WhatFinger


Constitutionalist with a real chance to win the nomination

Santorum Makes the Case—And Means It



Everyone at CPAC says things that conservatives like to hear. That, after all, is the purpose of CPAC. This year, of course, the most important speakers were the presidential candidates. As per the rule, all of them (apart from Ron Paul, who was absent) said things that played well with the audience. Only one, however, said the things that are most needful in this all-important year, and said them with a conviction that one can believe will continue, not only for the remainder of the campaign, but for the remainder of his political career. This was Rick Santorum.
All three men stressed the urgency of defeating President Obama, saving the damaged economy, and repealing Obamacare. The similarities ended there. And as the constitutionalist argument at CPAC is between Santorum and Newt Gingrich—few constitutionalists mistake Mitt Romney for a kindred spirit—a brief comparison of their respective speeches will be instructive. Gingrich made some big promises, not just for Day One, as is presidential custom, but even for the weeks prior to his inauguration. "My goal, with your help, is that by the time President Obama lands in Chicago [on January 20th], we will have repudiated at least forty percent of his government on the opening day." Okay, that isn't going to happen, but campaign hyperbole is part of the game, right? Fine. The real problem with Gingrich's speech, as with his thinking about goals in general, is that the focus is almost always on government, and how it can bring about the desired "results"—that is, the practical outcomes that collectively spell prosperity.

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Here is how Gingrich defines the central issue of the presidential campaign: "The number one theme of the fall campaign will be a paycheck president versus a food stamp president...." "Jobs" will be the centerpiece. He emphasizes this point in a most illuminating way. In the process of detailing the forty percent of Obama's government he intends to have undone before taking office, he says the following: "By January 20th when I am sworn in, [Congress] will have repealed Obamacare. It will have repealed Dodd-Frank. It will have repealed Sarbanes-Oxley. All three of those are job-killing bills which centralize bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. and increase the corruption of the political system." His big plans to repeal those three bills—the three pin-up girls of the government's final push to end individual freedom forever in America—are framed as a job-creation program. Gingrich's big gripe against those bills—the gripe he is pitching to a unanimously conservative crowd—is that they kill jobs, centralize bureaucracy, and encourage Washington corruption. With that sweeping statement, the man most eager to identify himself as the Big Ideas candidate has just defined America's most urgent problems as unemployment, red tape, and congressional ethics violations. In other words, he is practicing Republican politics as usual. He simply does not grasp the seriousness and profundity of the crisis. Jobs, higher incomes, greater productivity, and so on; these are good things, but they are not core principles. They can be the by-products of good government, but they are not the essence of good government. Good government, from a constitutionalist perspective—which is the only perspective that can be allowed to matter this year—means the restoration of freedom, and the re-painting of the now-faded line between government programs and private activity. This faded line and the attenuated freedom it implies are, unfortunately, apparent in most of Gingrich's own plans, and in his most forceful rhetoric. Santorum, by contrast, used his CPAC appearance to define the 2012 election this way: "This campaign is going to be about who we are as Americans, because in essence that's what's at stake. This is the most important election in your lifetime. It's an election about what kind of country you're going to leave to the next generation. Are we going to be a country that believes, as our Founders did, that our rights don't come from the government, they come from a much higher authority?" Following on this point, he detailed the Obama administration's foisting upon the public of the "right to healthcare." "When government gives you rights, government can take away those rights. When government gives you rights, government can coerce you into doing things in exercising the right that they gave you." As opposed to Gingrich, who explicitly focused the healthcare battle on the issue of jobs and over-bureaucratization, Santorum downplayed the superficial practical problems in favor of the underlying constitutionalist principle, explaining that "Obamacare will crush economic freedom [not economic prosperity, which is the practical problem, but "freedom," the moral issue], will make people dependent upon government for the most important things, their very lives, and as a result, government will own you." That is the nub of it, and his final point is no mere hyperbole. The 2012 presidential election is not about government inefficiency; it is not about job-creation; it is not about "how Washington operates." This election is about whether a nation that has already begun to step off the cliff into the bottomless pit of collectivist bickering over who gets first dibs on the government crumbs can finally pivot on its one planted leg and, turning around, catch a far-off glimpse, once more, of the haven of hope, self-reliance and individual dignity that she has left behind. Government healthcare, as Santorum argues, renders forever futile the fight for freedom. Addressing the matter of forcing "free" contraception on Catholic healthcare providers, whether directly or through a mandate on insurance companies, Santorum—who has been a leader in this debate from the outset—focused on "the foundational idea that you have the government telling you that you have to pay for everything, as a business—things that are not really things that you need insurance for.... Ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of coercion that we can expect. It's not about contraception, it's about economic liberty, it's about freedom of speech, it's about freedom of religion. It's about government control of your lives, and it's got to stop." These are the words Gingrich never speaks, or passes over without much conviction, for the simple reason that, as a big government conservative, he does not think that way. His emotional conviction arises when he speaks of how the government can, with an assist from the people, make great things happen. Santorum, by contrast, has made constitutionalist themes—liberty, God-given rights vs. government-mandated pseudo-rights ("positive rights"), and the urgency of stopping Washington's attempt to repeal the Declaration's right to life through government-controlled healthcare—the foundation of his campaign. The fact that Santorum is still in the race, and even enjoying a genuine surge in popularity, is resoundingly exciting news on two related fronts: First, for constitutional conservatives, it means there is still hope for one of their own to be the nominee, where such hope seemed all but lost only a few weeks ago. Secondly, it ought to give tremendous heart to those constitutionalists who, in recent months, have too often had to face the frustration—not to say desperation—of wondering whether they had been abandoned in the fight by those who had pledged to be with them through thick and thin. Santorum's rise—the fact that someone in the presidential race is still speaking directly about the existential crisis facing America and the world, the fact that he understands the roots of the crisis, and the way out of it, and, most amazingly of all, the fact that he is enjoying a groundswell of support for talking about these things—is, given the crucible the Republican Establishment has forced upon its constitutionalist enemies over the past year, as close to a miracle as anyone has a right to ask for. Constitutionalists had better take advantage of this opportunity while it lasts: God knows the right to ask for a miracle may be next on Obama's hit list. This is no time to get buried in policy minutiae, to be disappointed about a few poor votes in a candidate's past, or to dream of some computer-generated ideal president. There is a constitutionalist with a real chance to win the nomination. He speaks with conviction and consistency about founding principles and individual rights. And he is finding his voice on these issues, sounding stronger and more serious with each passing week of the campaign. The phrase "now or never" has rarely been more applicable, or more literally true. Santorum concluded his CPAC address by recalling the pledge made by the signatories of the Declaration of Independence: "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." Converting this pledge to a plea—his final expression of his case to the constitutionalists in the audience—he observed, "Honor is a term that is not used very often in America these days, but it is exactly what's at stake, because this is our watch. We are stewards of a great inheritance; and it is our responsibility to shepherd that inheritance, and to make it a greater and richer one for the next generation. And if we fail to do that, then we have failed our duty, and our honor as Americans." If you believe that, and if you believe that one of the four remaining candidates believes it, then you have found your nominee.


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Daren Jonescu -- Bio and Archives

Daren Jonescu has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He currently teaches English language and philosophy at Changwon National University in South Korea.


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