TRUST ME, RICK: THERE ARE PRESS CLIPPINGS YOU REALLY DON'T WANT TO TAKE SERIOUSLY

This morning, just as I was leaving the apartment, I heard this Rick Santorum soundbite on the radio:

"Let me tell you, what wins in America is bold ideas, sharp contrasts and a plan that includes everyone from across the economic spectrum."

No, Rick, no. Rick, seriously -- you don't want to go there.

Rick Santorum is running for the Republican nomination and he's talking about class? Has he been talking this way all along and I just haven't been listening -- or is he taking that David Brooks column, the one that praised him as a workin'-class hero and not a Harvard Law elitist, way too seriously?

Republican base voters already think conservatism has "a plan that includes everyone from across the economic spectrum" -- that plan is get a freakin' job, deadbeat! Republican base voters support that plan even if they're the ones who don't have jobs. They believe in bootstraps. They believe in the most job-destroying, elitist things Bain Capital has ever done. (Job destruction is job creation!) The only thing they want politicians to do is to crush government and unleash capitalism. The more Santorum says things like this, the better Mitt Romney will do.

Santorum's not talking in a way that can possibly get him the Republican nomination -- he's talking in a way that can get him deep love from the mainstream media, and (in all likelihood) a non-Fox media job (if he wants one) after he drops out of the race. I expect to see him on the Washington Post op-ed page by April.