By DAVID FIRESTONE
Sarah Conard/Reuters
Rick Santorum speaks to supporters at his primary night rally at the
St. Charles Convention Center in St. Charles, Missouri, February 7,
2012.
Rick Santorum's three primary victories last night were the first ones
in this campaign season that made some sense. At last, conservative
voters united behind a candidate who actually resembles the Republican
Party that Americans have come to know in the last three years.
The party that so despises government that it repeatedly tried to shut
it down last year in Congress – or ruin its credit rating – is not
truly represented by Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich might
enjoy closing Washington's doors out of a sense of pique or
domination, but both men are far too invested in the city's power
structure to shut it down out of a sense of belief.
Mr. Santorum is the only one of the three who can actually appear
heartfelt when asserting, as he did today on Morning Joe, that "the
central issue of the day is government oppressing and taking away our
economic freedoms." For him, as for the true believers who now
dominate his party, this isn't just a cynically crowd-pleasing line at
a debate; he actually subscribes to the notion that the federal
government is stalking its own citizens and mugging them of free
choice, and he has for years.
It was all there in his victory speech last night in a suburb of St.
Louis, which was structured in the classic paranoid style. Whether it
is health care, the bank bailouts, or the environment, he said, an
elitist President Obama deliberately ignored the American people and
imposed an oppressive mandate that impoverished the country of its
liberty.
"We have a president of the United States," he said, "who's someone
who believes he knows better, that we need to accumulate more power in
Washington, D.C., for the elite in our country, to be able to govern
you because you are incapable of liberty, that you are incapable of
freedom. That's what this president believes."
What counts when delivering this kind of nonsense, of course, is
whether you can appear to share the same bone-chilling fear of
government held by so many of the Republican voters in Missouri,
Minnesota and Colorado. Mr. Santorum, unlike his rivals, clearly does.
And he is the best in the field at suggesting that government
authority is particularly noxious because it dares to replace
religious authority.
"When the government gives you rights, unlike when God gives you
rights, the government can take them away," he said. "When government
gives you rights, the government can tell you how to exercise those
rights."
But when the Catholic Church tells its tens of thousands of employees
that they do not have the right to easy access to birth control, that
is simply religious liberty, in his view. The church stands for
freedom of conscience, he said, while Mr. Obama, in requiring access
to contraceptives, "would roll over that and impose his secular values
on the people of this country."
Churches telling people how to live: liberty. Government disagreeing:
oppression. Like his followers, Mr. Santorum sees no contradiction
there.
Mr. Santorum still lacks Mr. Romney's money and organization, but his
fervency may at least have pushed aside one of the two conservative
poseurs, Newt Gingrich. He deserves to become a real threat to Mr.
Romney, because he better represents the extreme strain of his party
that every day alienates a few more Americans who see some value in
the collective effort known as government.
--
Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time.
Have a great day,
Tommy
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