Santorum Rising

Is Rick Santorum for real? I think he is.

Ricko the Sicko has statistically insignificant leads over Mitt Romney in national polls for the Republican presidential nomination, but the fact that they're leads just the same has given Mitt Romney cause for concern. Romney is coming off as more of a phony as he tries to tighten what had once been thought to be a secure grip on the nomination, all the while coming across as an out-of-touch spoiled rich kid who doesn't seem angry about the perceived decline of the American middle class. Rick Santorum seems more authentic as an angry working-class-rooted conservative warrior going against the powerful economic elites, despite the unpleasant truth that the policies he espouses - which would make such economic interests more powerful and elitist - aren't that different from the ones Romney supports. But he has an obvious appeal to blue-collar "Reagan Democrats" who are inclined to vote Republican in presidential elections on cultural issues.

It is for that reason alone that Santorum should be no less underestimated than Newt Gingrich has been. (We can't rule out Newt yet either.) President Obama is presiding over an economy that seems to be on the mend, but we could reach a particular threshold, at which the economy has improved to the point where it's good enough to let people focus more on social issues (the kind of social issues that were resolved decades, if not centuries, ago in other Western countries) but not good enough to be neutralized as an issue in and of itself. A condition like that could make a Republican presidential candidate like Santorum very attractive.

Do not imagine for one moment that a rabidly conservative and intellectually bankrupt politician like Santorum could never make it to the White House. I've said it before and I'll say it again (an annoying habit on this blog, I know, but what the heck, history has been repeating itself a lot lately): Back in the 1990s, everyone knew that the idea of "President George Walker Bush" was ridiculous.