The Economist
Rick Santorum and the Republican Party
Perfectly compatible
Jan 5th 2012, 20:23 by R.M. | WASHINGTON, DC
MY COLLEAGUE, Lexington, has penned a column about Rick Santorum that nicely captures all of the thoughts I had planned to include in this post. So please, go read it. That we are even talking about Mr Santorum is a credit to his hard work, and the absurd emphasis we place on the results in Iowa. A little over 30,000 conservative Iowans think Mr Santorum is the second best of an underwhelming lot, and this makes him a serious presidential candidate? I (and you) think not.
Nevertheless, Mr Santorum is about to face more scrutiny, which is likely to focus on his extreme social and foreign-policy views (which are a shame, because his economic message is actually somewhat compelling). As Conor Friedersdorf notes, the candidate also has a bad habit of articulating his positions "in the most alienating, unlikable terms imaginable." Obamacare would kill his child, contraception is unnatural, the Palestinians don't exist, and it's about time we bombed Iran. These may all get headlines, but my colleague raises a larger question about Mr Santorum's candidacy: whether or not his opinions are compatible with conservative ideology. He writes
Mr Santorum’s thinking on public morality highlights a division in his party. He says in his book that the family, not the individual, is “the fundamental unit of society”. This idea, plus his religiosity, undergird his wider politics. Before he went down to defeat (by a margin of 17%) in Pennsylvania’s senatorial election of 2006, he was a champion of George Bush junior’s notion of “compassionate conservatism”, ie, giving taxpayers’ money to faith-based organisations, on the theory that do-gooders who had God on their side perform better than social workers.
Such ideas do not grate only on liberals. They also collide with the strand of conservatism represented in this cycle by Ron Paul, whose army of avid followers insist that the best thing government can do is to get out of people’s way—and certainly out of their bedrooms. Mr Santorum prefers government to serve as an instrument in the urgent task of remoralising a society that has lost its spiritual moorings. These philosophies are opposites, hard to accommodate in the breast of a single political movement.
So it would seem. But the Republican Party has long been quite comfortable living with the hypocrisy of promoting individual freedom in the economic realm, while strictly limiting it elsewhere. This is exemplified by Republican support for instrusive anti-terrorism measures, harsh anti-drug laws, restrictions on flag burning, and opposition to things like gay rights, abortion and euthanasia. Ron Paul is a pariah in the Republican Party in part because he falls on the "wrong" side of most of these issues. His supporters are not typical of the voters who deliver Republicans to the White House. It is telling that some have claimed Mr Paul is not even a real Republican, while no such statement has been made about Mr Santorum.
So while Mr Santorum's beliefs may collide with those of Mr Paul, much of his moralising is in harmony with the Republican mainstream. There are some egregious examples, of course. The candidate believes that contraception could be outlawed on the state level, as it is a "licence to do things in a sexual realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be". Most people, conservatives even, would probably disagree. But in general, while I find Mr Santorum's support for allowing the government into my home and bedroom disconcerting, I'm not sure most Republicans do. Many seem much more frightened by the idea of nominating someone like Mr Paul.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/01/rick-santorum-and-republican-party
No comments:
Post a Comment