The greatest regret I’ll ever have is not running for the 2012 GOP presidential candidacy. I’m not Mitt Romney, I can’t speak Mandarin and I don’t want to end the Federal Reserve. Apparently that’s all one needed to be front-runner for at least a month.

The latest episode of “Survivor: Country Club Island” aired Tuesday. (Skip this bit if you TiVoed it.) Dark Horse Rick Santorum (the guy in the sweater vest who always hangs out in the back) shocked the world (of cable news) by winning in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri.

Technically, Santorum didn’t win any delegates on Tuesday. Colorado and Minnesota’s votes were non-binding and won’t be awarded for some time. In Missouri, where no delegates were at stake, voters were basically picking Homecoming King and Santorum was the only one to show up at the dance.

So, who the hell cares? Well, the next primary is three weeks away, so 24-hour cable news networks have to care. Reporters and pundits will have to replace some fraction of the 22 hours spent on pre-game and post-game analysis and manufactured conflict with actual news. This saves them the trouble by shifting the narrative right before halftime.

But there are things to be read in these tea party leaves. Santorum didn’t just beat Romney, he pinned his sweaty ass to the floor and made him cry “Uncle!” (In Jesus’ name!) Romney didn’t win a single county in Minnesota or Missouri.

Santorum’s surge(ish) can be attributed to two things: 1) He’s still not Mitt Romney.

2) The religious right had more things to get angry (excited) about this week than they have since Osama Bin Laden and Lady Gaga tried to build that gay mosque on Ground Zero.

Obama waged a war on Christians, requiring institutions like Catholic hospitals and universities that serve the public to provide the same health care plans as any other institution, including contraceptives like birth control pills. Then gay judges waged a war on straight marriage, finding California’s ban on gay marriage unconstitutional.

Santorum made the most of these slights against God, and conservatives readily rallied behind righteous Rick. But the American people won’t. Ever. While the religious right was off finding itself in Sarah Palin’s Alaska, the rest of us moved on.

Wednesday morning on Fox News, Santorum called the new health care policy, “a direct assault on the First Amendment, not only a direct assault on freedom of religion, by forcing people specifically to do things that are against their religious teachings.”

The real First Amendment protects people from being discriminated against based on their religion; it doesn’t protect discrimination that is based in religion. Otherwise every employer would be a Christian Scientist and no one would get any health care.

Then, Wednesday evening, he decried the ruling against Proposition 8. Public opinion on gay marriage has shifted dramatically since the Bush era. The most recent Gallup poll found support for legalizing gay marriage at an all time high of 64 percent. GOP talking points have changed. Government is the antichrist again-you just can’t get enough traction in the culture wars nowadays.

Santorum is a relic of the GOP of yesteryear. That’s why last night’s comments about Prop. 8 were so unbelievably tortured and silly. He told the crowd that Obama is “all about appointing justices who think that the family is simply an institution that gets in the way of government directly controlling your life.”

They just don’t write ‘em like that anymore.

Dave Balson is a senior journalism major.

He can be reached at 581-7942 or DENopinions@gmail.com.