WAY back in 2006, when I was just a slip of a reporter, like April O'Neil from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I interviewed for an internship in the Washington office of this publication. I remember feeling distinctly outmatched, except at one point: when the bureau chief suggested that Rick Santorum, then running for re-election to the Senate, would be re-elected. I was so startled by the suggestion that I forgot to be intimidated for a moment. There was no way, I objected; he had simply proven himself to be way too conservative for what is essentially a centrist, perhaps centre-right state. I got the job; the prediction proved correct. And in light of Mr Santorum's exit from the presidential race yesterday, we could add that the 2006 analysis still applied: Mr Santorum was just too conservative.
Most pundits would agree with that. In watchng the Santorum campaign over the past few months, though, it's occurred to me that if we were basically right, we were also partly wrong. As my colleague noted yesterday, in what was one of the blogosphere's more balanced reactions to Mr Santorum's exit, the idea that he would become the nominee was always improbable. But so too was the prospect that Mr Santorum would work his way up from a negligible presence in the polls, that he would carry 11 states on a shoestring campaign, that he would revive his political career after that 2006 drubbing, and that he would be, effectively, the last candidate standing between Mitt Romney and the Republican nomination.
Some analysts are dismissing it as a quirk of the process: this year's field was a weak one, with some of the party's strongest prospects—Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Tim Pawlenty—having sat it out entirely or defected early. "Santorum's success was entirely the function of his being a Republican not named Romney who happened to be there when every other alternative had either been destroyed by Romney's money or collapsed on its own," writes Jonathan Chait at New York. Joshua Green at Bloomberg Businessweek added, "Impressive as his performance was, Santorum triumphed over the likes of Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Perry—clowns and pretenders who made up the weakest Republican field in recent memory."
While that's no doubt part of it, this seems a little dismissive. If Mr Santorum was just the least-weak guy in a field of unusually weak also-rans, then Mr Romney should have dispatched him long ago. It's not as if the Romney candidacy snuck up on anybody. Incidentally, I'd like to register an objection to the recurring suggestion that Mr Daniels, Mr Christie, Mr Bush, etc, could have won if they had just run. Pretty easy not to lose if you don't try, isn't it?
Rather, I would suggest that Mr Santorum's relative success in this year's contest reflects some of his virtues, rather than everyone else's flaws. While his more extreme positions have been widely and frequently noted, his premises—that families are the bedrock of society, that people must be accountable to the better angels of their nature, that national greatness is a real and attainable concept, that liberty is under attack if it's not being defended—are not so so alarming. When I saw him in Louisiana last month, I had the impression that the crowd was responding to a positive vision rather than a paranoid one: not a United States where women are shackled to the delivery table while the men arm up and man the front lines against Islamofascism, but a country full of committed families, caring neighbours, and otherwise squared-away adults, getting on with their own lives as God would want them too.
Millions of people found that vision appealing. As my colleague mentions, Mr Santorum was the only candidate who talked about poverty and rural America in a serious way. We might conclude that his policy prescriptions were problematic, but his focus wasn't misplaced. If Mr Santorum proved himself to be too conservative for what is essentially a centrist, perhaps centre-right country, he also proved himself to be a committed campaigner and politician with some mettle. I wasn't going to vote for him, and a lot of his analysis was just confounding, such as the suggestion that we need more drilling partly because drilling leases are an important revenue source for the federal government, which was nonetheless going to sternly slash entitlements under a President Santorum. But in the end, Mr Santorum's campaign didn't strike me as alien or pernicious, and his endurance was a reminder, at least to this pundit, not to dismiss candidates too hastily.
(Photo credit: AFP)
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"...a country full of committed families, caring neighbours, and otherwise squared-away adults, getting on with their own lives as God would want them too."
It sounds like a fifties sit-com. What will old man Rick do when he finds out that Tommy pushed little Billy in the lake on their fishing trip? And how will Mr. Romney react when he finds out that Mr. Gingrich's dog got into his garden? Tune in at 8 to find out, here on WGOP!
The article's title now has me stuck with a song running through my head, one by the Rolling Stones. Hope you guess its name.
Pleased to meet you. I think that was intentional in the title.
I for one could not be happier for the Republicans, the Presidential election, and hell, America as a whole, that this man has finally stood down. If he was to, God forbid, ever have become President, I may just have had to leave...planet Earth.
Your blog is dangerous because you are trying to be reasonable about a man who is an extremist.
Extremists are to be avoided because reason doesn't have a role in their approach to life.
A person with extremist views is a danger, because they lack the flexibility needed to be an effective leader.
A president with extremist leanings will lead a country into trouble.
No one is perfect, but somebody who is willing to listen has to be better than one who is not.
Please add up all the votes for Santorum for us. Is it millions?
"... a country full of committed families, caring neighbours, and otherwise squared-away adults, getting on with their own lives as God would want them too."
And individual rights and personal autonomy can go hang. We're not all 'families', you know. Sorry, but I'm not sorry to see the back of Santorum.
Sympathy for Santorum? Oh my, how scandalous!
"While his more extreme positions have been widely and frequently noted, his premises—that families are the bedrock of society, that people must be accountable to the better angels of their nature, that national greatness is a real and attainable concept, that liberty is under attack if it's not being defended—are not so so alarming."
Well, extreme positions matched with pretty-sounding words still results in an extremist. If anything, the pretty-sounding words serve as a fairly sinister Trojan horse if they're being used to deliver something that's quite ugly.
Wonder if Fox's Heather Childers will start asking if Rommney threatened to kill Santorums daughter?
I am glad TE is finally showing a balanced view of Santorum.
Everybody is kind.... in an "obituary".
TE needs to build a case up to the inevitable endorsement of Romney for the general elections - "for being the closest ideological fit to them without being a lunatic".
Santorum just happened to be in the way as Obama will be in the coming months. But you have to admit, Santorum allowed for a better caricature than Romney.
Yes everyone is kind in an obituary but how much ought one to be?
I do not admit Santorum allowed for a better caricature than Romney.
Somehow, I suspect that the Economist will endorse Obama if it gives an endorsement at all. Two reasons:
1) With Romney, it's hard to know where he will actually come down on anything. It appears to depend on the phrasing of the issue (not the issue itself, the phrasing), and what is convenient in the short term. In brief, he cannot be counted upon to support the positions that the Economist routinely favors.
2) Obama has held the sort of center-right positions, and taken the kind of center-right actions that fit the Economist's approach to the world. Not every time, by any means. But sufficiently often that they would have no problem finding him acceptable.
The Economist and European Libertarians know exactly what Romney is and where he falls on economic policy issues. They also know where he falls on social conservative issues which is just fine with them. European Libertarians tend to be not so conservative as the US in social policies.
A fiscal conservative (who is likely to be Libertarian in economic policy) even if a US liberal (who is likely to be libertarian) in social policy is just fine with them. So Romney is a better fit in the dimension they don't want to compromise too much on - Libertarian in economic policy and somewhat of a centrist or even left-centrist in social policies that they can compromise to a certain extent on.
They do not take an all or nothing ideological stance but endorse the "best of the lot". Obama came out better over McCain/Palin in 2008 (Social Libertarian and Economic Centrist/Pragmatist) but that was because McCain didn't fit that bill, Palin was a huge negative and Obama was seen as smart and reasonable.
Romney would be preferred over Obama because he is a better ideological fit and they do not have the same flip-flop concern about him as he is portrayed in the US. They understand the politics of the situation and that Romney cannot expose his pragmatic or centrist view (especially in social policy) if he wants to be elected as a Republican in the US. The flip-flopping is not a problem of Romney but the reality of politicking amongst the intransigence of the US Conservative base and their simplistic Litmus tests.
Yes, he will turn out to be a disappointment for the US Conservatives if he is elected and ignore the social conservatives and evangelicals just like Bush but TE is hardly concerned about that.
I agree with your take on Obama vs. McCain/Palin. But I'm not so sure that the Economist will agree that Romney has a "pragmatic or centerist view" on social policy.
More to the point, for them, I don't see their accepting the thesis that a Romney adminstration would be a pragmatic one on economic policy. No doubt he would be a disappointment to some of the US "conservative" base. But that wouldn't necessarily translate to something that the Economist would resonate with.
And I think he would be in a much poorer position (hard as that may be to believe) to push for pragmatic solutions, even if he were to want to, against a Republican Congress. With a Romney victory over Obama, and the gains in the Congress that would come with it, I just can't see anything but the most extreme economic policies getting enacted. Which might be nice, in the short term, for my personal finances; but would be a disaster for the country.
As long as we're bragging about predictions, I so called Santorum for the main contender against Romney way back before Iowa :) But for much different reasons, and I would be far less charitable to the guy. I'm more "parting is such sweet sorrow" to the guy right now.
He was a populist, and in a democracy, that works. That is the opposite of coming from the better angels of our nature.
Romney was always going to have to deal with opposition to cutting government, and however popular that is in the abstract among the right, that presents a thousand attacks when it comes down to specifics, and there are a thousand different things that you could get traction out of spending money on. Concentrated benefits/diffuse costs really is a problem.
This is particularly true in an electorate that isn't the same as the general. All the candidates will agree on cutting things like the NEA, but there are a lot of things that conservatives want to spend money on that they can't get through congress.
As for the position that he is most known for, opposition to homosexuality, it works because the vast majority of Americans aren't and telling people that they are better than others works. People like being told they are better than others.
Romney was kind of the candidate of the moment. He sold himself of being the person who can balance the books, who can fix the economy- he sold himself as a good President. But that's not Santorum, he was the man for the zero-sum game, he was saying not just conservatives will win, but liberals will lose. He was a twofer. He was there for the republican party that can't get over Roe, that wants to stop homosexuality, or serial monogamy, or atheism, or whatever- the republican party that is about getting them. Romney was going to fix their economy, Santorum was going to kick them in the face.
He had a certain type of charisma, and a certain amount of cache for honesty that you can see in blowing his reelection rather than actually try to engage with non-conservative voters. And charisma and honesty were Romney's perceived weaknesses. Santorum was like a Supreme Court pick you could count on not to pull a Kennedy. His ability to relate to people meant he could be us, that helps if you want to be against them.
He kinda sorta worked because he played on all the faults of democracy. That he finally lost says shows that its virtues are, however slightly, greater.
"He was a populist, and in a democracy, that works. That is the opposite of coming from the better angels of our nature."
I don't think Santorum is important enough to deserve a paradox, but that's his paradox. There's a limit to how much outrage you can gin up that the world isn't pretty. Let's name that Bryan's paradox or Publius' after Rick Santorum.
I appreciate this piece. I couldn't vote for him in a primary or otherwise because he doesn't quite have the ability to explain his views effectively. He indulges too much in the warrior rhetoric, enabling other warriors. A legacy of the late Sen. Kennedy maybe. Something that in my opinion the President has made much worse, when it was my expectation when voting for him that he'd be the opposite kind of person; post-partisan as people said. In constrast to all that, this piece is a refreshing thing to read. It has a feel of maturity about it.
Somehow you haven't noticed President Obama's attempts to reach across the aisle repeatedly, only to be reviled, defamed, obstructed, disrespected, and blatantly lied about by Republicans. A moderate compromise in health care reform based on Republican ideas (and they pretended it was a socialist government takeover of health care), opening up offshore drilling leases (before the BP spill, which they blamed on him), cutting taxes repeatedly (1/3 of the stimulus was tax cuts as a compromise with Republicans), tightening up immigration enforcement and medical marijuana enforcement (very unpopular with Obama's base), carrying out an aggressive foreign policy that no Republican can credibly criticize (they pretend he is weak for complying with the Bush SOFA agreement in Iraq, they claim he wants to gut defense, which is non-sense if you look at the numbers). The size of government employment has shrunk under Obama, and he has increased spending less than Reagan or Bush did; he inherited trillions of debt and a deficit bloated by lost revenues due to the crashing economy, which Republicans dishonestly and inaccurately represented as wild Obama spending. The vile and nasty treatment of President Obama by Republicans and the right-wing media is unprecedented in my lifetime.
It's remarkable that President Obama has remained so cool and calm and even-handed in the face of such naked aggressive political street-fighting from the right. Our President has exhibited the cool principled determination and poise that we saw in Jackie Robinson: when they spiked him and threw at him and spit on him he turned the other cheek and played twice as hard to beat them with fair play.
How dare anyone claim that President Obama is the source of partisan rancor in today's political climate? Nothing could be further from the truth.
The history of the Obama presidency is one of a man who bent over backwards to find constructive centrist compromises with Republicans, and they repeatedly kicked him, spit on him, and slandered him.
I just don't know what sources of information you've been using, but they don't seem to be working for you. If you see the President fighting Republicans today it's because if you examine the details of the last 3 years carefully, the Republicans have had the gloves off and have chosen all out combat rather than civilized cooperation every single step of the way.
I think you need to go back and look at the way healthcare actually happened. "Let's compromise on my position" and "we're going to pass this with no Republican votes, rather than finding something both sides can agree on" didn't look like non-partisanship to me.
But even then, there were people claiming that it was the Republicans' fault, because they wouldn't compromise. And there may be some truth to that. But Obama wasn't going to take no for an answer, and he wasn't going to alter the bill enough that the Republicans could say yes. He had to choose between his healthcare bill and keeping his non-partisan promise, and non-partisanship lost.
There was a lengthy period where Republicans were openly invited to contribute, and some of them did. President Obama said many times that he didn't care if an idea was a Democratic idea, or a Republican idea, as long as it was a good idea. This was the process Obama tried to lead.
Republicans followed the Jim DeMint approach "We'll make this his Waterloo". This was spoken and decided before any details were known.
The Republicans had a chance to cooperate but they were more interested in misleading the public about the bill and then using that to gain partisan advantage by manufacturing artificial attacks. Any Republicans that made an effort to cooperate with the health care bill were brought into line by party leadership; Republican leadership worked hard to craft absolute opposition to Obama regardless of the content of the bill.
The fact that no Republican voted for it does not mean that the contents of the bill were not a compromise. It means that Republicans refused to compromise under any circumstances.
"He had to choose between his healthcare bill and keeping his non-partisan promise, and non-partisanship lost."
What?? He had to choose between his health care bill, or give in to opposition that was, as it turns out, completely partisan. If the choice a president has is to either try and do what he thinks is right or surrender completely, I'd hope the president do the former. The other party's always going to cry partisanship when they don't get their way.
The GOP's been at least honest about non-partisanship: they clearly and loudly want nothing to do with it.
Jeff, as much as I try, I really can't bring myself to believe one side is wholly right, true and good, Christ-like almost based on your description, whereas the other side epitomizes evil. It's a tiring thing to read, and is exactly what makes the gentleman's article refreshing. I don't appreciate your last paragraph either. I follow things closely, study hard, and rely on many sources. I admit though it can be difficult to find good sources nowadays. Personally I can't help but think the loss of Mr. Russert in 2008 was national tragedy. My likely vote will be for Gov. Romney at the top of the ballot, and then Democrats as I move down.
You managed to blame the president for the GOP's strident partisanship. That's a neat trick.
My gosh. I'll just repeat that neither side is blameless. The President is responsible for what he says and certain policies he pursues. The GOP can be ridiculous too, of course. On balance I care more when he does it though, that inclination being the natural result of him being far more important than any particular GOP clown. But, really, your central point that the President is blameless is simply too categorical, too much fantasy, to accept. Credit though for your post being clever and twitter-friendly.
No, I'd say the Democrats are 25% bad and the Republicans are 75% bad. That might be generous to the Republicans though. They have practiced deliberate deception, dishonesty, and obstruction for partisan gain, to the extent of even being willing to harm the government and the economy as long as they could make the President look bad. The Democrats may have been spineless or incompetent at moments, and in cases there was some pork (or attempts at port: Ben Nelson), but they have been nowhere near the Republicans when it comes to denial of reality, organization of partisan games, and systematic practice of disinformation in talking to the public.
Your position is a false-equivalence. If you're forcing yourself into this position to be fair for some reason, it's not necessary. If your perception is that they really are equal, then something else is wrong (maybe too much FoxNews/WSJ consumption).
As evidenced by their support for Santorum (and the other ridiculous demagogues on the right), the GOP has gone off the deep end. To claim that they are just matching the equal-and-opposite force of the other side is... I don't know... I don't know what it is...
"To claim that they are just matching the equal-and-opposite force of the other side is... I don't know... I don't know what it is..."
It's epistemologically unsound. It's not firmly rooted in fact. It's intellectually lazy. It's a denial of reality. It could only be believed by someone not paying careful attention.
Take for example the Republican invention of the individual mandate because it entails individual responsibility, a sound conservative principle. Then there was the Republican support for the individual mandate for two decades, including Romney's implementation of it in Massachusetts, and many Republicans still advocating for it in early 2009. Obama opposed it, but was persuaded to accept it as a compromise, since it enabled guaranteed issue and community rating. Suddenly the mandate became a moral outrage, an unacceptable expansion of government power, a ticket to enable government to infringe on liberty without limits. Republicans went crazy and screamed bloody murder over something that they recently accepted as a solid policy rooted in personal accountability.
And ironically, almost deliciously so if it weren't so disgusting, still today Gingrich and many other Republicans proclaim the benefits of the Chilean model pension plan, which effectively includes an individual mandate to purchase a private retirement investment plan.
There is no way to understand Republicans today except as an emotionally charged political tribe that has elevated faith in a set of absolute rules they refer to as principles (every tax is evil, every regulation is evil, and government itself is evil) above logic, reason, and respect for facts and evidence. The Republican mind set has excluded the possibility of moderation and compromise; it's their way or the highway; their opponents have only two options: total surrender or knock-down drag-out take-no-prisoners conflict.
"he wasn't going to alter the bill enough that the Republicans could say yes."
Oh, come on. There's a reason why Obamacare and Romneycare look so similar, and it's because they are - they're both based on Heritage Foundation plans circa-2000. Many of the same Republicans in Congress in 2009 were there ten years earlier, and they hadn't all had a radical change in healthcare philosophy. There was just a Democrat in the White House. Thing is, it's fine to oppose politicians from a different party. That's not a problem at all. It's just annoying getting the lectures about 'partisanship' from the same crowd out of the other side of their mouths.
Crimson, to be fair, I was sort of pulled into the act of making comparisons by Jeff. It was only in response to him being an apparent true believer that I noted the absurdity that one side is perfect and the other the complete opposite. Again, I consume many sources and am not suffering from any form of brainwashing. I'm not claiming that the GOP's behavior in any particular instance is acceptable because it matches the equal and opposite force on the other side. You made that part up and attributed it to me.
I never said Democrats or Obama were perfect. That was your overreach.
You seemed to be implying an equivalence, and exaggerated my description of the differences.
There is an objective difference, and it's not very hard to see. Look at my last reply to Crimson Blue and explain the sudden Republican turn-around on the individual mandate, the universal solidarity on that sudden turnaround, and the present day support for the Chilean social security model. It defies reason, as does so much of present day Republican positions. When people say that Reagan could not win a Republican primary today (based on a purely objective evaluation of his behavior in office) they are not joking or exaggerating. The Republicans have gone that far to the right and that thoroughly abandoned careful attention to fact and evidence in their rhetoric and their decision making.
I'm not a "true believer". I'm a well informed careful analyzer.
By the way, your usage of the term "true believer" is kind of ironic in this context. The "true believers" who thought Obama was going to save America and fix all our problems don't exist any more. They are the ones who voted with unrealistic expectations in 2008, and today they abandon Obama as a "closet Republican" because he has worked so hard to be a compromising centrist. They are as unthinking and uninformed as the far right.
Here is a combination that is hard to reconcile with your "both sides are equally bad stance": to the left Obama has betrayed liberal values because health care doesn't have a public option or isn't single payer, and because his offer to compromise on budget cuts and tax revenues, which offered 75% in cuts and only 25% in revenue, was too generous to Republicans, and his foreign policy is too aggressive by focusing harder on killing terrorists than on protecting civil liberties. At the same time to the right Obama is a radical socialist who is un-American and illegitimate who is destroying our way of life and doesn't see things the way "we" do. His moderate health care compromise was a radical government takeover that he shoved down our throats.
I don't think there is any way Obama could take such differing criticisms from the far left and the far right unless he had been a pretty moderate centrist in his governance.
Being fair, you made the comparison when you Inserted the President into your post about Santorum, about making the warrior rhetoric worse and not living up to his post-partisan campaign. That original post excuses Santorum and instead focuses blame for partisanship on The President.
I'd also suggest that you delve into the book that provides the name and inspiration of this column - Toquville's Democracy in America. There, you'll see, from a well-respected historical perspective, the things for which a President or congressman should be praised or censured. Since his election, it is The President who has succeeded and since the mid-term tea-party takeover, it has been congress that has failed for America.
Full-disclosure: I voted for McCain (I thought he and President Obama ran very respectable campaigns. I regretted not supporting him more as an independent candidate in 2000, which could have prevented the ensuing carastrophy of President Bush. I didn't know Sarah Palin would become anything). But the republican party went insane after the election.
A couple of thoughts on the Santorum candidacy:
First, as you say, he was a lot more liberal on a lot of issues that people care about, than anyone else in the Republican field. Even if what got attention was his distinctly illiberal views on sex and religion. What does that say about the state of the culture wars, that someone can be liberal on a lot of economic and other issues, but still get lots of arch-conservative votes if he only articulates sufficiently extreme positions on sex and religion?
Second, what does it say about the rest of the Republican field, that there was nobody else willing (or able?) to make those points while avoiding his gaffes and extreme positions? I understand why Romney might feel unable to do so -- his conservative bonafides in general being in question, he can't afford to miss any check boxes. But that nobody else would even try? Could it be that Republican politicians are now overall more extreme, not just than the country as a whole, but than even the Republican Party as a whole?
Yes.
The party leadership made an end-run to the right, and then another, and then another...
1. I wouldn't agree he was more liberal on a lot of other issues. Pointing out that inequality exists then proposing a more regressive tax policy doesn't make one more liberal. It makes a hypocrite. Being a shill coal industry to remove accountability for externalities doesn't help the less affluent who would bear the costs of those externalities. And then turning around to attack people on some of the highest personal freedoms while trumpeting a reduced role of government further underscores the hypocrisy and rubs salt in the wounds.
2. The economist had a great cartoon a while back that showed a little man in a tri-corned hat marching toward a cliff, leading an elephant by a leash, who was in turn leading Uncle Sam, who was in turn leading the globe. So, yes, this Republican primary has been exactly as you described it (and for no good reason).
The adage "Don't shoot the messenger" is relevant for evaluation of Santorum although the messenger and the message are so inseparable that he will get blamed by both sides.
In the marriage of convenience between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives that is the Republican Party, Santorum truly represented the social conservative core with conviction and honesty. And that explains the support he got.
The problem isn't that he was awkward, too conservative or un-politician-like in his campaign, but rather the message of the social conservatism itself has lost PRACTICAL relevance in contemporary society.
For example, you state
"his premises—that families are the bedrock of society, that people must be accountable to the better angels of their nature, that national greatness is a real and attainable concept, that liberty is under attack if it's not being defended—are not so so alarming"
You would be hard put to find a Democrat that would disagree with those sound-bites taken literally. They are motherhood and apple-pie statements. Where they differ is in what those premises translate into.
In the contemporary world, the uncompromising and rigid practices of the core social conservatism has lost much of its relevance and consequently so has Santorum who reflected those principles with fidelity.
He exposed the narrowness of the principles - families have to be between a man and a woman even if they might lead to the worst of marriages. He exposed the biases of the principles - accountability to the better angels only happen in Bible based doctrines. He exposed world ignorance of the principles - national greatness can be achieved by win-lose scenarios. He exposed the hypocrisy of the principles - liberty must be defended as long as it is the small set of liberties recognized by the principles and demands for any others should be squashed.
The world needs more than those sound-bites.
His failure is a reflection of the failure of the social conservatism in the US to evolve to be relevant. It badly needs another William Buckley moment.
His success was in truly reflecting those principles - warts and all - with conviction and honesty.
There isn't even much disagreement on most of what broad-stroke social conservatism translates into. Few attacked Santorum for wanting to expand the child tax credit. The disagreement is over a handful of narrow issues: Abortion, hardcore porn, gay marriage, and Don't Ask Don't Tell. I didn't include sodomy and birth control because there isn't much disagreement on what to do about them as far as public policy is concerned. Santorum doesn't want to ban them. He didn't think the bans were unconstitutional which is a view even social liberals can take without hypocrisy.
Can social conservatism be relevant on these remaining narrow issues? On DADT, Santorum is already on the losing side even within his own party. Opposition to abortion is still very relevant and possibly even trending in favor of social conservatives. Porn is a non-issue even for social conservatives. Americans of every ideology seem to be satisfied with the status quo. The final issue is gay marriage and on that the socially conservative position is an increasingly irrelevant one.
There were disagreements at two levels:
1. Specific issues. These are the ones you have pointed out. The problem with most of these specific issues was that it appealed to a conservative base that was wholly intransigent on them primarily because they are based on faith that promotes black and white thinking. Such intransigence is not relevant to the modern complex society that is no longer racially, ethnically, religiously, culturally as homogenous as it used to be. Santorum's problems in being unable to resolve them without his "odd statements" is that those positions themselves are either not consistent or they require a leap of faith that the people outside that core group is unwilling to take.
2. Broader decision/policy making. While there are some "progressives" amongst the social conservatives, the socially conservative core still clings to a theistic, authoritarian philosophy to policy making which is outdated being from a more homogenous world. Individual issues flow from that. So even if the above issues were resolved, there would be tensions in every issue that would arise in the future. Faith-based (as opposed to pragmatism and reason not necessarily just faith in God/scripture) itself has become irrelevant to the modern world. Santorum exposed that as well.
This is not to dismiss the values of social conservatism itself which has its own positives. But as I said, it needs a William Buckley type of revivalism that can bring those core values into the context of reason rather than just faith which means acknowledging the inconsistencies, removing hypocrisy, introducing tolerance, reducing bigotry, etc., inherent in some of the principles.
Santorum was just a messenger who reflected what has been although some may have mistaken him for reflecting what they would like it to be and tried to mold him in that image. He was too square a peg to fit into that circular hole. The problem wasn't with him, it was with the message itself
While I agree that Santorum could've done a much better job, his campaign was a move AWAY from the faith-based policymaking practiced by evangelicals like Perry and Bachmann. He purposefully avoided appeals to scripture. It was ultimately a mostly failed attempt but it is the right approach. IMO the person who best applies this approach and loosely fits the William F. Buckley mold today is Ross Douthat.
Avoidance of explicit appeals to scripture should hardly be considered an accomplishment. There was plenty of Christian chest-beating to signal that he was more Christian than the Mormon Romney and certainly way more Christian than the decidedly Muslim Obama. The returns to scale beyond that begin to decrease sharply beyond that.
Is Santorum too conservative or too religious? The feel good points about families imply that somehow the family faces a real threat; that seems like a baseless fear to me. Santorum's strength shows that many Americans think religion should rule government. The good news about Santorum's defeat is: that contingent is not strong enough to plunge America into the darkness of full-on theocracy.
"many Americans think religion should rule government."
In your words, "that seems like a baseless fear to me." There probably are such people, but... given the size of the US population I wouldn't say "many" is a good word to describe them.
The people who could listen to what Santorum says and think they should vote for him is "many" people.
Agree with you post, but would have added a "yet" the to final sentence.
"Millions of people found that vision appealing."
I found him to be mean, intolerant, xenophobic, and one to pander to the less-educated elements of the electorate.
And, I'm looking forward to not listening to him for a while.
E.G.
I'm so pleasantly surprised to see you recognize that despite differences of opinion, Santorum really isn't all that bad of a guy. Your colleagues' article was completely negative and focused on bizarre aspects of Santorum's campaign like an apparent "google bomb" of his name. For this thoughtful piece and your refusal to let partisan vitriol get the better of you I congratulate you.
+1
Maybe not a bad guy, but a very confused and dishonest one. To call college education indoctrination is a recipe to undermine America's economic future. To lie about euthanasia in the Netherlands was incompetent at best, and slanderously dishonest at worst. To claim that Satan is waging war on America is deeply delusional. There is no way that the America I love could want that man at the helm. He may be a good father in some respects (but if he excludes his children from college it would qualify as abuse), but the man is clearly not qualified to lead America in a world where factual and reasonable analysis are crucial to the nation's future.
He could've simply been mistaken about euthanasia in the Netherlands like Obama was mistaken about having visited 57 states. Saying Satan is attacking America is empty rhetoric like saying "God bless America." If you probe him long enough on his views about college, you bet you'd get the very reasonable view shared by most that college isn't for everyone. This is what I meant when I said Santorum takes a reasonable position and presents it in the most unappealing way possible.
Misspeaking 57 instead of 47 is the kind of slip of the tongue that can happen to anyone. A lengthy story about wrist bands and wild exaggerated percentages of death by euthanasia is not in the same category; like I said it may have just been incompetent that he believed that, or it was at worst deliberate deception. It could not have been a slip of the tongue.
If he has a reasonable view about college, why did he publicly and deliberately use inaccurate statistics saying that 62% who enter college with religious beliefs lose them in college? That can't be backed up with credible evidence. His intent was fear mongering. It means the man can't be trusted to be reasonable about anything.
If he weren't doing it intentionally, he'd be called "undisciplined." He had policies that could resonate with a majority and the smarts to articulate them. But time and time again, he said the most unnecessarily alienating things as if he were on a mission to lose votes.
"that national greatness is a real and attainable concept, that liberty is under attack if it's not being defended"
Do we really need any encouragement to indulge our tendencies toward hubris and paranoia?
Of course not, but telling people what they want to hear is usually a good way of winning votes.
No. But if the alternatives are believed - that we are free and prosperous, and will continue to be so, so we can just sit on our behinds for the next several generations, or else that we are such a mess that we cannot possibly produce a healthy society - they produce objectively worse outcomes.
Yes, I know, there's such a thing as a happy medium - neither complacent, hopeless, or excessively proud. But in addition to the tendencies you point out, there are also tendencies to the other extremes.
In fact, hubris can reinforce laziness...
Gee, I would have said he appealed because his moral condemnations resonate with the many Americans who feel compelled to judge others.
Santorum is less conservative than other GOP candidates on many issues. He was a middle of the road senator on nearly all issues but those relating to the most rigid Catholic doctrines.