As Santorum rises, so does doubt about his policies
Too conservative to win in November?
Rick Santorum, the latest of five Republicans to lead national polls in the volatile race for the party’s presidential nomination, has a number of admirable qualities.
The former senator from Pennsylvania has run a disciplined campaign, speaks his mind, and makes an engaging pitch to many working class voters. In the 20-odd GOP debates, he has not frozen up or otherwise shown himself to be unprepared. When he goes negative, it is usually over a substantive policy disagreement, not some trumped-up triviality. And so far as is known, he has no embittered former wives or mistresses, no racist newsletters under his name, no Swiss bank accounts, no skeletons in the closet and no dogs on the roof of his car. More significant, he hasn’t stumbled over complex policy issues — the downfall of candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry.
For these and other reasons, Santorum has been adding to his base of social conservative voters and has emerged as the leading rival to Mitt Romney for the GOP nomination. He has even giving Romney a run for his money in Tuesday’s primary in Michigan, Romney’s home state. For Santorum, a long shot left for dead after losing his Senate seat in an 18-point drubbing in 2006, the comeback has been remarkable.
With a rise in the polls, however, comes increased scrutiny, and the spotlight has begun to give Santorum a difficult problem: the characteristic most responsible for his rise — his authenticity as a social conservative — is also his greatest vulnerability. Some of his positions on social issues are so far out of the mainstream that he would struggle, if nominated, to attract independent voters and win the general election.
Santorum is a culture warrior at a time when the public cares most deeply about . . . the economy. His emphasis on issues such as abortion and gay marriage is one reason that a swing state like Pennsylvania turned on him. It is also a key reason behind his poor showing in New Hampshire earlier this year. In a state that allows non-republicans to vote in its GOP primary, he finished fifth after getting drawn into verbal skirmishes with college students over hot-button social issues.
Too often, Santorum sounds less like a presidential candidate than a religious leader or conservative academician making a broad critique of American society as too decadent and lacking in values. His disapproving view on birth control puts him at odds with the great majority of the public. His advocacy of criminal prosecution for doctors who perform abortions takes the issue to an extreme. And his assertion that modern feminism has ruined the traditional family puts him on thin ice with many modern career women.
Santorum’s economic views tend to be an extension of his social policy stances. This can be seen in his disapproval of virtually everything that the Bush and Obama administrations did to prevent the 2008 financial crisis from turning into an economic catastrophe.
To Santorum, almost any government involvement is bad, and what is most important at a time of crisis is to make sure that bad judgments be punished in an unforgiving marketplace. In this, he takes a virtue — limited government — and carries it to a rigid extreme, much like President Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, who argued that the unfolding Depression of the early 1930s could actually be a good thing as it would force people to work harder and lead more moral lives.
Those views are offset by some sound policy positions. More than any candidate other than Ron Paul, Santorum is candid about the need to fix entitlement programs. He also has a sensible approach to simplifying the corporate tax code.
If Santorum were to win the nomination, though, he’d face a difficult choice: Stick to the course that got him there, hoping that he can bring the nation to him, or make a dramatic course correction. The latter option would substantially improve his chances, particularly if he could convince undecided voters he wouldn’t seek to impose his moral beliefs on those who disagree. But the longer he waits to define himself in a way that will work next fall, the deeper his conundrum — and his party’s — becomes.