For one brief moment, Rick Santorum was the ideal Republican candidate for 2012, the perfect consonance of Don’t-Tread-On-Me libertarianism and traditional cultural conservatism.
When asked about contraception, which Santorum and the Catholic Church hold to be destructive of marriage and family, Santorum replied, “You know, here’s the difference between me and the Left, and they don’t get this. Just because I’m talking about it doesn’t mean I want a government program to fix it. That’s what they do. That’s not what we do.”
This helped explain why so many liberal politicians and journalists were misunderstanding or lying about what Santorum was saying — why Nancy Pelosi would assert that Republicans want government to stop women from using contraception and a Salon.com writer would write that Santorum would “send the condom police into America’s bedrooms.” For many of today’s liberals, if something is bad — like the traditional light bulb, a very high health-insurance deductible, a gas-guzzling car, or a lack of racial diversity — the government ought to outlaw it.
