Yes, there was another debate last night and yes it was as weird as you would expect at this point. Here are the highlights.

Wednesday night’s debate should have been Rick Santorum’s night. He’s helped whip the whole country into hysterics over contraception, held meetings with nativist birthers, made the case of climate science as “political science,” suggested mainstream Protestants were no longer Christian and has just enough momentum to snatch the Republican presidential nomination out of Mitt Romney’s well-manicured hands.

Instead BFF’s Romney and Rep. Ron Paul (TX) attacked Santorum as a fake conservative addicted to earmark spending who once supported a pro-choice Democrat (Arlen Specter) over anti-choice Republican, which is funny given Paul’s congressional district lives well off of DC and Romney used to be a pro-choice Republican. But I digress.

Romney and Paul have a heavy stream of ads attacking Santorum on spending and this line that he’s “fake,” so you’d think he’d have an answer ready. But he didn’t, relying instead on a defense built on the rules of Senate procedure and his time in Washington D.C. Is it just me or is it maybe not the best strategy to offer as a defense to claims that you are a Washington insider addicted to pork-barrel spending your extensive experience in D.C. horse-trading on legislation?

Also, whenever I hear the Paul campaign dismiss Santorum as a “fake” conservative I can’t help but hear “illegal” conservative. Just seems like that would fit Paul’s whole oeuvre more.

Thankfully Santorum was back on his game when the domestic policy issue of our time came up: women’s access to contraception. Here’s where Santorum showed us what his presidency would look like and what conservative leadership is all about.

The debate moderators asked the candidates what they thought about this whole controversy around women trying to make medical decisions on their own. Romney and Newt Gingrich (I know I almost forgot he was there too!) both dismissed the question as frivolous and offensive, unless we’re talking about religious liberty and religious liberty is obviously sacred, and no more so then when religious liberty is on the march.

But Santorum, he saw a pulpit and he was going to take it. And take it he did, offering a long exposition on the lurid explosion of teenage sexuality made possible by access to contraception.

Is anyone else half-expecting John Waters to jump out and shout “cut” at this point? Is it just me?

As ridiculous as his answer is, and as bloodied as Paul and Romney managed to make him, Santorum showed that he’s still leading the pack and he will drive them right off the cliff with this crusade. Rather than stick with their reasonable and still very conservative answers on contraception, Romney and Gingrich fell all over themselves to amend that answer to talk about the evils of teenage pregnancy and the need for abstinence education. Paul, of course, has always been against contraception so he didn’t have to change positions to be on the same side of the issue as Santorum and even tried to one-up Santorum pointing out the obvious: women’s immorality and lasciviousness is the only reason contraception is even necessary. Duh.

But Romney and Gingrich, in this moment, showed that in the fracturing of the Republican base it’s the evangelical base that now calls the shots. It is officially their party. I’m serious. No joking there, folks.