IT ISN'T JUST SANTORUM -- IT'S ALSO (AMONG OTHERS) MARCO DREAMBOAT

Dana Milbank alerts us to Rick Santorum's latest mission in life:

President-unelect Rick Santorum made his triumphant return to the Capitol on Monday afternoon and took up a brave new cause: He is opposing disabled people.

Specifically, Santorum, joined by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), declared his wish that the Senate reject the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities -- a human rights treaty negotiated during George W. Bush's administration and ratified by 126 nations, including China, Russia, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The former presidential candidate pronounced his "grave concerns" about the treaty, which forbids discrimination against people with AIDS, who are blind, who use wheelchairs and the like. "This is a direct assault on us," he declared at a news conference.

Lee, a tea party favorite, said he, too, has "grave concerns" about the document's threat to American sovereignty....

Their concerns ... came from the dark world of U.N. conspiracy theories. The opponents argue that the treaty, like most everything the United Nations does, undermines American sovereignty -- in this case via a plot to keep Americans from home-schooling their children and making other decisions about their well-being....

Well, yes -- that's pretty much what the site of Santorum's organization Patriot Voices, claims. Homeschoolers think it will restrict them. Abortion opponents think the treaty's promise of access to reproductive rights is pro-abortion -- hard to see how that could be the case if the signatories include nations that ban abortion, but it's a worry expressed by both LifeNews.com and the Heritage Foundation. And, of course, Phyllis Schlafly opposes it, because, to her, everything the UN does is fascistic and evil.

But I just want to remind you that one of the treaty's opponents is a Republican who's frequently mentioned as a 2016 presidential candidate -- Marco Rubio. Before the treaty was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he tried to attach an anti-abortion amendment. When that failed, he voted against the treaty. And he's one of 36 Senate signers of a letter opposing the treaty.

Remember, I'm not talking about nutty Rick Santorum now -- I'm talking about Marco Rubio, who's widely seen as a serious, credible, non-crazy guy who could lead the GOP out of the wilderness in 2016.

Milbank says of the treaty,

... if it had such sinister aims, it surely wouldn't have the support of disabilities and veterans groups, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Republican senators such as John McCain (Ariz.) and John Barrasso (Wyo.), and conservative legal minds such as Boyden Gray and Dick Thornburgh.

But no -- it's too extreme for Senator Dreamboat.