Santorum

As soon as I hit the “publish” button on my last post, I knew I would be writing a follow-up to clarify. And that was before I was aware that Rick Santorum’s daughter was in the hospital with Trisomy 18. Had I known that fact, I would have chosen not to publish my post on, of all days, Easter Sunday…And now, to top it off, Santorum has suspended his campaign, which makes the whole purpose of my post moot…So I feel even more compelled to publish the follow-up.

For starters, let it be known that I have immense respect for Santorum. If more men were like him, America would be in much better shape that it currently is. If he were to win the Republican nomination in August and get elected president in November, he would be a significant upgrade over the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Nonetheless, I stand by the main point I was trying to make on Easter: Santorum can not win the general election and therefore should not win the Republican nomination.

I also stand by my second point, which I suspect might have sounded like my main one: Santorum, for all his decency, has a streak of immodesty that could leave him blind to any value that exists in opposing arguments -- and could therefore lead to his actions having troublesome unexpected consequences.

As for clarifying specific things from my last post, let me start with the seventh paragraph, in which I wrote: “There is obviously nothing wrong with talking about the downsides of contraception, but such talk has nothing to do with the office of President…Contraception is a personal matter that the government should stay out of.” I did not mean to imply that Santorum has ever suggested the federal government involve itself in our choices about contraception, nor did I mean to imply that an American president has no place talking about contraception; I simply meant that for a president to lecture the nation on birth control would be, well, weird -- especially when he has so many Constitutionally approved matters to talk about and there is nothing he can officially do regarding contraception anyway.

My next paragraph began by saying “(e)ven if a president was to merely talk about contraception, as opposed to issuing executive orders regarding it…” Again, Santorum has never suggested he would “issue executive orders” regarding contraception and I doubt he would even consider doing so. I was simply trying to draw a distinction between his stated intention as president (to “talk about”) versus actual presidential actions.

If you scroll further into my post you will see that I agree with Bernard Goldberg’s opinion that “deep down, Rick Santorum would like to set up a neat little theocracy here in secular America just to make sure we’re all living moral lives -- as he sees it.” The key phrase is “deep down” -- I don’t think for a minute that Santorum would ever try to establish a theocracy, but I do believe he likes the idea of one existing to follow his theology.

And finally, in the next to last paragraph I quoted part of the First Amendment’s so-called Establishment Clause, which liberals always use to prop up their belief in absolute separation of church and state. For the record, I do not believe that those things should be separated absolutely. The Establishment Clause merely prevents the government from establishing an official state religion to which all citizens must adhere in order to avoid state punishment.

The Left tells everyone the Establishment Clause exists to protect government from religion, but the exact opposite is true: It exists to protect religion from government. The state can not tell a church what to do, and likewise, a church can not tell the state what to do; but when the head of state has to make tough decisions, I would much prefer him to be a man of faith than a man who fancies himself wise enough to rule alone from on high.

In summary, Rick Santorum is a good man, but unfortunately, his human flaws make him a weak presidential candidate.

Now that he has seemingly removed himself from the race, let us all get behind Mitt Willard Romney. And may little Bella Santorum conquer the odds.