In 2003, when he was a Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Rick Santorum made some disgusting anti-gay remarks, suggesting that homosexuality was on a par with pedophilia or bestiality. In response, Dan Savage launched one of the first political google bombs that defines the word Santorum as, let me just say delicately, something pretty unsavory. As a result of this google bomb, this definition is what turns up first (even ahead of his own campaign website) when you google Santorum’s name. How much this contributed to Santorum’s crushing 18-point defeat in his 2006 senatorial re-election campaign is unclear

Now that Santorum seems to running for president, people who have never heard of him but are curious are (naturally) going to google him and get this result. Santorum was asked recently what he could and would do to combat the problem. It turns out that he has few viable options.

Although Santorum exemplifies the worst kind of sanctimonious religious bigotry, this episode shows that politics in the age of the internet can be brutal and that even the most powerless of groups can no longer be attacked with the kind of impunity that politicians have long been used to.