Stewart v. Santorum

Except that it wasn't. I mean, Jon Stewart made no bones about the fact that they disagreed on almost everything ("ok first, some common ground: ice-cream is delicious!"), but otherwise he was professional and nonconfrontational, taking an "it's amazing that we can both be decent folks and just have such incompatible world views" approach. I'd have liked to see him push a bit more, especially in places where Santorum has ruffled a lot of feathers, like by claiming that women who work outside the home are selfish. But none of that -- just a little about his incomprehension at the dismissal of gays and their families, and then some softballs about "what do Santorum critics get wrong?" and the like. Sigh.

The scariest part to me was that Santorum looked pretty sane, pretty good-humored and thoughtful. Despite his being one of my Senators, I hadn't heard him speak before, and the worst I could say of his performance was that he looked a bit goody-goody, used the word "virtue" anachronistically often, and had helmet hair -- no Zell Miller-style frothing at the mouth to give his extremism away. Makes me think that convincing voters to distrust him may be mighty hard going...

Haven't found any online links to the video or transcript, but will post such a thing if I find it.

Update: a quick summary provided here. Must be something better soon. This blogger points out that Rick said overtly that he thought governments should legislate ideals; there are some unfortunate precedents for that...

Update 2: belatedly, the video, a partial transcript, and some more rants.