Candidates say nutty things, but usually they’re accidental, unscripted remarks. No adviser or focus group ever suggested to Mitt Romney that he mention his wife’s two Cadillacs or bet Rick Perry $10,000. While those comments revealed Romney’s isolation from the realities of kitchen-table America, they were not part of his game plan.

But when Rick Santorum called President Obama a “snob” for wanting kids to go to college, he said it deliberately. In fact, he’s said it before -- in New Hampshire in early January -- so he can and should be held accountable for his words. And those words create sharp doubts about his qualifications for the presidency.

Even Republicans were appalled. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (who has endorsed Romney) said: “I wish he’d said it differently. When you look at what’s going on in other countries -- China, India, the premium they put on higher education -- we’ve got to do better if we still want to be the global leader that we are.”

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, no friend of Obama’s, said the president “has a good, strong message on education. In Arizona, we’re trying to implement the things he talked about.”

GOP strategist Ed Rogers, writing in The Washington Post, summed up: “I don’t think I have ever seen another candidate so mistakenly head in the opposite direction of where common sense should have compelled him to go.”