By Ben Hulac, Contributing Writer

If there were any doubts that Rick Santorum has made it big, They’re gone now.

Clad in Santorum’s (now) trademark sweater vest, his hand on a leather chair, an image of an eagle over his shoulder, and all types of imagery stereotypic of Republican politics hanging in the set background, Saturday Night Live star Andy Samberg delivered the opening monologue for SNL this weekend.

Samberg blamed the former Pa. Senator’s recent razor-thin second-place performance in the Iowa caucus on Mitt Romney’s “enormous financial advantage and the usual Mormon trickery.” And, as the jokes roll on, he talks about getting lost in Iowa cornfields, being tricked into eating a stick of butter by local college Democrats and attending a speaking engagement with only one audience member.

Toward the end of the monologue, Samberg discusses the campaign road ahead and pledges that he will campaign in all 3141 counties in the nation and overcome the most difficult areas of the country including “the nation’s largest stock of grizzly bears” in Alaska, an active nuclear testing site in New Mexico, and most daunting of all: San Francisco.

It’s not quite Tina Fey as Sarah Palin, but it has its moments. Like Palin thought, Santorum is a candidate who the general public knew little about until the middle of a campaign. Though a Saturday Night Live cold opening holds little political significance, it does perhaps mean that Santorum has officially made it into national popular culture.

The free publicity can’t hurt, either. Here’s the sketch: