”The fact is this is a dictator, Ahmadinejad, who has said he doesn’t believe the Holocaust existed. This is a dictator who said he wants to eliminate Israel from the face of the Earth. This is a dictator who said he wants to drive the United States out of the Middle East. I’m inclined to believe dictators … If you think a madman is about to have nuclear weapons, and you think that madman is going to use those nuclear weapons, then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people by eliminating the capacity to get nuclear weapons.”

That, of course, was Newt Gingrich at Wednesday’s Republican debate in Mesa, AZ., invoking the apocalyptic tone of the Bush administration just before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. What Gingrich either forgot, or never knew in the first place, is that the “madman” Ahmadinejad doesn’t hold much power in Iran, certainly not the power to launch imaginary nukes against Israel and the West. That power belongs to  ”Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei . But let’s not ruin all the saber rattling fun with facts. These jokers are on a roll.

Mitt Romney, last fall, before an AIPAC  convention, refered to Iran as “unalloyed evil” and at each presidential debate has lied about the Obama administration’s approach to Iran.

Obama “should have placed crippling sanctions against Iran. He did not,” Romney said during the CNN debate Wednesday night.

The Obama administration, of course, has already put in place the toughest sanctions ever imposed on the Iranian government, including new measures  targeting, for the first time, Iran’s entire financial system. Obama on  New Year’s Eve also signed into law a raft of tough new sanctions that  would penalize any foreign financial institution that does  business with  the Central Bank of Iran. As part of broader U.S.-led efforts to exert pressure on  Iran, the  European Union has agreed to ban new contracts to buy,  transport or import Iranian crude oil.

And Rick Santorum carved out his evil empire scenario years ago during his failed senate re-election bid in 1996: “Ahmadinejad, like Hitler and Mussolini, intends to conquer the world,” Santorum said in an apocalyptic tone that suggested that Iran (population: 70 million) was size of China. “This is not a hidden agenda. His goal is to establish a caliphate. Like Khrushchev, he wants a nuclear arsenal, and he is building the same sort of frightening global alliances that enabled the Soviet Union to put missiles near us.”

And this from Santorum a couple years back at an address before students at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida: “This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war at all. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies, Satan, would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country: the United States of America.” There you have it, Hitler, Mussolini, and Satan all vying for a piece of Ahmadinejad’s soul.

I guess one of the freakiest aspect to all this war mongering is that these kooks are really not that far to the right of Obama, who continues to remind us that all options are on the table, apparently including a military invasion, when it comes to Iran. The freakiest aspect is that, once again, Ron Paul appears to be the only adult in the room.

Who would have believed that a Republican candidate for president could come along, so odious and mendacious, that he would make you miss the warmth of Newt Gingrich and the sincerity of Mitt Romney? Behold Rick Santorum.

Sure, ex-senator Rick was fun for a while, the shithead next door who’s repressive social believes were so extreme that even the Italian Catholics of South Philly kicked him to the senatorial curb in 2006. A few months ago, Santorum was just another jester piling into the Republican clown wagon, elbowing for position against light-weight buffoons like Herman Cain and Donald Trump.

But then the unlikely happened: Ricky became the Repug front runner and the media cognoscenti were certain that the intensified scrutiny would bury Santorum under five tons of Pennsylvania slag. Whoops! What actually happened was that the more Santorum flung his verbal feces around, the higher he rose in the polls. Apparently, his brand of coercive bible-thumping and repressive misogynism has been deemed by the perpetually angry Republican primary voters as just the right antidote to the evil Obama.

Emboldened, Santorum ratcheted up the rhetoric. He oppurtunistically siezed upon the recently manufactured birth control controversy, declaring that Obama is waging a war against religion and suggesting that birth control wouldn’t even be neccesary if American women just kept their damn legs together. More recently, Santorum further burnished his dipshit credentials with some convoluted gibberish that Obama blasphemes the bible by putting “the earth above man”. In Ricky’s world,  land rendered barren by hydraulic fracturing is all part of God’s plan.

As more and more christo-fascists scuttled out from under the tea party woodpile to show their support, Santorum and his acolytes stepped up the attacks on Obama’s otherness by declaring that the president is pursuing a “radical Islamic policies“, then quickly playing the “misspoke” game. This kind of weasly chickenshit is endemic to Santorum’s campaign. He’s willing to say anything, no matter how extreme, repugnant, or ignorant,  but is never willing to own it. In his world, Santorum is constantly being misquoted and misinterpreted by the liberal media who are out to play “gotcha” journalism.

In a sane world, ticks like Santorum would be engorging themselves out in the far reaches of the political forest, not in your backyard. And whether or not he gets the nomination is largely irrelavent. Santorum is merely a vector. The disease of intolerance he is spreading will  linger long after after he has scurried back under his rock.