Little Ricky Santorum takes on the Bay State - singlehanded!!!

Where to start with this one? In yesterday's Boston Globe columnist Brian McGrory tackled the story of Santorum's brave if misbegotten crusade against Massachusetts liberalism.

Who knew that the president of Harvard, the people at the Museum of Science, and Mayor Thomas M. Menino were to blame for Cardinal Bernard F. Law's decision to move predatory priests from one parish to another? Here's who knew: Senator Rick Santorum.

Santorum's words about Boston, though written in 2002, weren't highlighted until the last couple of weeks, when a Philadelphia Daily News columnist, John Baer, raised them in print and prompted a running political discourse in the blogosphere. Perhaps so many imbecilic statements flow from Santorum's mouth and pen that this one was initially overlooked.

(snip)

What would he find up here, anyway? He'd find one of the most Catholic cities in the country.

He'd find academic institutions that are the intellectual engine of the nation, schools, by the way, that have churned out plenty of Republican leaders, George W. Bush among them.

And he'd find a city that is pretty much the birthplace of civil political discourse, a concept that Santorum essentially violates every time he opens his mouth.

Oh, but that's not the end of the story. It continues in a piece in today's Boston Globe written by Susan Milligan, wherein Little Ricky engages in a war of words with the entire Massachusetts congressional delegation. It's a war, let's be honest, he is ill-equipped to wage.

The senator's words sparked instant reaction from Massachusetts political leaders, who ridiculed Santorum's suggestion that priests were driven to abuse children by the city's liberal culture.

US Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat, called Santorum ''a jerk" and pointed out that the senator tried to use the levers of the federal government to block the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, an act that Santorum likened to ''execution." An autopsy found that Schiavo's brain was half the normal size and that she could not see anything.

''This is one of those people who claims to have had eye contact with a blind woman," Frank said.

Representative Martin T. Meehan, Democrat of Lowell, said, ''There's not much you can say about someone who claims to have read the Bible cover to cover and came away from it thinking it encourages hatred for fellow human beings."

David Wade, spokesman for Senator John F. Kerry, said, ''Sometimes you wonder whether Rick Santorum can possibly believe the radically wrong words that escape his mouth."

With his reelection campaign staggering perhaps he sees Massachusetts as more fertile ground than Pennsylvania? Good luck, Ricky. We're up here laughing at you.