A few days ago, I wrote that "the joke's on you" if you're a Democrat voting for Rick Santorum to be the Republican nominee. My article made the rec list (thank you, DKos community!). My three key points were as follows:
1. It will make Democrats look bad and accomplish nothing, since Santorum has a very good chance to win the Republican nomination anyway.
2. If Santorum wins the Republican nomination, he will be a tougher candidate for Obama to beat than Romney would be.
3. A strong showing by Rick Santorum is bad for America.
In this follow-up article I'm going to elaborate on points 2 and 3, especially #3. Follow me below the elegant squiggle for some more explanation about why an Obama-Santorum general election battle would be a really bad thing that we should
not be hoping for.
Since I wrote my previous article, Rick Santorum has doubled down on radical social conservatism and amped up the harshness of his rhetoric against President Obama. It has reached the point of pure vitriol, as though Santorum decided to empty the entire contents of his spleen on the face of our nation's leader. Specifically, Santorum accused Obama of being essentially non-Christian. He said that Obama has a "phony theology" and that his policies are "not based on the Bible" (as though it were to be expected that the president of a country with no established religion would be basing government policies on a specific religious text!).
But he couldn't stop there. Santorum went even further, comparing Obama's presidency to the rise of Adolf Hitler. (Yes, he really went there, as ludicrous as it sounds.) The only possible reaction among normal people would surely be along these lines:
Santorum also made an extremely radical statement on policy, calling public schools "anachronistic" and promoting a transition toward a fully privatized educational system.
After all this, you're probably wondering whether I'm going to retract my argument that Democrats should prefer to face Romney in the general election rather than Santorum. Nope. We should still prefer Romney. Here's why:
Even if Santorum goes so far off the deep end that he becomes nearly unelectable in the general election, he will still do major damage to our national political conversation.
Basically, what I'm saying is that to the degree that my argument #2 becomes weaker -- as I admit it is, since Santorum is unwisely choosing to play up rather than play down his social ultra-conservatism -- my argument #3 becomes stronger. Having Santorum's crazy ideas and ferocious ad hominem rhetoric in the general election would divide Americans as never before since the Civil War. Even if he loses in a landslide, the 40% or 45% of Americans who do vote for him will see themselves even more as an embattled, embittered subculture of American society, and they might become increasingly radicalized after they discover that the normal political process doesn't produce the results they desire. Keep in mind, these people believe they have GOD on their side.
A Santorum vs. Obama race will produce a coarsening of our nation's mainstream political conversation (hard to imagine it could get worse than it already is, but it can!). Rick Santorum has recently shown that he is going to run a no-holds-barred, scorched-earth style campaign against Obama. It will be all-out culture war between Red America ("good, decent, hardworking, small town, churchgoing folks who are the true Americans") vs. Blue America ("snooty urban elites with their secular, European, anti-American values, and the lazy bums they keep dependent on government handouts rather than get a job"). Santorum will urge people to pick sides between these caricatured camps, and it will get downright nasty.
Once Santorum loses, as will probably happen in such a scenario -- since he appears to have decided to move even further to the right rather than moderating his policies and tone after becoming a national frontrunner -- the people who sided with the red-meat, Bible-über-alles, Obama-is-evil camp are not going to suddenly become quiet and harmless. They may increasingly decide to form their own enclaves within America, towns and even whole states that are run by Santorum-style theocrats. Some, on the fringe of the fringe, may even resort to domestic terrorism against liberals, atheists, Muslims, and LGBT people.
A Romney vs. Obama race, on the other hand, would not produce these destructive results. Romney will undoubtedly try to move to the center if he wins the nomination, because he is not a true believer; he is a moderate conservative trying to play an ultra-conservative on TV so that he can get his party's nomination. Santorum is a true believer. He is showing his true colors day by day. He is a dangerous radical, and if he get gets more airtime and the greatly increased credibility that a major party nomination would bring, he would do great damage to America's political discourse. As a national political leader, he could be also responsible for the rise of a new generation of social conservative fanatics who could be with us for years to come.
In conclusion, I want to leave you with another thought, something we always need to be thinking about. As Troubador said in a diary last night,
So decide, both personally and as a citizen of a larger society, whether you are something more than the shadow of your enemies.... Does the world flow from you, or are you forever defining it by what other people do for and to you?
If Rick Santorum is the Republican nominee for president, the 2012 election will flow from the conservative side of America's political spectrum, not from us. We progressives will become merely the shadow of our enemies, constantly reacting to Santorum's craziness. You know how it goes: the media always tries to be "even handed," so no matter how far to the right Santorum moves, it will be seen as one of the two mainstream positions. Thus, the entire political spectrum will shift right along with him. Democrats will be playing defense against Santorum's rightward march rather than defining the discussion around progressive themes and ideas.
In 2012 America, we shouldn't even have to be talking about any of the things Santorum is saying in his campaign. It should all be off the table. The vaginal probes, the end of health coverage for birth control, the end of public education, the idea that U.S. government policy should be based on the Bible (anyone's interpretation of the Bible, whether liberal or conservative), and comparing the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler. All of this should be beyond the pale. It should not even be part of the conversation in a national political campaign in our country today.
You want that stuff on the table? You want it to define the debate in this election? Be careful what you wish for. I'd rather have a boring race against rich-guy Romney, whose conservatism is mostly about more tax cuts, rather than to have one of our nation's two major political parties nominate a madman. How about you?