Rick Santorum spoke in defense of Donald Trump’s shockingly tolerant reply to a question which demanded ethnic cleansing in the United States:

[Santorum] told reporters at a presidential forum here in Greenville organized by Heritage Action that it’s not the job of presidential candidates to “police” questions or voters.

“It’s not my job, it’s not Donald Trump’s job, it’s not anybody’s job to police a question. The questioner can say whatever he wants, it’s a free country,” Santorum said told reporters.

Actually, it is your job, if the job you are trying to acquire is one of leadership and responsibility. Any position of authority, in fact, requires that you, at the very minimum, lead those who follow you on the path of at least minimal moral and ethical standards. If you run a playground and the kids start fighting, you are required to stop the fight. If you run a business and you hear one employee planning to sabotage the career of another, you put a stop to it. And if you are running for president of the United States, and your followers begin demanding what amounts to an international war crime, then you bet your goddamned ass you better set the record straight on that. You don’t respond to a call for ethnic cleansing by saying, “Yeah, that’s a good idea, we’re looking into that.”

Santorum here is, at the very least, trying to dodge the minimal responsibility a leader must display—or, at the most, and perhaps just as likely, simply agrees with the sentiment that Muslims should be cleansed from our country.

Either way, neither he nor Trump is showing the kind of responsibility or leadership which is minimally required for any position of authority—which is excellent evidence as to why neither deserves any.