The new face of Republicanism, or so some would have it.
(Bryan Snyder/Reuters)
I want to start out here with the title.
Suddenly, a fun candidate writes George Will (or his headline-writer). The reference is to Rick Santorum, and I do not believe I have ever before heard the word "fun" uttered in reference to Rick Santorum, other than as in "the candidate who does not want you to have any." Adjectives that could be used to describe Santorum might be angry, or petulant, or prickly, or perpetually indignant, or cranky, or moralizing, or uptight, or sanctimonious, or any of at least 20 other things, but
fun? That one would not have occurred to me.
Political punditry in this country is, I have said before, sick. It would be better if it were running a fever but, aside from perhaps the pages of the Washington Times, it generally does not. Instead, it lies in a sullen torpor, barely able to move, barely able to lift even a single stiffened finger. We have yet to see any world event able to pry it free from the corpse of its own past convictions. Not war, not recession, not criminal acts: nothing. Just dust off the same premises as 10 or 20 years ago, change the names around a bit, and there you go; brand-spanking-new punditry on why thing two-dozen-and-one will work now, when it never did before, or why such-and-such philosophy really needs to be better considered by so-and-so, for the sake of rationality and reasonableness, and screw you very much for doubting it. In the field of punditizing for wrong ideas incessantly proven wrong, there are numerous contenders, but some of them shine more than others.
There is movement, though; even a corpse can slide downhill. Most of the current movement comes in the form of pretending that something considered mainstream, sensible or conservative a decade or two ago is incendiary, catastrophic or socialist-infused now; see Romneycare v. Obamacare v. Heritage v. Gingrich for just one example. As rhetoric such talk can of course be expected. Posing as erudite conventional wisdom, though, it puts the cock in poppycock.
George Will is a curious case. He has been around forever, but I honestly have no memory as to whether he made more sense, in the distant past, or I was just more forgiving. Whatever the case, he currently is at the top of his game, if top of his game means what I suspect conservative ponderers think it to mean. He knows the right words, and knows a lot of them; he has learned that if the facts are against you, you can make up new ones; he knows that the most important thing is to toe the party line, and make your criticisms of the safe kind, and to imagine out scenarios of glorious conservative ascendency even if those scenarios are improbable in the extreme. In the political world there are pundits that go for glory, and pundits that go for porn, and Will is definitely in the porn category. His focus is on making his readers feel good about themselves, or at least feel bad about everyone else, which is the same thing.
So Suddenly a Fun Candidate, starring Rick Santorum, is mostly a feel-good romp through two decades of conservative tropes in service to hailing the skills and bonafides of a schoolmarmish ultra-hard-right conservative whose only human emotion seems to be that of antagonistic prig in dire need of someone to lecture. If this is the conservative idea of a fun fellow, then I shudder to think what the average pastimes of Republican America might look like.
Very well, let us begin:
The complaint that Iowa is not a typical American state is true but trivial because there is no such state. Can you name one whose political culture, closely considered, is more like than unlike any other state’s? Anyway, someplace has to go first, and it should be somewhere the natives are receptive and media are not decisive, so marginal candidates have a sporting chance to become central.
This would seem dodge the question of whether any single state should go first every year, since if all states are interchangeable it seems to work against an Iowa claim to special status, not for it, but of more interest is the thought that the natives are more "receptive" and the media, of which Will is a conspicuous part, is less consequential. This is a sketchier premise than the assertion proposes; the top Iowa vote-getter was notably stingy with his Iowa appearances, while politicians that all but camped out in the state took spots in both second place and a campaign-ending single-digit nothing. I expect you could have the first conservative primary in a communist media bastion like New York and also get results in which the locals are "receptive" and the media is similarly "not decisive." (One could even make an argument that this is among the most poll-driven of elections in recent memory, as receptive Republican voters seem to latch on to whoever everyone else is currently latching onto, only to abandon them just as suddenly a few weeks later.)
Will is, however, correct to state that the point is trivial, at least so far as he has engaged it, so we will just toss the whole premise and be done with it.
Rick Santorum has become central because Iowa Republicans ignored an axiom that is as familiar as it is false: Democrats fall in love, and Republicans fall in line. Republicans, supposedly hierarchical, actually are — let us say the worst — human. They crave fun. Supporting Mitt Romney still seems to many like a duty, the responsible thing to do. Suddenly, supporting Santorum seems like a lark, partly because a week or so ago he could quit complaining about media neglect and start having fun, which is infectious.
Here Wlll goes to battle against a nine-word strawman, decimating it via a bold assertion that Republicans are indeed human. Food for thought, all you other pundits, reporters and political hangers-on.
Like all humans, then, Republicans "crave fun," and the fun they seek in this case is in the form of the one-person carnival ride that is Rick Santorum. The picture painted here is more than a bit creepy, with Romney being the stodgy stay-at-home husband and Santorum the impetuous, drunken one night stand. Hey, Republicans, want to help yourself to a slice of Rick? You may regret the hell out of it when morning comes, but for now, it's either that or doing the responsible thing, and there is way more beer here.
I admit it: I have never seen Rick Santorum look like he is having fun. The closest I have ever seen him to "having fun" is during his frequent hectoring of others. He gets a certain glint in his eye when talking about the dangers posed by the sluts or the homosexuals or the abortionists, and seems to be truly entertained by the notion of all of America going to hell in a handbasket as a result of deviants doing naughty, unspeakable-but-oh-so-fascinating-to-imagine things. Like a nun holding a ruler, he seems to be far happier when people are being naughty than when they are being nice.
This, though, probably does count as a lark for a certain class of social conservative voters, mostly the busybodies and the godbotherers and the gossipy types who never have a kind word to say about anyone but who revel in the possibility of imminent comeuppance for the supposed armies of the deviant. And it is infectious, like laughter or syphilis.
He can, of course, be tenaciously serious. On Sept. 26, 1996, the Senate was debating whether to ban partial-birth abortion, the procedure whereby the baby to be killed is almost delivered, feet first, until only a few inches of its skull remain in the birth canal, and then the skull is punctured [...]
What follows here is a few paragraphs of suggestion that prominent Democrats want to be able to murder babies by the bucketload, primarily supported by Democrats being unsympathetic to Santorum's trademark hectoring and doomsday-heralding visions of, well, Democrats murdering babies by the bucketload. I had never quite figured Will as being quite so ham-fisted at this sort of thing, but then again I confess to not dedicating my life towards counting the columns in which George Will is or is not ham-fisted. It didn't come up.
The choice, then, is between Democrats murdering babies for fun, or Rick Santorum, who as recently as a week ago re-opined that states would have the perfect right to ban birth control because non-procreational sex is icky. What methods of birth control government might or might not forbid to their citizens has never quite been clear, but according to Santorum's stated logic it would seem to imply all of them.
This is the lark, or the naughty fling, that Will is trying to muster support for. The choice is between being responsible and being crazy; choosing a boring bank-manager type or someone who wants to see the whole world burn, just to stick it to his socioreligious opponents. Vote for Democrats and support rampant toddler-killing, or vote for Santorum and have a bit of fun: Never mind his positions or his litany of past ridiculous statements, because it doesn't really matter. Will here is acting as Santorum's wingman, and is desperately trying to spike your drink.
Santorum is not, however, a one-dimensional social conservative. He was Senate floor manager of the most important domestic legislation since the 1960s, the 1996 welfare reform. This is intensely pertinent 15 years later, as the welfare state buckles beneath the weight of unsustainable entitlement programs: Welfare reform repealed a lifetime entitlement under Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a provision of the 1935 Social Security Act, and empowered states to experiment with new weaves of the safety net.
The 1996 welfare reform predicated on visions of the lazy, shiftless poor suckling at the government teat? On the notion that if we just deprive these people and their children a little more food, they will get hungry enough to find a damn job already? If that is the farthest afield Santorum goes from social conservatism, then this purported second dimension of his is thin indeed: Conservative welfare reform, from Will and Santorum and others, is all about social conservatism and its promise to do less, and for fewer people. Will is right that Santorum and others helped usher in a new era of "experimenting" with the safety net, though he does not bother to mention whether the experimenting has led to better outcomes or worse. It hardly matters: After all, "experimenting" in Iraq led to a stubbornly unmeasured level of carnage, all of it pronounced acceptable in order to tinker with building a new society.
Social conservatives demand experimentation quite a bit, I have noticed. They never quite get around to measuring the results, at least in no way that a true experimentalist would recognize. They can experiment with climate change science, but never quite make it to the last steps; they experiment with school systems, but the results never seem to shine quite as brightly as the brochure first advertised. They are constantly demanding we experiment with Social Security, or with Medicare, or with other social programs, but the experiment always comes down to paying private industry to do the same thing for more money, just to see what would happen, or slicing off a chunk of the program in question, just to see how much it might really hurt.
I would feel better about it if the "experiments" were followed by introspection as to the results; that never seems to happen. We have a front row view to what would have happened in the last few years, had we "experimented" with having Americans invest their Social Security savings in the stock market lottery; it never seemed to result in discrediting the notion. We have "experimented" plenty with cutting off families in need from social support: Oddly, this has not resulted in the whole sorry lot of them going out and getting invisible jobs at all the invisible offices and factories produced by the effort. Go figure.
Another aspect of conservatism that seems especially prominent of late: The value of legislation or of a court decision is determined in large part by the age of the law it reneges on. The older and more established an American law is, the more giddy it makes conservatives to carve it out. Something passed during or after the Great Depression makes for an exceptionally juicy target, as everyone knows those were the golden years of socialism, when the foul American populace demanded all sorts of rules and restrictions be placed on their betters, the people and institutions that caused the whole damn thing to begin with. Laws meant to rein in robber barons and Wall Street scoundrels are seen as anachronisms, even while history merrily repeats itself. The Constitution itself is never so riddled with holes and flaws as it is when seen through conservative eyes: The document often makes it into their wallets, but never quite manages to work its way into their hearts.
The 1935 part, then, is a badge of sorts. Santorum is not just conservative; he is one of those conservatives.
White voters without college education — economically anxious and culturally conservative — were called “Reagan Democrats” when they were considered only seasonal Republicans because of Ronald Reagan. Today they are called the Republican base.
That is quite possibly the most gentle way I have ever heard anyone describe the Republican base. Economically anxious could apply to anyone, but I take it is here meant to mean some unmentioned more specific touchstone involving stinginess; culturally conservative is a far better phrase than Islamophobic, or theocratic, or race-paranoid, or other things that have seemed to most motivate conservatives during this current primary season. And yes, in this instance I am being mean for the sake of mean, because the suggestion that the Democrats are somehow wounded by the absence of this crowd that boos gay soldiers, or gets impatient when a candidate will not come right out and agree that the sick and uninsured be left to die, or that hoots over execution records as if it were Olympic sport—that grates. I do not know who these mean-spirited loons used to be (by all accounts, the "Republican base" is in fact the same batch of southern-state whites that it has been ever since the unpleasantness, but that is a less flattering notion than supposing they are children led to the flock by St. Ronald the Pure), but the Republicans are quite welcome to them. The rest of us have no intention of competing in that crowd.
Who is more apt to energize them: Santorum, who is from them, or Romney, who is desperately seeking enthusiasm?
I personally think this crowd could get energized by a barking dog, so long as the dog seemed angry at the right people. The flitting, inch-deep affection for Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and now Richard Stone-the-Gays Santorum would tend to support that premise, though I am eager to try out the actual canine version as "experiment." Wardrobe by PetSmart.
Romney recently gave a speech with a theme worthy of a national election, contrasting a “merit-based” or “opportunity” society with Barack Obama’s promotion of an “entitlement society,” which Romney termed “a fundamental corruption of the American spirit”: [...]
Romney discerns the philosophic chasm separating those who embrace and those who reject progressivism’s objective, which is to weave a web of dependency, increasingly entangling individuals and industries in government supervision.
Unsurprisingly, George Will is an untalented spokesman for the objectives of progressivism. It is to be expected: If you were to ask me what the objectives of conservatism were, I would probably state that they were to reinstitute slavery and a royal class, turn The Handmaid's Tale into a new blueprint for our schools and punch kittens for sport. The difference is that I would be being insincere, whereas Will no doubt considers his version the gospel truth.
Even the bland Mitt Romney, however, can only garner praise when he angrily denounces something else, whether it be real or imaginary. I mark this as another point of evidence for my theory that social conservatism primarily revolves around denouncing things and being afraid of things.
Santorum exemplifies a conservative aspiration born about the time he was born in 1958. Frank Meyer, a founding editor of William F. Buckley’s National Review in 1955, postulated the possibility, and necessity, of “fusionism,” a union of social conservatives and those of a more libertarian, free-market bent.
Hmm. For the life of me I cannot tell if this is smart insight or pure rubbish. Santorum exemplifies a lot of things; does he, however, represent the pinnacle of William F. Buckley conservatism, the possible Chosen One that can combine the conservative demand for laissez-faire government policies with the stern moral scolding conservatives need to muster in order to round out an otherwise minuscule base?
I am going to go out on a limb here and predict that Santorum's future electoral performance will not, in fact, live up to that challenge. For starters, Santorum is known for social conservatism, not for any libertarian bent. As aspiring theocrat, Santorum is as far away from small-government libertarianism as one could probably get, and I cannot say that I have ever heard him give a rousing free-market speech that can compare with his gleeful denunciations of the various social atrocities he sets his sights on. I imagine he would be competent to the task of dismantling government regulation, but holding him up as a credible balance between the two halves of the conservative base seems a bridge too far and then some.
If the Republicans’ binary choice has arrived, and if new technologies of communication and fundraising are repealing some traditional impediments to fluidity in political competition, Santorum can hope to win the nomination. Yes, in 2006, a ghastly year for Republicans (who lost 30 seats and control of the House, and six Senate seats), Santorum lost by 17 points in his bid for a third term.
Even Will is not dedicated to his own premise. Santorum's predicted fate careens from historic opportunity to a hypothesis so tenuous that it requires the use of italics, all in a few sentences flat. At least it shows a bit of desperately needed caution, on Will's part: The Republican base has proven themselves to be serial arsonists, when it comes to their own candidate, and since we are getting to the bottom of the barrel at this point it would be wise for conservative pundits to perhaps consider that this candidate, too, may be in for a rough time. We are told that if Santorum wins, it will be due to some unspecified technological advance that magically wills it into happening, which is I suppose a safe a bet as any other, but it is also tersely pointed out that Santorum was trounced in humiliating fashion during his last go-round, which is I think a disclaimer that should be made in rather larger print than that ...
But, then, Richard Nixon was defeated for governor of California six years before being elected president, carrying California.
... but this is the point where I begin questioning Will's own commitment to maintaining even a semblance of coherent, rational thought.
Richard Nixon: Rick Santorum. These are both bipedal Republicans who lost a political contest; if the comparison is meant to be any deeper than that I am at a loss to describe how. Sentences or premises like these always grate the most, because regardless of ideology or substance, it simply demonstrates an agonizing, devil-may-care laziness that makes you suspect the author has been funning with you all along. "Well, Richard Nixon once lost an election, so therefore do not count out people who have lost elections" is a thread of wisdom so ethereal that I feel bad even restating it.
Bits of comparative wisdom, for your consideration: Charles Manson has two arms. George Will also has two arms, so never discount the possibility that he could be a homicidal maniac. Puppies are often black, as are DVD players; you can never be sure whether your own dog is Region 1 compatible until you give it the old college try.
I do not think people should discount Richard Santorum because he once lost an election, like Nixon. I think people should discount him because he is a tightly wound spring of ideological extremism worthy of a children's-book villain. Conservatives have already worked themselves into a lather over Muslims and immigrants in our midst, both apparently existential threats a moment away from causing our destruction: If anything, Santorum's brand of theocratic moralism is a throwback, not a bold new invention. That he is even being considered now, after languishing in the campaign doldrums for so very long, and so very, very appropriately, is evidence of nothing more than a bout of spastic panic on the part of the Republican "base." That the literati of the conservative moment is reduced to stumping for him, more dismal still.
Even if Santorum is not nominated, he might galvanize a constituency that makes him a vice presidential choice. For Obama, getting to 270 electoral votes without Pennsylvania’s 20 is problematic. But so, just now, are Republican prospects of getting to 270 with their narrowing choice of candidates.
I would pay Mitt Romney a good chunk of money to make Rick Santorum his vice presidential choice, and I suspect a great many others in non-conservative America would do the same. Santorum is poster child for conservative holier-than-thou-ism. He does not have a moderate bone in his over-tense, perpetually-constipated-looking body, and he would do more to convince wider America of Romney's own apathetic immoderateness than anything a non-conservative could possibly say against him. A Romney-Santorum ticket would have all the Wall Street elitism Republicans could offer, combined with all the sanctimonious brow-beating of Santorum's ostentatiously hyper-religious subsect. That would be placing quite a bet on the little un-Googleable fellow.
I do not quite know what Will is after, in his column. If it is to convince us that Rick Santorum is "fun" and "a lark," good luck with that one. If it is to convince us that he is electable, it again does little to persuade. Will furthermore attempts to paint a picture of a unified party, under (of all people) Rick Santorum, a party in which the constantly pissed-off social conservatives can finally sing kumbaya with the Wall Street plutocratic crowd, but settling on Santorum as the supposed symbol of that balance and moderation is, in a nutshell, insane. If we are to believe Rick Santorum is now the moderate face of the party, worthy of consideration instead of the insincere, not-conservative-enough Romney, then I really have no idea what to say to that. The thing speaks for itself.
Apparently there is simply no such thing as extreme, in Republicanism. There's not a damn thing that would count, and no end to the embarrassing crackpots to be held up as new exemplars of the movement. That Michele Bachmann was considered anyone, or Palin, or Cain, or the truly inexplicable Perry, or the once-disgraced Gingrich, who apparently has the remarkable superpower of making nearly everyone he has ever worked with hate his everloving guts; what a gallery of misfits. Reagan has been purged from the party in all but name, since he did unspeakably liberal things that we must not even talk about, in this new era. There hasn't been a candidate yet whose proposed newfangled tax plan did not include a bottom line reliant primarily on fairy magic. Every one of the not-Mitt candidates elevated to momentary not-Mitt seemed primarily to ignite the interest of the base due to their incoherent anger at something, and at least one of them lost it again primarily because he committed the crime of not hating immigrants, one of the targeted groups, quite enough. Intelligence or learnedness has not been a prerequisite.
So in spite of a fleeting attempt at savior-based unity, Will leaves us right were we were before: a Republican party staunchly divided between one half, represented by a multimillionaire whose entire plan for government revolves around further restructuring government as the vassal of multimillionaires, and a social conservative base who demands frothing, uncontained expressions of rage and future retribution against the insufficiently pure. Will offers the most conventional possible solution, in the end, which is to chose one from each group and call it done.
What strikes me most, however, is the myopic, nearly rote manner in which he expresses even the unlikely personage of Rick Santorum as someone "exemplifying" what his party should aspire to be. Any notion of radicalism on the part of Santorum has been discarded; even this nutcase counts as moderate, now, and we are expected to be good enough to not remember that even a few mere elections ago, conservatives sought to portray themselves as considerably different beasts. Even the deans of conservatism have been reduced to a dumbed-down intellectualism barely above the grumpy ramblings of Rush Limbaugh or other crackpots; you get the feeling that each of them is stubbornly trying to out-conservative the other, knowing that the impatient and ever-more-stern base would just as soon put every last one of them out to pasture, if they had their way, for the crimes of word-knowing and sentence-saying. Conservative pundits used to be a bit more rational, but that was before "expressing a logical thought" became a mark of suspicious bookishness and/or thoughtfulness, both of which are traits that conservatives now consider to do more harm than good.
I had really thought we had gotten over the whole notion of supporting the endorsers of theocracy, however. That just seems silly.
(Disclosure: This columnist’s wife, Mari Will, is an adviser to Rick Perry.)
This may be the saddest sentence of all. Apparently poor political judgment in the Will household spreads itself around.