The Santorum Surprise

[Geee]

PjMedia:

Rick Santorum — a man who lost his last election in his home state by eighteen points — is suddenly threatening the frontrunner status of Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. He, not Newt Gingrich, is emerging, at least for the moment, as the conservative alternative to Romney, having won decisively in three state contests this week.

I say “for the moment,” because only a dopey pundit like me would assert that this race is over, as I did immediately after the Florida primary.

Nevertheless, things are looking good for Santorum. Events, again “for the moment,” are swinging his way, with Obama coming under heavy, and justifiable, criticism from conservatives and some liberals for crossing the line on religious freedom. The Obama administration issued what amounts to a diktat to Roman Catholics to toe the liberal line on birth control, even to the extent of paying for the contraceptives their faith finds immoral. For shame.

 

Santorum, the candidate most associated with religious faith, should profit from this execrable policy, especially in the short run. But definite perils are ahead for the Republican Party if it allows Santorum-style social conservatism to dominate the election. And those perils go well beyond the obvious that the campaign will be largely about the economy.

The greatest danger is that Rick Santorum will be singled out as the spokesperson for extreme right-wing religiosity and made to look like a bigot to the largest voting group in our country — the independents. This is particularly true in the area of gay rights, but not because those people favor gay marriage. The majority of them probably don’t. But most people these days have homosexuals among their friends, family, or work colleagues and don’t appreciate even the whiff of bigotry. It’s become a big no-no.

Santorum does not have a good track record in that regard. He is the only politician I know of who merits his own Wikipedia entry on the subject: “Santorum controversy regarding homosexuality.”

Some of the quotations at that site from the former senator are not pretty. In one rather notorious interview with Lara Jakes Jordan of the Associated Press, Santorum, defending his position on sodomy laws, which he apparently supports, or supported then, asserted he did not oppose homosexuals, but rather homosexual acts. In other words, it’s fine to be a homosexual, as long as you don’t have a sex life.

On the marriage issue, he picked a rather peculiar analogy:

In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.