That’s the line Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum appeared to have taken last night.

When the “C” word (contraception) came up last night, the Newster found his chance to raise up the old reliable attack on the “media elites.”

But didn’t answer the question.  Typical.

So when moderator John King served the same question to Santorum and Romney, they began an exchange about the frightening numbers of kids born to single women these days — 42%, according to a recent study, and 70% of all African-American babies (you can read about it here).

A horrible problem with potentially disastrous effects, not just to the kids but to the larger society as well.

But wouldn’t more prudent use of contraception actually diminish the problem Santorum and Romney briefly landed on?  Wouldn’t even easier access to birth control and better education about its use make sense?

Not with these two.  No, these two briefly touched on abstinence education (well, I guess these guys believe that Big Government can do some things well, like teach kids to be abstinent) as a solution but otherwise ignored the question with their curious connection between contraception and illegitimate kids.

Maybe you could make the argument that birth control led to more casual sex, which could’ve made the stigma of being single and pregnant less serious, which led to more illegitimate kids.

But Romney and Santorum chose instead to string some sound bites together in an almost comically incoherent fashion.

Thanks be to God that last night is the final scheduled debate.  We can’t take too much more of this comedy.