March 3, 2009

Santorum at CPAC: Reality Check for the Right

Rush Limbaugh got the adulation, at least four overflow rooms (one of them presumably for his head), and the live feed on Fox News.

Ann Coulter, the blonde bombshell author delivering, essentially, an outrageous comedy routine in the formest-of-form-fitting tops, got the laughs – and the leers of the panting college lads populating Washington’s Omni Shoreham Hotel.

Newt Gingrich got the nod from intellectuals. Mitt Romney got the straw poll votes. And Bill Bennett got the best line – referring to the Big Bad "Mother of Believers" who had women raped, the better to recruit them as suicide bombers, the Gipper’s Education Secretary thundered, “We will not share the world with these people.”

You betcha.

Yet among the standing Os and red meat at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (I thought I was at an aerobics session in the lions’ cage), the most timely, thoughtful, must-see address came before a half-filled ballroom at the unlikely hour of 9 a.m. Saturday from a speaker barely two years removed from one of the most crushing electoral defeats ever for an incumbent U.S. Senator.

Rick Santorum gave the surprisingly smug and self-assured right-wing rump session a stern reality check, spotlighting a trifecta of conservative shortfalls unrelated to conservative principles that produced defeat at the polls.

“We were unethical,” the Pennsylvanian declared, reminding the gathering that Democratic financial hanky-panky, not just the Contract with America, had paved the way for the Republican takeover in 1994.

“We were incompetent,” continued the lawyer and TV commentator, citing Hurricane Katrina and a war in which the administration not only made “lots of mistakes” pre-surge but failed to garner support by identifying the real enemy – “a radical theology.”

Finally, Republican leaders were “unprincipled” in selling out their beliefs for a bailout: “The long-term consequences of a Republican taking over sections of the economy (are) more devastating than any economic calamity that could have befallen us.”

Ouch.

What to do? Well, forget all that wishing and hoping that Obamian overreaching would guarantee a conservative comeback. “Hoping your opponent screws up is not a strategy for victory.”

Santorum’s advice? First off: “Don't mess with success.” Conservatives understand that "you keep what is good about America. You fight for it and protect it.”

Numeros dos? Stop the infighting among Republicans’ economic and social wings and go after “9-11 conservatives” who “vote for us because we are the adults who look squarely in the eyes of the enemy and see it for what it is.” Speak out against the “creeping Sharia” headed to our shores from Europe, and take on an Iran whose leader leaves a chair empty at every speech for the apocalyptic 12^th Imam . . . and is now seeking nuclear weapons.

Yet Santorum also cautioned the crowd that there's something more important than politics – culture. While conservatives have counter-intuitively focused on government, the left has taken over Hollywood, universities and K-12 education. Not to mention “the news media . . . need I say more?”

Now, liberals are gunning for two last conservative culture bastions: the family and the church. “The left doesn't want to separate the church and the state,” warned Santorum, citing proposals to reduce charitable deductions. “The left wants to replace the church with the state. And by the way, they think they found themselves a good Savior.”

In response, the Catholic Santorum concluded, conservatives need not only to “protect our families, fight the popular culture,” and attract security-conscious voters. “We need to pray.”

I would add one more: we need to find a real Republican to challenge the stimulust Quisling Arlen Specter in next year’s Pennsylvania Senate primary.

Uh, any ideas?