The Santorum Surge: One Man’s Culture War Is Another’s Flaccid Flop
You know your party is having a bad election year when it’s only February and they’re already screeching about social issues. After all, opposing parties generally save the sideshow gimmicks until the tail end of the race, when the galvanizing potential of rational arguments has diminished and a few successful stump speeches built on divisive demagoguery may be the difference between the Oval Office and the equally circular process of finger pointing until you find out precisely where you went wrong. But in a sea of blunders, hysteria and snarls that now define a major political party in decline, it might be easier if you instead ask where—if anywhere—you went right. Or actually, it might be better if you didn’t ask anything at all. Rather, you must distract.
That’s exactly what today’s Republican Presidential contenders, namely Rick Santorum, are doing. And in some ways, it makes sense: the economy is on the rise, Obama’s approval ratings are no longer below freezing, and his administration has demonstrated its foreign policy prowess by successfully removing two of the world’s most despised men—Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi—from power. Not too shabby given that Obama accomplished all of this while dealing with a House and Senate led primarily by individuals with as much flexibility as slabs of granite.
