The Hawkeye State alreeady beckoning the wannabes

Rick Santorum has been running for president for at least  50 or 60 years and is back to the lodestone of such candidates:  Iowa.  This time he's out there campaigning arm-in-arm with Rep. Steve King, the sociopathic Hawkeye congressman-of-faith  who will  forever   be remembered for identifying immigrant kids  because their calves bulge like cantaloupes from smuggling drugs across our border. He's assailed  Planned Parenthood for promoting "ghoulish, ghastly and gruesome" practices! His latest: He said that if he gets to Heaven he doesn't expect to meet gays.

Once  again, Santorum isn't reluctant to cast stones against his own perceived villains despite his holiest avowal  to be true to his purified faith by joining guys like Steve King.  It's the divisive religion of whatever works  suits him just fine.

And once again, as Republican politicians, from Gov. Kasich to  the other  anti-unionists  who campaign in work clothes  to prove  their everyman's ties, there's Santorum  bumping around Iowa's 99 counties in his " Chuck Truck" - a Ram 1500 pickup. We must assume that it is the rough-rider's image of choice to secure his role as a circuit rider in a common dirt farmer machine.

Iowa is the Valhalla for a lot of pols who see the 2016 presidential election as occurring tomorrow.  Along with Santorum, Texas Rep.Louie Gohmert, always a challenge to linguists, will be joining the parade before the GOP altar.  Oh, and Donald Trump, too.  And Chris Christie, all of them approving of Steve King as the man who  represents the core values best suited for their party.

Kasich made it to Iowa as a presidential candidate in 2000. And although some media people are trying to hoist him into the 2016 campaign, he left a muddy footprint on a comment to the Youngstown Vindicator  editorial board that would not sit well  in that state.

"Honestly, I just don't see it," he said to the board of any plan to go for it again. "I tried  it once.  You come with me.  You can go with me out to Iowa.  You wouldn't believe it.  You'd never go there again...I don't expect anything.  I don't even think about it."

(As an aside:  Kasich  is so sensitive to events he can't control, he refused the paper's request to vidoetape the interview - which the Vindy said was the first time a candidate had rejected such a request.)  

As for Santorum and King:   I'll just turn them him over to the Roman poet Petrarch, the father of humanism, who wrote for the ages:

"The climax of all evils is when a man rooted in some false opinion, grows fatally persuaded that his cause is right."