The Building Backlash Against Rick Santorum

I'm going to say it once more: Not one of the remaining candidates is my first pick, but I'm impressed with Rick Santorum, and I'd like to see him continue in the race and make the case for his candidacy. That's how it works.

That said, things certainly look grim for the GOP, by the looks of some of the responses to Santorum's surge and the increasingly desperate appeals to support Mitt Romney.

Jennifer Rubin, the resident Romney shill at the Washington Post, attempts to knock down Santorum this morning, "Is the not-Romney an improvement for conservatives?" I think attacking Santorum as an "extremist" is over-the-top and personally offensive, but that's Rubin for you:

I had lunch with a conservative scholar and writer on Friday. Remarking on the rise of Rick Santorum, he exclaimed sarcastically, “Oh, swell, the Republicans have found a guy who’s a big spender AND an extremist on social issues!”

On one level it was a funny remark, symptomatic of the notion among many conservative curmudgeons that if there is a way to screw up an election the GOP will find it. On the other, it was an interesting statement that suggests that the Republicans, after winning a House majority in 2010 by stressing limited government and focusing much less on social issues, may undo their success by choosing a candidate with positions unpopular with a substantial majority of Americans — big government and excessive meddling in personal lives (having nothing to do with abortion, on which the GOP is virtually united and public opinion in general is at least evenly divided.)

The two issues that I raised this past week — Santorum’s unconservative economic thinking and his extremism on social issues — have not gone unnoticed by others.

There's more at the link.

Again, that notion of "extremism on social issues" really rankles. Tell me, what's so extreme to say that traditional marriage is the foundation of a decent, ordered society? And what's so extreme to say that abortion is an abomination, and we should do everything we can to discourage it. It's funny too, since no doubt much of Rubin's attack on Santorum as "extreme" is directed at his Catholicism. But Rubin is Jewish, and one of the hardest of the neoconservative hardliners on the defense of Israel, something I admire in fact. The point is the hypocrisy here is astounding, and frankly a real turnoff.

In any case, Dan Riehl has more on this, taking on John Hinderaker for his whiny pleadings in favor of Mitt. See: "Powerline's Pansy Politics."

BONUS: Some additional thoughts from William Jacobson, "I feel Santorum supporters’ pain."

EXTRA: At Reuters, "Santorum says Obama agenda not 'based on Bible'." (Via Memeorandum.)

Santorum's walking that back a bit now at the video above.