Thank you, Rick Santorum

There are two sides to Rick Santorum, both of which he cheerfully exposed at yesterday's Values Voter Summit--the annual, three-day orgy of evangelical intolerance, smugness, profound authoritarianism and even profounder anti-intellectualism--but only one of which could materially affect his next presidential campaign, which the former senator has rather gauchely launched while Mitt is still losing his.

Santorum's first side is receiving more media play, which is understandable. From it he seems to dramatically concede a weakness, though in reality he's only exploiting the ebbing power of an organized ignorance:

We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite, smart people on our side.

No contemporary analysis of Santorum's motivation is needed. Eighty-five years ago, following the death of William Jennings Bryan, H.L. Mencken provided all that ever needed to be said of this nation's Rick Santorums:

What moved him, at bottom, was simply hatred of the city men who had laughed at him so long.... He lusted for revenge upon them. He yearned to lead the anthropoid rabble against them, to punish them for their execution upon him by attacking the very vitals of their civilization.

So, on to Santorum's side two, which, as noted, portends a fresher kind of fireworks:

When it comes to conservatism [said the 2016 candidate], libertarian types can say, oh, well you know, we don't want to talk about social issues. Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement, there is no basic values of America.

This is an old and fiery sermon, though its every secular preacher stands blindly in opposition to an immense political reality: there would never have been a conservative movement at all--the Buckley/Goldwater fusionism of the late 1950s and early 1960s--had either the libertarians or social conservatives demanded internal preeminence, for which Catholic-thumper Santorum is now vividly striving.

Neither side has nearly enough numbers to wield any real electoral power; both might separately reign in isolated, backwater outposts or a few urban conglomerations of glass and steel, but only united can they present a national front. Buckley knew it, Goldwater knew it, Reagan knew it--and everyone, for a half-century, has been waiting for this shakiest of power-sharings to split wide open.

Welcome, Mr. Santorum. And thank you.

Comments

[Peter G]

Odd, isn't it, how Santorum can see some things so clearly, (Romney was the worst possible candidate for the Republicans if you inlude the ones smart enough not to run) and yet come to completely illogical conclusions about the solutions. It is not true they will never have smart people on their side. But the ones they have are,and will be for the forseeable future, malign.