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Rick Santorum is running for president. Again. According to the Republican Rulebook, the 2016 Republican nomination is his by rights. Santorum was the last NotRomney standing in 2012 and the GOP always nominates the runner-up next time around. To seal the deal Santorum went on MSNBC's Morning Joe today and urged Republican primary voters not to make the same mistake in 2016 that they made in 2012: failing to nominate Rick Santorum. Because it turns out that Santorum and only Santorum, according to Santorum and only Santorum, could've beaten Barack Obama in 2012. But we don't have to take his word for it! Some of Obama's own flying monkeys thought Santorum would've won if GOP voters had the sense to nominate him. They even told him so:

"Look, I thought I could have won last time," he said. "I'm convinced. You know I asked one of the Obama minions who were running the campaign 'Hey, why didn't you guys help me? I was up there battling Romney and all these folks at MSNBC were saying wouldn't this be great if, Santorum were the nominee, why didn't you help me? Why didn't you go out and bang me a little a bit, hit me you know, as being too conservative?'" "And the consensus was, 'We didn't want you, because of this,'" Santorum added, holding up his book.

Obama's minions were convinced that a book Rick Santorum hadn't written yet would win him the election. That must be some book. Anyway, Rick Santorum wrote a book. It's here. And Esquire's political blogger Charlie Pierce wrote a blog post. It's here. Money quote:

Bullshit, bullshit, and also, bullshit. First, I don't think this conversation [with an Obama "minion"] actually happened but, for the moment, let's assume that it did. One of the key factors in the president's re-election was a 12-point gender gap over a guy who once held relatively moderate positions on women's issues, but who abandoned them because he was a big old 'ho who wanted to get nominated. If the party had nominated Santorum, who actually believes this stuff, and has campaigned on it his entire career, there would have been a gender gap the size of the fking Bosphorus.

The gender gap was a key factor in the president's re-election. But it wasn't the only gap that factored in:

The backing Mr. Obama received from gay voters also has a claim on having been decisive. Mitt Romney and Mr. Obama won roughly an equal share of votes among straight voters nationwide, exit polls showed. And, a study argues, Mr. Romney appears to have won a narrow victory among straight voters in the swing states of Ohio and Florida. Mr. Obama’s more than three-to-one edge in exit polls among the 5 percent of voters who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual was more than enough to give him the ultimate advantage, according to the study, by Gary J. Gates of the Williams Institute at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, in conjunction with Gallup. The results are consistent with earlier research on the number and political beliefs of gay voters.

A 12-point gender gap? That's nothing. Romney suffered a 52-point queermo gap. Obama and Romney split straight voters down the middle while 76% of voters who identified as queer backed Obama. It's hard to picture a scenario in which Rick Santorum—AKA "Frothy Mix," AKA "Man On Dog," AKA "Ban Gay Marriage"—would've picked up a larger share of the LGBT vote in 2012 than Mitt Romney did. And unless Rick's daughter has millions of imaginary gay friends—and they're all registered to vote—Frothy Mix doesn't have a prayer in 2016.