Rick Santorum today joined the physically crowded but intellectually challenged list of Republican presidential candidates for 2016. I can’t think of anything positive to say about this development.

Santorum is one of the more unpleasant conservatives with a history of provocative and unthinking remarks. And he’s done nothing lately.

Candidates for this nation’s highest office ought to be highly qualified, highly motivated people. They should have thought-out motivations and a serious desire to serve the best and the least among us. Rick Santorum offers none of that. Further, since he was defeated for re-election as a senator from Pennsylvania, he has no significant accomplishments beyond running unsuccessfully for president in 2012. The only reason he’s running this time around is that he has nothing better to do. Absolutely nothing better to do.

Regrettably, that description also fits other GOP candidates and wannabes like Mike Huckabee and Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina and Donald Trump. They, like Santorum, are people beset with an almost total lack of qualification for the country’s highest job and whose only real interest in running is feathering their empty nests. They’ll get book deals, or high-paid jobs or maybe positions as TV analysts. That’s it. They’ll never be elected to anything.

What a sad place we have come to with our political system. I wish I could speak with enthusiasm about the other party’s candidates, but I can’t. Hillary Clinton comes with a lot of baggage that troubles me, although she at least has some of the policy chops the Republicans are so lack. It’s a sad pass for all of us who truly care more about the welfare of our country than an abstract and dubious set of “principles.”