And it raises this question for Republican party conservatives: Is Rick Santorum really the place where they want to place their hopes?The Santorum candidacy pushes Republicans toward an election in which the issues are religious, cultural, and sexual, not economic. It's a candidacy that pushes the party away from metropolitan areas, away from areas of growing population, and rebases the party everywhere that is not dynamic, not growing. The concerns of hard-pressed America are deeply worthy of attention and respect. They call for responses and solutions. That's not what a Santorum candidacy offers. (As we've seen with the Santorum proposals to spur manufacturing with one single change in tax law, this is not a policy-serious campaign.) Instead, a Santorum candidacy offers an airing of resentments and grievances. Is that really where party conservatives want to go?
Unfortunately for the Republicans, I think this is exactly where the conservatives want to go. They are in the words of Buckley, standing athwart history and yelling, "Stop!" That may be their dream, but it will never become reality. And the way they are going, they are paring their electoral support down to the elderly, the religious, and white men. Meanwhile, older folks are dying off, the country is slightly over half female, minority population is growing, and religiosity is shrinking. That doesn't seem like a winning strategy to me.
Yelling "Stop!" isn't going to win elections, especially when also yelling at the majority of the people in the country that you hate them.
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