RS McCain asks the question:
Conventional wisdom suggests that the social conservative message that fueled Santorum’s surge in the Iowa caucuses, where evangelical Protestants are an influential constituency, will not go over well in New Hampshire. Yet Santorum appears determined to try to prove the conventional wisdom wrong.
During an afternoon appearance at a gathering of college students in Manchester, Santorum was challenged on his opposition to same-sex marriage, which the New Hampshire legislature approved in June 2009. Instead of brushing off the question, Santorum engaged in what the liberal blog Think Progress called a “Socratic dialogue” with his student questioner. “So, are we saying that everyone should have the right to marry?” Santorum asked. “So, anyone can marry anybody else.… So, anybody can marry several people?”
His implicit comparison of homosexuality to polygamy was, of course, offensive to liberal sensibilities, and an annoyance to many Republicans who nowadays view social issues as a distraction or political hindrance that prevents their party from appealing to independent voters. However, Santorum seemed confident to the point of boldness Thursday, and there were good reasons for his confidence. Since his unexpectedly strong showing in Iowa, his campaign says, he’s been raising money at the blistering pace of $1 million a day. And Santorum’s refusal to trim his sails in regard to his conservative stances on social issues may be much wiser than the conventional wisdom.
[…]
Polls are lagging indicators for a suddenly surging campaign like Santorum’s, but the latest New Hampshire poll — commissioned by the Washington Times — showed him breaking into double digits for the first time. He is still a distant fifth in the Real Clear Politics average of New Hampshire polls, and it is too early to tell if Santorum can replicate his feat in Iowa, where his vote total on caucus night exceeded the final Des Moines Register poll by a full 10 percentage points. And his campaign is seeing signs of a similar surge here.
“We feel the excitement’s building out there,” Santorum’s campaign manager Mike Biundo said Thursday afternoon. “The crowds are getting bigger. More reporters are covering us. It feels pretty good.”
Biundo is a veteran New Hampshire operative and, while pundits have frequently asserted that Santorum had no organization outside Iowa, in fact he has made more campaign appearances here than any other candidate except Huntsman. While it’s nearly impossible to imagine that Santorum could fare as well here as he did in Iowa, he may once again exceed expectations, lending weight to the perception that he is the conservative with genuine momentum going into the South Carolina showdown.
Thoughts of political strategy, however, may have nothing to do with Santorum’s insistence on standing firmly on his social conservative stances. A devout Catholic father of seven, Santorum can’t be accused of “pandering,” when he is simply stating his own firm beliefs. And contrary to the conventional wisdom, his message appeared to win him admirers in the Tea Party crowd at Windham High. As they left the auditorium Thursday night, many of them were carrying home the candidate’s yard signs emblazoned with his campaign slogan, “Join the Fight.”
As several commenters here have pointed out, New Hampshire — though it is traditionally a kind of Rockefeller Republican stronghold — may nevertheless contain just the kind of Reagan Democrats who, as Tea Partiers voting in an open primary, could join with social conservatives (and some movement conservatives) to provide Santorum with a suprisingly strong showing.
One of Santorum’s great strengths, it seems to me, is that he is willing to stand and answer questions — to defend his positions and, importantly, to make clear what those positions actually are. That is, he tells you what he believes and is willing to tell you why he believes it, and his arguments appear genuine, which I suspect wins over grudging respect and new admirers from those who realize that, under a conservative stewardship, the presidency won’t be an monarchy, and so there is really no reason to fear Santorum’s religiosity: the US will not drift into a theocracy under a constitutionalist, and in fact, it has moved in the direction of a secularist dictatorship under progressive statism precisely because the statist agenda has been to remove religious competition and replace God with the State.
You don’t have to agree with Santorum on every issue; and he wouldn’t expect you to, as he’s made clear in interviews. But as with Newt Gingrich, whose earlier surge was fueled by a concentration on substance, Santorum’s willingness to stand and explain himself and his thinking is a proving to be refreshing to voters used to canned and polished responses from slick technocrats and seasoned perpetual candidates; and in that regard, I think Santorum has picked up some of the Not Newt votes from those who like Newt’s message but not Newt himself, in addition to a lot of the Not Romney votes.
Time will tell. But I think there’s a chance Santorum surprises and picks up some more momentum going into SC.
What would really help is for some compassionate, tolerant, secularier-than-thou Proggy to mention how “weird” his wife is for want to share her dead baby with the rest of the family, and for Santorum to punch him square in his weaselly little face. That’d be good for a 20-point jump, at least.
I imagine Santorum will pick up the Bachmann supporters too, such as they are.
I think the usual suspects remain in deep denial regarding the breadth and depth of Not Romney voters. And those not in denial are the ones orchestrating the “inevitability” campaign.
Haha! His baby died!
Michael Gerson on Santorum:
Has Santorum denounced the Romneycare mandate? If so, it is a big stretch to call him a “pro-life statist“.
That just means Santorum is not an Objectivist.
Bh made a good argument earlier about why the state’s concentration on the family is a legitimate concern of government. I made a minor argument in that regard myself. We sometimes forget that traditional Burkean conservatism is different from, say, Hayek, but both can work. It’s true that Santorum is using government to put a finger on the scale to bolster the family (with deductions) and manufacturing (through the abolition of corporate tax for manufacturing); but he’s ALSO proposing halving the corporate income tax for everyone else — 17.5%. Which you are free to compare to Romney’s across the board 25%.
I prefer a flat tax. But you can see Santorum’s reasoning. And frankly, either plan is likely to lead to growth — while Santorum’s has the advantage of appealing to many blue collar democrats, and lowering tax rates more significantly than Romney’s plan does.
What would really help is for some compassionate, tolerant, secularier-than-thou Proggy to mention how “weird” his wife is for want to share her dead baby with the rest of the family, and for Santorum to punch him square in his weaselly little face. That’d be good for a 20-point jump, at least.
Yea, they may want to back that right up. Since, doing such a thing is actually rather common among those who lose newborns, or babies in the womb.
Of course, you’d have to be a breeder to know that.
Geoffb alerted me last night to an Althouse post on Santorum’s dialogic interaction with the student crowd on the same sex marriage questions. Althouse linked a NYT’s piece, which in turn has a brief video of the exchange. Santorum was really very good in his conduct of the exchange — I thought — (leaving the substance of the questions they dealt with aside for the moment), an exchange initiated by a question not of Santorum’s choosing, though judging from the descriptions of booing, to little ultimate effect on many of the people he was interacting with; which was far more a function of the closed-mindedness of the audience in my judgment, than of Santorum’s attempt to reason with them.
Still, we here, and others elsewhere, often end up discussing Sen. Santorum’s views on so-called social issues first, rather than say, predominantly focusing on his tax policy or fiscal proposals, or his excellent grasp of many looming foreign policy problems. This in turn seems merely an effect of the order of prioritization of the issues as Sen. Santorum himself sees them: not to say, necessarily, a faulty ordering of issues in electoral political terms, for who knows?, [I certainly don’t] Santorum’s ordering of priorities may catch hold to propel him to election.
I’m less concerned with Santorum as a Big Government type than many in the rightwing media, largely because I’ve been listening to him. It’s not really Big Government to use government to re-assert and re-empower the private sector. I understand that libertarians and even some classical liberals are going to have a problem with the elevation of the family over the individual. But “family” as a unit is not the same as the collective. It’s far closer to individualism than it is to anything truly statist. So that’s something of a canard — and it’s ironic that a lot of this oppo research is coming from Romney’s camp.
The Paul camp can make the claims; but I fear Paul’s foreign policy far more than I do Santorum’s Burkeanism and concentration on the family as a societal building block worthy of special consideration. What programs or special considerations arise from that view and are offered as policy I’d have to look at on an individual basis. As I said upthread, I’d prefer a flat tax, for instance, because I believe that takes away the power of the left to talk about “fair share” and “skin in the game.” But I don’t have a problem with a lower tax rate for all, with increased deductions for charitable giving and families — both of which hope to move dependence away from the State.
There does seem to be a political opening on the horizon for a grand reconfiguration — and hopefully, simplification — of the “global” federal tax policy, on the order of Reagan’s move or possibly even better. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity (though much of the impetus will come from Congress, I imagine). Seems to me the direct political ramifications are vast, and often underestimated. And the flat tax is just such a proposal at the top of the heap. Plus maybe, a portion of Steve Hayward’s idea to “serve the check”. To gist the latter, let people pay for what they want, to be sure they understand what the actual costs are.
sdferr —
I think it’s more to get his social views out out now, discussed, argued over, etc., so that should he win the nomination he can turn his attentions to the fiscal and economic matters, while all the while maintaining that, socially speaking, he would manage his fiscal policy to aid families. I see this more as a rather canny strategy — knowing what will be the attack on him — than I do a necessary suggestion of his overall prioritization come general election time, should he make it that far.
I could be wrong. But in my experience, I tend to gravitate toward people who are firm in their convictions and can intellectually defend them — even when I don’t agree with those positions. (And before you ask, there are very few of those on the left; they rely on NEVER telling you what it is that ultimately want to see happen, or when we’ll have “progressed” enough to satisfy them).
Heh, such a question about the left wouldn’t enter my mind, I think. I’m pretty well fixed in the camp that they’re lost lost lost, and haven’t a clue how to extricate themselves.
That’s one thing for certain about PW, you’d better be prepared to intellectually defend your position.
Santorum is not an Objectivist.
Very good point!
It would help him if, instead of dismissing libertarians in general, he were to focus his disagreement with libertarianism to those who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand.
“…he were to focus his disagreement with libertarianism to those who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand.”
Ha and ha and ha! Best of all were he to attack Rand from a thoroughgoing Thomistic (and far superior to the Randian) interpretation of Aristotle. That would be a hoot. But also, of course, never gonna happen.
I’d say it has more to do with the prioritization of the reportage, shaped in no small measure by the campaigns of his rivals.
Can you make the case for Santorum’s own prioritization standing to the contrary of a posited “prioritization of the reportage”, Ernst? Cause that would redound to Santorum’s benefit, I think, and even might be something he himself would have noticed and sought to correct, were it evident.
“I’d say it has more to do with the prioritization of the reportage”
Me too, which is why I thought Jeff @12 was a bit on the optimistic side.
The MSM won’t let him turn his attentions to the fiscal and economic matters.
I think one of the things Santorum could do on the Big Government Conservative charge would be, for example, to say something like given the number of immediate priorities —overturning ObamaCare etc., he expects his administration to make it’s “big push” for a Constitutional amendment banning all forms of abortion sometime around the middle of his third term.
And then when the media overreacts in the predictable manner, he can atribute his confusion to the fact that the last three years has felt like twelve.
Can you make the case for Santorum’s own prioritization
Nope. I only started paying close attention to Santorum after Bachman broke broke broke my heart
The cowardly failshit media sellout SLUT.
I’m in much the same boat Ernst. And turning to youtubes of debates as a drydock in which to make repairs.
It’s not really Big Government to use government to re-assert and re-empower the private sector.
Only to the extent that the gubmint removes artificial barriers to prosperity (especially those that previous gubmints imposed) and protects (not provides) those private institutions that best nurture healthy human beings.
Thought I should emphasize that.
For the It Matters How You Get There files: a good essay here on why beating Barak Obama isn’t enough. How you beat him and who you beat him with is going to have consequences.
I was poking around the net and come across this great 2009 piece over at Dr. Sanity’s blog from Gagdad Bob that covers about everything we’ve been talking about around here lately, up to and including the use of leeches. Read the whole thing, but here’s some tidbits:
Oh, I shoulda included the Sanity link, as she adds worthwhile thoughts…
Can you make the case for Santorum’s own prioritization?
sdferr, I caught the tail-end of a Santorum interview w/ Laura Ingraham tonight. She asked him about the big government Social Conservative charge and his answer was to use a football analogy: He thinks the game needs a referee running up and down the field, not always calling penalties, but there to see the game is played by the rules. That’s the difference as he sees it between himself and other more libertarian minded Republicans, who to him seem to believe that no referee is needed because the players will always play by the rules.
Obviously I don’t have a problem with that answer, not being either a Libertarian or even one of the more libertarian minded Republicans, although I recognize that it’s a strawman as far as your typical libertarian-minded (as opposed to Libertarian) Republican is concerned.
I wouldn’t mind seeing him pressed on what kinds of flags he thinks need to be thrown. If he really doesn’t know the difference between self-interestedness and selfishness, for example, (“Someone,” always gets hurt when masses of individuals do what is only in their own self-interest.), he’s going to be calling holding penalties on every play, and in that case, there’s no game.
“I wouldn’t mind seeing him pressed on what kinds of flags he thinks need to be thrown.”
yea wonder that while baracky destroys the “game”.
Hey Jeff, just saw the Santorum is Burke to Romney’s Hayek over in the Twitter Thing sidebar. It’s worth pointing out to people that Santorum is closer to Burke than Romney is to Hayek.
I think Romney is as keen to ameliorate the negative effects of capitalism on corporations as Santorum is on families, for example.
(Throwing it out here because I don’t do the Twitter thing.)
I’m still looking and studying Ernst, though this is good input you’re bringing (and my thanks for it).
To the earlier question on Santorum’s own prioritization, I’m finding there’s a necessary complex of issues, none of which are simple or easy to place in a cardinal order, something foregone, so far as I can tell, at Santorum’s own website list.
However, there is a choice there (and elsewhere) — made by someone, I know not who — to headline his graphics and campaign literature, in the manner of a motto: Faith Family and Freedom tour, it goes, with “Rick Santorum: Building an America that believes in you”, to round it out. This says something too.
Hell ‘router, if what we really care about is saving the game, let’s all just get behind Romney now.
Sure, he’ll go along with the Dems and the RINOS and the corporate fat cats to institute Canadian styke rules, but it’ll still be football and that’s a damn sight better than playing the faggy European game they call football.
“Hell ‘router, if what we really care about is saving the game, let’s all just get behind Romney now.”
the “game” is individual liberty. mr. romney doesn’t do that. mr.santorum does.
link
In terms of Santorum’s prioritization of Faith Family Freedom, there’s this from that 2005 speech Gerson highlighted:
Faith and Family are what give Freedom meaning in Santorum’s formulation.
Thanks for the link newrouter. I didn’t get where you were going with that go ahead and wonder how Santorum will ref the game comment. (I still don’t.)
“Faith and Family are what give Freedom meaning in Santorum’s formulation.”
I took the formulation to mean personal responsibility and the rule of law(something higher than yourself, and as outlined in our founding documents)is what makes freedom even possible.
The whole quote was: “Someone always gets hurt when masses of individuals do what is only in their own self-interest. That is the great lie of liberal freedom.?.?.Freedom is liberty coupled with responsibility to something bigger or higher than the self. It is a self-less freedom. It is sacrificial freedom. It is the pursuit of our dreams with an eye towards the common good.”
As for the ordering I would consider the syllable count, the beat/rhythm 1 pause 2 pause 1, 2.
I’m happy to go along with that, Lee.
I’d like to find a transcript of the whole speech. Because I’d like to know the part about the “great lie of liberal freedom” that Gerson didn’t find worthy of inclusion. Is Santorum talking about Smith/Adams liberal freedom? Mills liberal freedom? Roosevelt liberal freedom? What? I’m willing to give Santorum all the benefit of the doubt and then some. Gerson not so much.
“I’d like to know the part about the “great lie of liberal freedom””
That is a tough one. I’m not sure but I think he’s saying something like: ‘the great lie
liberalsproggs [imply about] freedom’, or, ‘the great lieofabout [classical] liberal freedom… [is it carries no responsibility].I’m pretty sure he’s not saying classic liberal freedom is a lie…
That’s a good point geoff, but I have no doubt that when Santorum talks about Faith Family and Freedom, that’s the order he prioritizes them. Coulter wasn’t necessarily wrong about that “Santorum is more Catholic than conservative” thing, just about the conclusion she drew from that.
The ordering is along the lines of the traditional God, family, country thang, seems to me.
I’m pretty sure myself lee, but I’m not positive, and it’s not unimportant. It’s just possible that Santorum’s vision of conservatism is just communitarian (not that same thing as collective, of course) enough to be offputting to majority of Republican primary voters. I really don’t know, but if I wanted to take out Santorum, that’s where I’d go after him.
No argument from me on God, family country. You can probably throw in duty and honor as well. And the thing with Santorum is, he means it.
Now, if he can articulate a vision of what the country is….
What is the difference between what you characterize as communitarian, and what we usually speak of as federalism(and as I understand to be summed up in the 10th amendment)?
Just trying to get what you mean by communitarian, and, if it’s contrary to constitutional principles, how…
I doubt you’ll like it much Lee, in whichever form it comes down. I used to hear Etzioni in D.C. now and again; it was all I could do to keep from gagging.
You’re right sdferr…not a fan.
Has the stench of social justice to it I don’t detect on Santorum though.
I gotta go, catch ya on the flip side…
I have further thoughts on this but it’s nothing to write home about yet.
Hypothetically, Lee, I could see Santorum and that “crunchy-con” Dreher guy being sympatico. I could see him being more protectionist than free-market. I’m certain he’s big into the “war on drugs.” I’m positive that he doesn’t believe there’s such a thing as a “victimless” crime.
I suspect that when he criticizes the radical individualist interpretation of “freedom,” what he’s getting at is an Eric Cartmanesque “nobody owns me, I can do what I want!” attitude. I suspect that, when faced with the question “do we err on the side of individual liberty or on the side of the good of the community?” he’s going to come down on the side of the community. More times than not? I don’t know. Right now, like Jeff, I’m comfortable supporting him. I’m probably more comfortable supporting him than Jeff because I don’t myself identify as strongly “classical liberal” as he does.
I also suspect that Santorum understands that Statism is the biggest threat we face at home today. The State wants to break down all the subsidiary institutions between it and the individual —things like the family and the church that he values— in order to preserve the things he thinks important, he’s going to have to roll back the welfare state, so we’re all on the same side.
Until we aren’t (and that isn’t going to be anytime soon).
Santorum on Social Security. The headline is “AP’eed to mislead.
Props to Santorum for telling hard truths in a straightforward manner.
It’s really a shame that we don’t give more credit for that.
That’s because the section of that wiki that’s giving you hearburn (I assume) best describes left communitarianism. I don’t believe Santorum believes in positive rights,* rather, he’d like government to limit itself to creating the space for communities to take care of their member.
Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part. Now that Bachmann and Cain are out, I’m mostly intuiting that Santorum is the next best harbor.
After that, it’s Perry. Then Gingrich —mostly for the schadenfreude. After that it’s McGehee.
I forget my footnote:
*Someone should ask Santorum what he thinks of Roosevelt’s second bill of rights. Does the Government for example, have an obligation to free you from Want? In a world of unlimited wants? That would assuredly be a bridge too far.
Time to call it a day when I can’t even remember to finish a thought.
I really need to go, I wish I had more time to rap tonight…but I did want to fire off a question for sdferr I forgot to ask earlier. Regarding the gagdad bob link in #25, there was something that he wrote I’m having a little trouble digesting, and I immediately thought “I wonder what sdferr thinks about this?”.
Your thoughts would be appreciated…
Funny, Ernst: I wrote to Ace on Twitter today that, now that Bachmann’s out, I’m down to (in order) Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, write-in, write-in, Romney. But yeah, I can throw McGehee in as one of the write-ins.
“I don’t believe Santorum believes in positive rights,* rather, he’d like government to limit itself to creating the space for communities to take care of their member.”
Isn’t that the idea of a constitutional republic and enumerated powers though? Bottom up government?
As for what you said in #49, about the order of candidates, I’m right there with you. I might have to flip a coin between McGehee and Squid though…
Great minds think alike Jeff. I only wish I was the great mind in this instance.
I wanted to add one more thing before I ducked out. Since I brought up “left” communitarianism, I thought I’d better give people an idea of what I think of as right communitarianism, which I’m sympathetic to, but wouldn’t go so far as to subscribe* to.
Unfortunately for me, either my Clinton era dial-up internet service or my Bush 43 (first term) e-Mac is acting hinky. Anyway, it’s the essay “Revenge of the Castle People: Reflections on the Death of the Agora,” by Michael Knox Beran from his Pathology of the Elites: How the Arrogant Classes Plan to Run Your Life, and there’s a version of it, or something approximating it on City Journal‘s web site.
*(remembered this time) I’m actually in a bit of a pickle. Four years ago, I would have called myself a Reagan Republican. About a month or so ago, I got one of those political opinion survey calls, and when they asked me if I considered myself a Republican, for the first time since I was four years old, I said “no.” I’d say that I’m a “Reagan conservative,” but I’m honestly not sure what that means. And while I’m sympathetic to libertarian conservatives (the lower-case “L” is deliberate) I don’t consider myself one. I can’t afford to be: I have three children to raise, and I don’t have the financial resources to insulate he and mine from other people’s children.
I think I’m honestly hoping that Romney does something so egregiously offensive to the base that Sarah Palin gets back in it. Like I’ve said before, if you’re not seriously thinking about a third party, you’re just not serious.
Okay, finally found what I was looking for (sorta): here and here (second half in particular).
Y’know what? Go out and buy beg borrow or steal a copy of the book, Beran is one of the good guys.
Behaviors or ideas is the gist of the question? The two seem to me wholly bound up with one another in a felt near impossible to disentangle, fiber by fiber, even were one willing to destroy the whole to do it. There’s a video of Antonio Damasio posted over at Maggie’s Farm that’s worth a watch. As to our own ordered liberty, Mark Levin’s coming book will be a hearty source of the examination of the long and deep roots of the ideas involved. It’s a built world, to me, and I think we do well to attend to the materials of construction. This, by the way, is one reason the left seems to me so awfully out of kilter: they’ve completely lost track of their antecedents, nor even have a way to find them, in the main.
Well, yeah. I mean, that’s what happens when you’re hell bent on uprooting everything and starting anew.
The Knox Beran essay on Arendt (Can the Polis Live Again?) Ernst linked up there is a good ‘un.
It’s interesting to me that Knox Beran is silent about Arendt’s contemporaries, acquaintances and fellow Heiddegger students, Jascha Klein and Leo Strauss; both also native born Germans; both also serious men, as Arendt was serious; both also Jews who escaped Hilter’s killing machines; both of whom, like Arendt, could be heard to comment on longing for conversation in their native tongue, grumbling (excusably) of nagging miseries of the life of an émigré; both also concerned with politics and political education; both, like Arendt, concerned with making a “recovery” of something gone missing, yet each coming to distinctly different — albeit possibly only subtly so — conclusions from those Arendt reaches.
“. . . that’s what happens when you’re hell bent on uprooting everything and starting anew.”
I don’t think that’s exactly the source of their troubles though Ernst, though possibly by mistake they may have made it so. That is to say, the contemporary left’s lack of respect, their arrogant attitude against what they think (as if they knew it! ha!) they’ve overthrown (as a thing itself in error) wasn’t a lack of respect entirely present in their antecedents themselves (taking antecedents here as the thinkers like Comte, Condorcet and Rousseau, or later, Kant, for that matter, who laid the groundwork of progressivism).
Okay, lemme try putting it differently. When the future is already known, it’s no wonder that the past constantly keeps changing.
Jonah Goldberg writes about this from time to time. For the left, everything is settled, so there’s no need to debate where they are or how they got there, because they don’t plan on staying long anyways. Places to go, people to see eschatons to immanentize….
Heh. Haven’t thought much about the connection, but in a sense, wasn’t ol’ Nicolo already chafing against just such eschaton-mission-creep into the politics of his own time?
Think about the committed left this way.
You don’t believe in an afterlife, so the time you have here is it. Heaven will be here someday and would be here now but for the obstruction of idiots, non-believers, mostly from the conservative right. They are keeping you from entering heaven and may cause you to miss out on it entirely. Why would you not intensely hate them? Wouldn’t your world be much better if they were unpersoned?
The old progressives saw the perfection of humans as an inevitable thing that would happen over a long time period. The ones now are people in a hurry, taking any and all shortcuts that they imagine into being.
Such are the hallmarks of the committed thief.
Like that story the other day about the couple who, while inside a store shoplifting (and getting caught and detained at it), the shoplifter’s own car in the parking lot was robbed of a heap of expensive electronic equipment. Oh, the outrage, said the shoplifters! How could they steal our stuff?
Ernst, I’ve been ruminating on the communitarianism thing, and wanted to run a random thought past you.
I wondered if the mindset we are talking about is based on the idea that any particular family as a whole is to be regarded like an individual in it’s own right, an extension of the individual if you will, granted the same inalienable rights as any particular individual.
The concept just occurred to me, so I haven’t really developed it yet, but it seemed interesting…to me anyway. I’m thinking along the lines that such a mindset might explain a visceral objection to abortion, homosexuality, and the death tax, for example.