Rick Santorum: 'Good Man in the Wrong Century'

Rick Santorum and President Obama can agree on one thing, writes Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post. Both desperately want Santorum to be the Republican nominee. "Let me be blunt," she writes. "If Republicans nominate Rick Santorum to run for president, they will lose." She praises Santorum as a man she respects, but sums him up thusly: He's a "good man in the wrong century."

Which is to say he is "so far out of step with the majority of Americans" that he would never be able to win enough independents and moderates necessary in a general election. He surged to popularity as an anti-Romney, but now his views on matters such as birth control have come front and center and proven him to be "an outlier," writes Parker. "It’s too bad this election season got lost in the weeds of religious conviction," she adds, although the White House probably loves the turn of events. (More Rick Santorum 2012 stories.)