The media has unleashed the hounds on Rick Santorum.
He was last seen a step ahead of the braying pack, trying to explain that he hadn’t accused President Barack Obama of being a crypto-Muslim. The former Pennsylvania senator criticized the president’s environmentalism as representative of a “phony theology.” The press snipped the remark out of the context and played it as Santorum donning his finest Grand Inquisitor garb and reading the president of the United States out of the Christian faith.
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This followed immediately upon an ill-considered joke by Santorum backer Foster Friess about aspirin as a contraceptive that drove a couple of days of coverage insinuating the comment told us something important about Santorum’s own views.
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.
If Santorum had the social views of a Barbara Boxer, he would be hailed in all the glossy magazines as a political virtuoso. He has fought a front-runner with all the advantages to a jump ball in Michigan. His aides can’t provide advance texts of his speeches because he always extemporizes and speaks from a few notes. He is indefatigable, willing to lose on behalf of what he believes and committed to trying to convince others of his positions.
In the wake of his surprise showing in the Iowa caucuses, news coverage focused on Santorum arguing about gay marriage with college kids at his New Hampshire events. It was taken as a sign of his monomania. Yet he genuinely — if naïvely — wanted to convince them. If the cauldron of a presidential campaign is not the best place for Socratic exchanges on hot-button issues, Santorum was trying to do more than repeat sound bites back at youthful questioners.
Although his critics will never credit him for it, Santorum’s social conservatism brings with it an unstinting devotion to human dignity, a touchstone for the former senator. The latest position for which he’s taking incoming is his opposition to a government mandate for insurance coverage of prenatal testing often used to identify handicapped babies who are subsequently aborted. For his detractors, his respect for the disabled is trumped by his unforgivable opposition to abortion.
Santorum conceives of his social views as a badly needed support for economic aspiration. It’s no accident that the Republican candidate most committed to the traditional family and associated virtues is also the one who talks most about the struggles of the working class. He frequently cites research from the Brookings Institution showing that simply getting a high-school diploma, getting a job, and getting married before having children — the so-called success sequence — are powerful tools against poverty.
As Jeffrey Bell, author of the new book The Case for Polarized Politics, notes in a Wall Street Journal interview, Santorum’s style of social conservatism is deeply American. No other Western country saw the rise of such a social-conservative movement after the social upheaval of the 1960s. Bell traces American social conservatism back ultimately to the God-given natural rights enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. Sure enough, Santorum is given to quoting the Declaration.
That won’t stop Santorum-haters from portraying him as threateningly un-American. He can play into the negative image of him. In one interview last year, he said that as president he would warn people of the dangers of contraception, a task better suited to a youth minister or Catholic premarital counselor than the leader of the free world.
Santorum occasionally needs to curb his enthusiasms. But the implicit message of his candidacy is unassailable: Denounce and dismiss it as you please; American social conservatism is here to stay.
Conservatives main character trait: whine. Whine when attacked. Blame the media. Whine when the polls give you bad news (which you'll be getting LOTS of this fall) and blame the pollster. You even attack RedState dude now for daring to talk about Santorum talks about!
Dear notwithyou. To those of you who are blind to the fact that the press is biased to a fault, it sounds like whining. To us who are victims it is a statement of fact. Please contradict this with your fearless leader who has yet to take responsibilty for anything bad that has happended during his watch. His, and the liberal media's, approach is simple. Just blame Bush, the EU meltdown, the earthquake, unrest in N. Africa, sunspots, anything. Yet the press never allowed the Bush administration to blame little events like 9/11 or Katrina the two greatest economic catastrophies to ever strike America. Obama has the gall to take credit for the fact that we import less of our oil now than before but fails to mention to key issues for this relate to Bush policies promoting oil and ethanol production and the fact that with the economy sucking for all four years of his administration, the US isn't using as much oil.
One last thought. Where was the press when a liberal congress was incentivizing home ownership past the point of corruption and extortion all the while preventing the Bush administration's attempts to reign in Freddie and Fannie.
In short we aren't whiners, just sick and tired of the dual standard applied by the press.
Very likely, Mike, and by people who seem not to see that one is impending now - one of the Left, which of the two sides is the only one actually bent on establishing such an order.
Whether you think its legitimate or not, Santorum's zeal for a society more in line with his religious beliefs will be a major factor if he is Obama's opponent. Any time he talks about the moral degradation of society or how much better off we would be if birth control were never invented the closer we get to another four years of Obama.
Agreed. And it is very frustrating that we can't find someone who knows how to effectively express these ideas. Paul Ryan has done a great job of explaining both the economic and societal impacts of Obamacare and has done so in a way that is hard to demogogue.
If theocracy seems stark, lets just concede his impetus - his knee-jerk reaction - is to wield federal power toward the promotion of his social values, not to return that power to a self-reliant people. This is evident in his doubling of the dept of education, call for universal economic education in his book, in his meddling with the Terri Shiavo affair, and in his vote for Medicare Part-D prescription drugs.
When this guy isn't lecturing America on the harmfulness of "the pill", he's making sure grandpa gets a discount on his viagra on the tax payer's dime.
Whether I agree or disagree with Mr Santorun, I do not think that social isssues should be the basis of any presidential campaign. I want the government out of my private life.
I don't want a President that makes his social beliefs an agenda for being elected. Yes, I do want a President that has morals, will take a stand on his religious background and is not afraid to put his family views out there. But, as a campaign basis, no thank you. This country will come back to it's roots, if government will stay out of social issues. I don't like Obama doing it and I don't like Santorum doing it, no matter if they are on opposite ends of the issue. This country has many high priority issues to reslove and what happens in the country's bedrooms are just not one of them.
FI Ms, try to look at this another way. Santorum is not suggesting any legislation base on his views of Satan, he's just letting us get to know who he really is. He is being transparent. I can go with a politician that is real because then I know his proposals are real as well. There is a lot fixing to do in Washington. We need more than just someone keeping a seat warm in the oval office.
Santorum's brand of hardcore social conservatism may be here to stay, but it is certainly in the minority, and judging from the past 40 years of US social and cultural history, that minority will only continue to dwindle. Not only do liberals find his views beyond the pale, but so do a sizable chunk of independents and Republicans, if the scorn heaped on Santorum by Mitt Romney's moderate supporters is any indication.
We already have a theocracy. God is now mother earth and Barack Hussein Obama is her son. The Holy Spirit is the William O. Douglas Memorial Judicial Ouija Board from which emanate the penumbras of rights hidden in the words "Due Process of Law" and "Equal Protection of the Law" written in the 14th Amendment.
Infallible dogma holds that because we are causing g-d to have a gigantic hot flash, we must reduce our numbers through contraception, abortion and euthanasia. Infallible dogma also holds that government is the source of wealth and income; and, because of that fact, can spend any amount of money that it deems necessary for its self-preservation. It sells indulgences in the form of special tax breaks and direct expenditures to the true believers and those cronies who believe because it is in their own self interest. It dispenses these indulgences through a byzantine system of administrative boards presided over by the son of g-d aka mother earth.
Who will have the courage to nail the 21st century's version of the 95 theses to doors of the Capitol, the White House and the Supreme Court?
It took the Catholic Church over a thousand years to get corrupt enough that bishops were selling indulgences. It's taken modern liberalism only a couple of generations to get to that same level of corruption. The level of degradation that modern liberalism can achieve taxes the imagination.
He's not unapolegetic. He said Obama's Christianity is based on phony theocracy and then walked those comments back by saying he meant environmentalism. He's throwing red meat to the base and then denying it to the press. He is a weasle.
Everyone loves a train wreck, so much fun watching Santorum taking the GOP and the bid for the White House over the cliff ... sadly our party must now regroup for a 2016 run.
What are we supposed to do? Abdicate to the dictatorship of moral relativism? Are we supposed to be ashamed of talking about the dignity of human life from birth to natural death or the values that made this country great? Because the day we do become ashamed or hesitant to defend those values that many had died for, that day, our country will be lost, never to see it again.
Do you want another phony politician? Go ahead Mitt is your guy or better yet go for Ron Paul he already abdicated the fight to the grand altar of Libertarianism.
Your best bet would be to shut up about these unpopular goals until after the election. There's this thing after the primaries called a general election, and it won't just be you evolution-deniers voting. Most of the participants will be worried about the economy, not what consenting adults do behind closed doors. You do remember the economy, don't you? It's the reason all you freaks gave for dressing up like Benjamin Franklin three years ago.
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