With remarks on Thursday by Rick Santorum suggesting he might rather see four more years of Barack Obama than see Mitt Romney become president, some are theorizing that Santorum is making a play for the 2016 Republican nomination.

As Newsbusters and AmSpec’s own Jim Antle pointed out, Santorum’s comment was more conditional than much of the reporting has made it seem, saying that Obama might be better than a Republican if that Republican would be not very different from Obama:

“You win by giving people a choice. You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who’s just going to be a little different than the person in there… If they’re going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future.”

Still, the implication that Romney would be “little different” from Obama is so far beyond what the average American voter would consider reasonable that the focus on Santorum’s willingness to prefer Obama to a Republican other than himself is appropriate.

Frankly, I don’t think Rick Santorum is clever or devious enough to be thinking about 2016. I think he’s focused completely on this year’s contests.

However, Santorum’s statements are so silly, unnecessary, and potentially harmful during the general election — such as by encouraging his supporters not to vote for Romney in November should Romney win the nomination — that they should be held against Santorum today.

This is a man who too often seems temperamentally unfit to be President of the United States.

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UPDATE: Newt Gingrich has said he “couldn’t disagree more” with Santorum’s words.

Santorum, on Neil Cavuto’s “Your World” show on Friday afternoon, says that he is being misunderstood, and that he would never support Barack Obama. Still, even if Santorum didn’t mean precisely what he said, the fact is that he said it. Santorum also flatly denied having any thought about 2016, and on that I believe him.