David Sirota also wonders why Santorum's writing for the Inquirer:

So how can a newspaper like the Philadelphia Inquirer complain about losing readership when, in a major Democratic city, it is providing news analysis from a right-wing Republican who was soundly rejected by voters, who isn't even originally from Philadelphia, and who actually decided to move out of Pennsylvania while representing the state in the U.S. Senate?

Indeed.

I think it comes down to several motivations. Newspapers and other media outlets post-9/11 became afraid of being labeled liberal or anti-American. It got to the point where MSNBC had a rule, according to Phil Donahue, that every anti-war voice had to be counter-balanced with at least two pro-war voices. While the fervor has died down a bit in the past couple of years, there's still a demonstrable bias towards conservative opinion. Media Matters found that three times as many newspapers have more conservative column than progressive as have more progressive than conservative.

Maybe this is because newspapers have to protect their stockholders' interest, maybe it's because conservatives usually complain a lot more loudly than liberals do about media bias, or maybe it's because so many of these editors themselves feel the need to push a conservative agenda in their papers. Whichever it is, they feel a need to represent one side more than the other.

Moreover, with declining circulation, which the Inquirer has been complaining about, some editors are looking for novelty instead of substance. While I'm sure that there are wonderful progressive writers in Philadelphia, none of them would probably be as "shocking" or "provocative" as the former Senator. It reminds me of how Chris Crain hired vocal homophobe Jeff Gannon several years ago to write a column for the Washington Blade; it's about novelty, not credibility or a productive discussion.

I also wonder about the kind of national attention these sorts of columnists bring local papers like the Inquirer and how that skews what editors think is being read. If they receive more letters over one columnist than any other, even if they're mostly negative, they might believe that they're starting some sort of discussion, that they're provoking people in a way that's challenging instead of just annoying. If readers don't send in positive comments about other columnists, I would imagine it's easy for these editors to think that they have a mini-star on their hands.

Whatever it is, I know that a few years from now, or sooner, Santorum is going to say something deplorably offensive and insult another group of people (or maybe the gays again, who knows). And the Inquirer is going to publicly distance itself from him, shocked that something like this could have happened, even while he was pushing a far-right agenda for all those years. It's just the same cycle we've already gotten used to, so here we go again.

I mean, seriously, Rick Santorum?