Dave Weigel analyzes Santorum’s latest rant:

Is it true that Mitt Romney is the absolute worst Republican you could have debating health care with Barack Obama? Santorum’s logic is that of a Howard Dean fan criticizing John Kerry in 2003; you can’t debate the president if you took half a loaf on his biggest mistake.

If that’s his logic, Santorum is wrong enough that it undermines the core of his argument. Howard Dean was against the war in Iraq, and as of late 2003 John Kerry was running as the candidate who voted to authorize the invasion and was still arguing that Bush’s main mistake was in his management of the war after the invasion. Kerry was running as the one who would better manage the Iraq war, not the one who would bring it to a quicker end. Dean was tapping into deep dissatisfaction among netroots activists with national Democratic politicians, most of whom had gutlessly aligned themselves with Bush on national security issues out of a desire to protect their future political ambitions. Romney had his own incentives to oppose Obama on health care all along, but he is significantly less compromised than Kerry was in 2003-04. Romney was against the passage of the ACA, and he claims to want to repeal it. He may be an unprincipled, me-too Republican, but he isn’t campaigning as one.