Has the word gone further than the man himself? Or do you joke?

Yes and what's even funnier is that this wasn't even common knowledge at first, there was a new story about how someone tried making a Rick Santorum character in an animal crossing game that had come out around the time, I think it was the one on 3DS.

And the game flagged Santorum as being a lewd word or slur for its online cuss word prevention. Which led to people looking it up, and figuring out what that word meant.

Here's the deets:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_for_the_neologism_%22santorum%22

Which I recall vividly. Dude deserved it wholeheartedly