THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS FOR ...

I was going to write a post with a brilliantly original reaction to this:

Testing the Waters: Santorum Makes It Official

In a letter that went in the mail yesterday to his PAC, the America's Foundation, Rick Santorum ... announces that he is "actively considering the 2012 race." ...

And then I discovered that True/Slant's Michael Roston had a similar reaction to mine when news of Santorum's interest in a presidential bid first surfaced in August -- Roston thinks Santorum is a stalking horse for Mitt Romney.

Roston notes that Santorum endorsed Romney (and trashed McCain) back in February 2008. He parses a couple of Santorum statements on Palin, particularly what the Rickster told Laura Ingraham when Palin resigned as governor:

Her biggest fans that I know is my wife, Karen (ph), and she loves her, and she felt really bad that she quit. She felt like, number one, it hurt her, it hurt Sarah. And number two, it hurt women in politics. And although my wife is not an elected official, she was very much a part of my career and she was always trying to promote women in politics. And it looks like, you know, she couldn’t take it, and that’s not a good thing for women.

And you know, I'm -- I'm speaking for my wife, not for me. I'm not — I’m not telling you how I feel about it. That's how she feels about it, and I think that's -- that's probably going to -- going to hurt. It's going to hurt her.

Yeah, that's not too supportive.

Roston thinks this is specifically about Palin. But I'd say Santorum is also valuable to Romney in 2012 because of his ability to take a sliver of the God-botherer vote away from Mike Huckabee.

I don't want to rule out the possibility that Santorum just lives in a bubble and hears from so many people who like and admire him that he has no idea how he's regarded in the public at large (which would make him similar to about 50% of the presidential wannabes we've ever had).

But I just think it's possible that he's working an angle.