Social Issues and the Santorum Surge

Back in 2009, in the months after Barack Obama took office, the conservative right entered into a heated debate on the future of the movement. Some argued against a prominent role for social values in the early Obama-era push to retake political power. I argued against this position, making the case for "Core Values Conservatism." The debate picked up again last year, when Indiana Governor Mitchell Daniels was testing the waters for a presidential bid and argued that Republicans should declare a "truce" on social issues to focus on economic issues exclusively. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention shot that idea down decisively in an essay at the Wall Street Journal, "Americans Don't Want a 'Truce' on Social Issues." That said, obviously the economy continued to be the dominant issue in the electorate as the Democrats pushed ahead aggressively with its statist agenda that is bankrupting the country.

And now social issues have emerged again as a central force on the political agenda. The administration's been aching for a fight on these issues, no doubt, as shown by President Obama's no-holds-barred program to ram through the contraceptive mandate against the wishes of Catholics and religious-minded voters. But also in evidence is the rise of Rick Santorum to the front of the GOP pack. Few predicted so prominent a trajectory for Santorum as recently as a couple of months ago. He seemed like an also ran. Mitt Romney was considered virtually inevitable and the MFM establishment was attempting to quash any right-wing challenges to a Romney coronation. The GOP race has been extremely turbulent, with a roller coaster of ups-and-downs leading to the first primaries and caucuses this year. And now Santorum is not only surging in the polls but looks an even more formidable rival for the nomination than any of those previously who challenged the conventional wisdom. As I noted previously, Santorum is not my first pick, but I'm pretty stoked at how social issues are getting a new hearing, and if the economy continues to improve the right will have a tremendous opening against Obama and the progressives on the values divide. Conservatives will have the chance of a lifetime to demonstrate the radical left's agenda for the secularization of America and the destruction of faith and decency in our nation.

And for more on that, see James Taranto's weekend interview at the Wall Street Journal, "Jeff Bell, an 'early supply-sider,' on the roots of American social conservatism—and why the movement is crucial to building a Republican majority":

If you're a Republican in New York or another big city, you may be anxious or even terrified at the prospect that Rick Santorum, the supposedly unelectable social conservative, may win the GOP presidential nomination. Jeffrey Bell would like to set your mind at ease.

Social conservatism, Mr. Bell argues in his forthcoming book, "The Case for Polarized Politics," has a winning track record for the GOP. "Social issues were nonexistent in the period 1932 to 1964," he observes. "The Republican Party won two presidential elections out of nine, and they had the Congress for all of four years in that entire period. . . . When social issues came into the mix—I would date it from the 1968 election . . . the Republican Party won seven out of 11 presidential elections."

The Democrats who won, including even Barack Obama in 2008, did not play up social liberalism in their campaigns. In 1992 Bill Clinton was a death-penalty advocate who promised to "end welfare as we know it" and make abortion "safe, legal and rare." Social issues have come to the fore on the GOP side in two of the past six presidential elections—in 1988 (prison furloughs, the Pledge of Allegiance, the ACLU) and 2004 (same-sex marriage). "Those are the only two elections since Reagan where the Republican Party has won a popular majority," Mr. Bell says. "It isn't coincidental"....

In Mr. Bell's telling, social conservatism is both relatively new and uniquely American, and it is a response to aggression, not an initiation of it. The left has had "its center of gravity in social issues" since the French Revolution, he says. "Yes, the left at that time, with people like Robespierre, was interested in overthrowing the monarchy and the French aristocracy. But they were even more vehemently in favor of bringing down institutions like the family and organized religion. In that regard, the left has never changed. . . . I think we've had a good illustration of it in the last month or so."

He means the ObamaCare mandate that religious institutions must provide employee insurance for contraceptive services, including abortifacient drugs and sterilization procedures, even if doing so would violate their moral teachings. "You would think that once the economy started looking a little better, Obama would want to take a bow . . . but instead all of a sudden you have this contraception flap. From what I can find out about it, it wasn't a miscalculation. They knew that the Catholic Church and other believers were going to push back against this thing. . . . They were determined to push it through, because it's their irreplaceable ideological core. . . . The left keeps putting these issues into the mix, and they do it very deliberately, and I think they do it as a matter of principle."

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