How Rick Santorum Hurts Social Conservatism
The problem with Rick Santorum is not that he doesn’t stand for faith, life and traditional marriage. The problem is he thinks he can get a nation of 300 million people to stand with him. On the issue of gay marriage, Santorum recently told CNN: “I’ve just said I think this is a national issue, we can’t have 50 different marriage laws, and we have to have a consistency in what marriage is, and family is something. And we need to have a national discussion about it and develop a national policy.”
But we already do have 50 different marriage laws, concerning what age you can get married, what defines common law marriage, and so on. Unless Santorum can find where in the Constitution the federal government is delegated the authority to regulate marriage, his proposal is unconstitutional.
It is also impractical. As the Founders intended and the 10th amendment makes clear, marriage is a state issue. Before Roe vs. Wade, so was abortion. Before the 1960’s, so was school prayer. Any powers not delegated to the federal government by the states are reserved to the states and the people. This is called federalism and it was the basis for our original form of government.
A return to a truly federal system, in which some states have gay marriage and some don’t; some states ban abortion and others don’t; and even where some states openly allow public prayer and religious expression that other states don’t—this constitutional approach is one that could potentially yield victories for social conservatives.
If it was the federal government that took these cultural decisions away from the states, Santorum now looks to the federal government to restore social conservatism. Santorum seeks a national consensus on issues like gay marriage and abortion that simply do not exist and likely never will.
The best thing about Rick Santorum is that unlike many of the Republican presidential candidates, he actually stands for something. The problem is he is typically the worst enemy of what he is supposed to stand for.
Santorum’s argument is this—that he eventually will convince liberal states like Vermont and Massachusetts to agree with him on social issues. Well, good luck, Rick. The more sensible approach is the constitutional argument, which is this—that the states will never agree on these divisive issues and each state should be allowed to go its own way culturally.
It might be politically impossible to ban abortion nationwide, but it could be possible to save unborn children in Alabama. It might be unrealistic to ban gay marriage in every state, but it is possible to prevent the federal government from forcing gay marriage on every state. The same powers Santorum wants to give the federal government to implement legislation he favors, could easily be turned around on social conservatives depending on who controls Washington, DC. In fact, the federal government has been an enemy to social conservatives for the last half century, whether Republicans have been in power or not.
Social conservatism can win where there still exists a socially conservative consensus in this country. Santorum sees the culture wars as an all-or-nothing battle, where America will either be returned to 1950 or social conservatives will never win anything at all.
If social conservatives want to take their country back, they can. But they must first stop following Rick Santorum.
