Rick Santorum has been getting a lot of kudos from everyone in the GOP over the past 24 hours — mainly because his exit clears the decks for the whole party apparatus to get to the issue at hand: dethroning Barack Obama on November 6.
There's no doubt that the former Pennsylvania Senator outperformed the expectations of everyone who followed the Republican nominating race from the beginning — including Santorum himself.
But does anybody seriously think Santorum will be viable in 2016, like so many Republican candidates who lost in one election cycle but came back as the front-runner in the next one (à la Nixon, Reagan, Dole, McCain)?
Actually Chris Matthews does. The Hardball host went into one of his quasi-irrational fantasies last night of a Santorum-Hillary Clinton duel in 2016, a duel he said would be so exciting people would cancel their vacations to watch. Yes he really said that.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2012.