Dear Mr. Santorum,

As you approach the final days of your campaign to set American culture back several decades, I can only express my absolute gratitude, joy and relief that you will soon have your time to fade into the reams of our history books.

I’ll admit, when you launched your campaign in June of last year, I didn’t give you much of a chance past the first few primaries of 2012. Given your arcane views on numerous major issues, I assumed you would be considered a fringe candidate with no real shot of clinching the Republican nomination. For a while, I was right.

Your performance in Iowa shocked the country — apparently grassroots campaigning and old-fashioned hand shaking still work in the digital age — and your ability to win über-conservative states based mainly on social issues is to be commended.

However, as a young Republican worried about the future of our nation under another Obama presidency, your meaningless publicity stunts and unnecessarily harsh and hateful rhetoric could not go away any faster.

You are the epitome of all that is wrong with today’s Republican Party. You’ve championed draconian values that cater to a limited number of party members while alienating the overwhelming number of center-right and independent voters looking for an alternative to Obama.

You’ve said that contraceptives pose a danger to our country, compared homosexuals to child rapists and suggested that women should have no say in reproductive choices even when it involves rape.

With those sort of heartless, callous statements, you’ve shown that you don’t display any sort of the compassion you preach; you don’t set an awe-inspiring, presidential example to the American people.

For all intents and purposes, you’re a right-wing extremist appealing to a small, but notoriously loud, base of supporters. The conservative that even most conservatives are embarrassed to be around. You’re like the crazy uncle that everyone avoids at the family reunion.

Your track record on how to handle international affairs and crises is simply unsustainable. Saying that you would bomb Iran is an easy thing for a presidential candidate to say to get a roar of applause, but unless you’re in the daily presidential briefings and meeting regularly with national security advisers, your opinion is meaningless.

Not to mention, campaigning on promises to bomb another nation sounds like a presidential platform idea from a third-world nation, not from the global powerhouse of military and economic capability.

On the campaign trail, you started the mildly amusing game among the GOP candidates to be the “most conservative,” and have not missed out on an opportunity to slam Gov. Mitt Romney as unprepared and unfit to face Obama in the general election.

In reality, Romney appeals to many voters because he isn’t as polarizing and has an ability to rally both conservatives and independents. Sure, he’s made some mistakes and gaffes, but compared to some of your statements, he almost looks angelic.

You campaign on the platform of small government and want to drive down outrageous Washington spending, but while you served as a senator, you added trillions of dollars to the nation’s debt by voting to increase the debt limit five times. The size of the federal government also grew by 80 percent during your tenure in the Senate, and you brought over $1 billion in earmarked spending to Pennsylvania. Clearly, your idea of a fiscal conservative is different than most Americans.

Now that clinching the nomination is mathematically impossible for you, many Republicans would ask that you not attempt to divide our party any father. In your quest to eliminate Romney, you lost sight of our real competitor this year: Barack Obama.

For the best interest of the party, it is imperative that we rally behind one candidate and that you leave as soon as humanly possible.

Meanwhile, I’ll still chuckle every time I Google your last name.

Austin Gaddis is a junior majoring in communication studies and public relations. His column runs on Thursdays.