Go to the BuzzFeed Politics page and behold an orchestrated media feeding frenzy in progress. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is the target. He has been rising in the polls, and BuzzFeed won’t allow it.

Three of the current top five pieces on the site are attacks on Santorum, and the hit pieces continue as you scroll further down the site or look at the “Most Viral in Politics” sidebar. Here are the headlines:

• Dutch Outraged over Santorum’s Euthanasia Claim
• Rick Santorum: Evolution Is Used to Promote Atheism
• Santorum Takes Credit for Helping 1994 GOP Sweep, But He Backed Away from the ‘Contract With America’
• Santorum’s Previous Obama/Hitler Comparison
• Rick Santorum in 2008: There’s No Such Thing as a Liberal Christian
• Rick Santorum in 2008: Obama Joined Church for Power
• Santorum: ‘I Am not a Manager, I Am not a Visionary’
• Santorum Defiant: ‘I’ll Defend Everything I Say’

And then there’s the piece lamenting the fact that no matter how many presumably outrageous Santorum quotes BuzzFeed and other publications unearth, the new frontrunner is “gaffe-proof.”

The press dutifully transcribed all these remarks, but none of them raised a ruckus for more than a few hours. They’re just the latest in a long line of Santorum quotes — on homosexuality, on women’s roles, on contraception and abortion — that seem to have lost their capacity to shock. And though they’re still well to the right of public opinion, as reflected in polls, they’ve done nothing to hurt Santorum, whose campaign has attained an aura of momentum after winning three states in a row earlier this month. For Rick Santorum, there’s no such thing as a gaffe anymore.

Reading BuzzFeed these days is like reading transcriptions of the opposition research compiled by either his top GOP rival, Mitt Romney, or the Democratic National Committee — or both. I’ve rarely seen a presumably objective publication so transparently contemptuous of a candidate and so determined to drive a negative narrative about him or her.

But hey, BuzzFeed is driving traffic and generating buzz for itself. That’s all that matters in today’s “journalism,” right?

UPDATE: Rich Lowry of National Review explains what’s really stirring in the minds of journalists who keep trying to manufacture Santorum controversies.

Santorum is a standing affront to the sensibilities and assumptions of the media and political elite. That elite is constantly writing the obituary for social conservatism, which is supposed to wither away and leave a polite, undisturbed consensus in favor of social liberalism. Santorum not only defends beliefs that are looked down upon as dated and unrealistic; he does it with a passionate sincerity that opens him to mockery and attack.