Is Rick Santorum inspired by P.T. Barnum?

Here’s a small sample of “Rickisms”:

•Most famously, Santorum has equated homosexuality to adultery, bigamy, incest, child molestation, and zoophilia, notably coining the phrase, “man-on-dog” sex.

•Santorum has stated “the right to privacy does not exist in the U.S. Constitution,” inferred by some to mean there are few if any limits on government to regulate private sexual behavior.

•Santorum has attributed problems with Social Security to abortion: “The reason Social Security is in big trouble is we don’t have enough workers to support the retirees. A third of all the young people in America are not in America today because of abortion, because one in three pregnancies end [sic] in abortion.”

•Santorum has blamed the Catholic Church’s sex scandal on “moral relativism,” a sick Boston lifestyle, and “cultural liberalism.”

•Santorum has compared abortion to slavery, adding that comparing the two was nothing new and he wouldn’t apologize.

•Most recently, Santorum stated that Sen. John McCain, who underwent horrendous torture in Vietnam, couldn’t understand why torture was necessary in the fight against al-Qaida: “McCain doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works. I mean, you break somebody, and after they’re broken, they become cooperative.”

So the former senator and wannabe president has broken just about all the rules. Yet although not quite thriving — his polls are still wobbly — he is doing just fine. In the inchoate mess that is the present GOP field, he is holding his own and then some. So what gives? By every political convention, Santorum should be stone cold dead right now.

But he’s not; he understands what others fail to grasp — that the GOP presidential nomination fight has become not just great political theater but a genuine three-ring circus. And who better to look to for advice about running a circus than the great circus master himself, P.T. Barnum. Better known for his work with carnivals, sideshows and assorted hoaxes, Barnum was also a politician. He served in the Connecticut Legislature for two terms, was mayor of Bridgeport, and ran for Congress.

Barnum, in short, is the perfect role model for anyone running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Santorum, of the odd dozen GOP aspirants, is the first to figure this out. That explains the otherwise inexplicable — why he talks and acts as he does.

The conclusion is inescapable. Santorum has discovered Barnum’s secret — that the public loves a show and that one can say almost anything and someone will believe it.