Santorum Is on Every GOP Voter's Lips

At first glance, Rick Santorum is merely the fifth Not-Romney of the Republican Primary. Before him, we had Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, and Newt Gringrich, which makes his sudden popularity sort of insulting to him. He’s the last fallback, the least preferable candidate in a stable of has-beens and weirdos. He seems like the guy who could be most fairly dismissed as Not-Romney by snickering liberals.

Unlike those others, Santorum’s newfound popularity seems unearned. For his 15 minutes of legitimacy, Perry marked his entrance to the race with a very effective storm of hype (He’s a governor! What a retail politician!). Bachmann spent years ingratiating herself with the Tea Party inner circle while Cain and Gringrich delivered hours of extremely entertaining public speaking before anyone would lend them credence. Even Tim Pawlenty had more presence and no one even knows who Pawlenty is anymore.

Meanwhile, Santorum’s only contributions to the primary were tremendously awkward debate performances. He always appears peevish and irritable. He’s fussy. He sounds scolding when he wants to sound commanding and he comes off more indignant than dignified. Worst of all, he is transparently uncomfortable discussing his future presidency.

He is much more comfortable talking about his past and his conservative bona fides. Above all else, he loves telling audiences and moderators that they don’t adequately appreciate his conservatism. He comes off as a man with more grievances than ambitions, like he’s running for president just so he can lose and sulk about it.

But Rick Santorum’s popularity is no accident. Santorum is more than just another byproduct of the Romney campaign’s nosedive into the uncanny valley. Before he became the latest Not-Romney, Santorum emerged from the primary’s noisy background by winning the Iowa Caucus in an enormous upset. He didn’t win as a candidate of last resort. He won because he appealed, personally and effectively, to Iowa’s evangelical powerbrokers.

Every Republican candidate mouths some adequate, poll-tested quanta of homophobia, prurience, coverture, and intelligent design, but Santorum does much more. He takes commonplace conservative moralism and just pounds it shrieking into the earth. Lesser conservatives couch their homophobic appeals in word games and dog-whistle phrases, but Santorum just comes right out and compares homosexuality to bestiality, then says gays are “afraid of the truth” when they get mad. Lesser conservatives merely have plans for your sexual and romantic life, but Rick Santorum has a pair of binoculars and a whistle.

Real, hard-line social conservatives back Santorum because Santorum is the only genuine social conservative candidate in the race. The others have all been a haphazard collection of predatory salesmen, known moral frauds, Mormons, a libertarian, and a woman. Santorum is different. He is genuinely their kind of crazy, and he’s not a woman.

The Republican base recognizes the difference. They understand that Santorum is more than some fair-weather bigot—he is a genuine, honest-to-goodness, unreconstructed agent of intolerance. Pundits have asked repeatedly just what it is the Republican base wants from their nominee. They want Santorum.

His preeminence is yet another object lesson that the masters of the universe have lost control over the Republican Party machinery. A million years ago, when this primary began, no one predicted that Republican primary voters would gravitate to Santorum. Republican primaries may start out fractious and untamed, but they still settle on the electable party favorite in the end, not the creepy, unelectable guy in the sweater vest. And yet, here, we are. Rick Santorum may very well be the GOP candidate for President of the United States of America.

But more than that, Rick Santorum demonstrates the current character of that Republican base. Mike Huckabee occupied much the same political space Santorum’s taken over in the 2008 Republican primary as the overtly religious, conservative Christian candidate. But there’s a world of difference between Huckabee and Santorum’s public demeanor. Huckabee always came across as soothing and conciliatory. He seemed generous and nice. Rick Santorum comes off sullen and angry; he seems disgusted and vindictive.

That’s the heart of Santorum’s unique appeal with Republican primary voters. He does more than walk the walk and talk the talk. He carries himself with the same seething anger that has consumed the Republican Party. Like Bill Clinton, he feels their pain. He shares it. They can see themselves in him, because he comes off as an actual human being who feels what they feel. He has achieved a profound, accidental empathy. And in a race where the only other competition is an unwholesome, insanely wealthy, smiling robot whose every empty word seems to mock you, that means everything.

Of course, a Rick Santorum presidency is just pure fantasy. If JFK’s presidency was Camelot, then Rick Santorum’s presidency would be Narnia with cruise missiles. It’s a whitewashed childish fantasy where children pretend Jesus is a lion and women stay out of combat situations. But right now, to the Republican primary voter, Narnia sounds pretty great. That’s where they are, and that’s what they want. They want Narnia. They want Rick Santorum.

Previously - Hard Times for Boehner