As the cliché has it, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. That ancient maxim certainly applies to conservative columnist George Will, who, despite having been wrong about nearly everything else, has been dead accurate in his assessment of the Republican presidential field. Earlier this week he concluded a characteristically orotund analysis with the blunt observation that "neither [Mitt] Romney nor [Rick] Santorum looks like a formidable candidate for November." What sane onlooker could possibly disagree?

As Wednesday night's heated Arizona candidates' debate demonstrated, the Republican contest has devolved into a hissy fit between Romney and Santorum over which is the loonier appeaser of hard-right social conservatives. Instead of the robust debate over economic policy that the country deserves, the contenders are refighting the culture wars over issues that were settled more than a generation ago.

In the process, they've become totally unhinged from reality. They've dreamed up a war on religion that Barack Obama is supposedly waging. They've managed to make access to contraception, which is about as American as apple pie, a subject of controversy. Santorum, who believes that "Satan is attacking the great institutions of America," has suggested that neither states nor the federal government should have a role in education.

He spun out even more deeply into outer space on Friday by suggesting that Obama's real motive for encouraging more young people to go to college is not to equip them to compete in a rapidly evolving job market but something far more sinister: to indoctrinate them into a secular worldview.

I swear I am not making this up. Here's the story from CBS News: "In an hourlong interview with conservative television host Glenn Beck ... Santorum said, 'I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely ... The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.' "

Well, this, like much of what Santorum decrees, is just plain nuts. It's the kind of nonsense that people should feel free to spout around the kitchen table or at the rail of the neighborhood tavern. But to make it an integral part of a presidential campaign is flat out crazy.

And the Republican establishment -- or at least that part of it that still has a foot in the world of reality -- knows it and is starting to panic. They know that running a 21st-century Savonarola like Santorum would be a disaster. They realize that running a super-rich twit like Romney, who was born with a silver foot in his mouth, wouldn't be much better.