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Is Rick Santorum's Fundamentalist Catholicism at Odds with Protestant Christianity?

by Steven Conn

Rick Santorum has cast his presidential campaign as a religious crusade and has made no apology for it. Satan is loose in the land, according to Santorum, and he has offered himself as the only man capable of exorcising the demon.Santorum has surged in the polls among GOP voters precisely because he is so comfortable mixing politics and religion. He presents a stark contrast to Mitt Romney, who seems profoundly reluctant to talk about his Mormonism.Yet despite putting his religious convictions front and center in his campaign, Santorum hasn't been entirely candid about what those convictions are. He is hiding certain aspects of them in plain sight.Santorum is a Catholic. While he has always acknowledged this, he has downplayed the specifics of his Catholic faith in order to curry favor with fundamentalist Protestants, many of whom regard Catholicism with roughly the same disdain they have for Mormonism.

What is True Political Wisdom? A Primer for the 2012 Election

by Walter G. Moss

We want our leaders to exercise political wisdom. At least, we do if we think about it. Does anybody really desire unwise leaders? But what do we mean by political wisdom? What virtues and values does a wise leader possess? The present essay, condensed from a much longer footnoted essay, attempts to answer these questions. It does so partly by looking at what past thinkers, starting with Aristotle, have said about political wisdom.

Pat Buchanan was Breitbart Before Breitbart

by Timothy Stanley

Pat Buchanan’s dismissal from MSNBC is probably the best thing to happen to him since he was hired by MSNBC. For ten years, the pundit was the voice of populist conservatism on the network – sparring with Rachel Maddow or Chris Matthews over abortion, gay rights, war, taxes, and affirmative action. His career was brought to an end by the publication of his latest book, Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?, released in November 2011. The book argues that America is breaking up under the pressure of demographic change—driven by immigration and multiculturalism. The liberal lobbying group Color of Change took offense at chapter titles like “The End of White America” and demanded Buchanan’s dismissal. On February 17, 2012, he announced that MSNBC had caved under pressure and he was no longer on its staff. Since then, it feels like he has never been off television.

Santorum Misunderstands Both Kennedy and Religious Pluralism

by Joel K. Goldstein

Even without its ugly imagery, Rick Santorum's repeated claim that John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech about religious freedom made him "throw up" would rank as one of the most unsettling remarks of the 2012 campaign. Contrary to Santorum, Kennedy did not say or imply that "people of faith have no role in the public square," and his speech ranks as one of the classic statements of the pluralistic foundations of our country.In September 1960, when some Protestants suggested that Kennedy's Catholicism should disqualify him for the presidency, Kennedy confronted the role of religion in politics in a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. In words more poetry than prose, Kennedy argued that no one should be denied public office because of his faith, that no public official should request or accept "instructions on public policy" from any "ecclesiastical source," and that no religious entity should seek "to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials."

How Santorum Misunderstands Kennedy's Catholic Speech

by David Greenberg

Rick Santorum may have extreme views, but at least he describes them colorfully. The man who once likened homosexuality to “man on dog” sex caused a stir again Sunday by saying on ABC News’ This Week that John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech about religious freedom made him want to vomit. Deploring JFK’s assertion that “the separation of church and state is absolute,” Santorum explained: “You bet that makes you throw up. What kind of country do we live [in] that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?”

"Obamacare": A History of the Most Effective Scareword in Politics

by Robert Brent Toplin

When Republican candidates for president confronted each other in several televised debates in late 2011 and early 2012, they frequently criticized “Obamacare.” Those candidates did not say much in detail about the Affordable Care Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2010. Brief mention of Obamacare served adequately to communicate their disgust withthe Democrats’ plan for health reform. Sometimes those GOP candidates attacked one of their own, speaking contemptuously about “Romneycare.” That single term implied sharp criticism of the mandated health insurance program that Mitt Romney established when he was governor of Massachusetts. Why do Republicans favor this personalized, shorthand approach to attacking health care reform? Why do they often connect Obama’s name in their references to health care legislation?

Santorum and Romney Were Wrong on the Bailouts -- But George W. Bush Wasn't

by Robert Brent Toplin

When campaigning in Michigan recently, GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum criticized President George W. Bush, a fellow Republican, for supporting the bailout of ailing banks and auto companies during the recent financial crisis. “President Bush set a precedent,” Santorum complained, “and it was the wrong precedent.” Mitt Romney agreed with Santorum’s criticism of federal loans to auto companies, but he disagreed on the question of aid for Wall Street. Romney supported President Bush’s efforts to rescue large banks.Many decisions by President George W. Bush deserve criticism (take your pick: a questionable rationale for war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich that turned federal surpluses into deficits, or policies promoting de-regulation that allowed reckless speculation). But George W. Bush’s stance on bailouts is not one of those major shortcomings. By endorsing strong federal intervention in an emergency, President Bush helped to prevent the U.S. economy from going over a cliff.

How to Think About Corporate Personhood, Part II

by James Livingston

I Last time out I ended on a skeptical note—I had begun to doubt my own deployment of James Madison’s formative distinction between the rights of persons and the rights of property. I concluded that the Santa Clara decision of 1886 conflated these “two cardinal objects of Government,” as Madison called them, and thus had adjourned the debate he had designed to trouble congressional decision-making—the debate he thought would prolong the process of majority formation and prevent the propertied oligarchies that had destroyed the ancient republics by ignoring the rights of persons. After Santa Clara, I suggested, the rights of persons and the rights of property couldn’t be distinguished because the Supreme Court had designated corporations persons whose property was protected by the substantive due process of the 14th Amendment. 

Gingrich and Romney: Right and Wrong on Space Travel

by Jonathan Coopersmith

When Newt Gingrich proclaimed that the United States should establish a base on the moon, he was right: We need a major inspirational goal for space exploration. When Mitt Romney attacked Gingrich's proposal as failing the rational business test, he was right, too: The cost would be enormous. But what neither presidential candidate discussed were the reasons why space travel is so costly or how those costs might be reduced.  The question both men should have asked was, "Why, after 55 years of launching rockets, does it still cost so much to reach orbit?" Launching a satellite today costs approximately $10,000 a pound, or tens of millions for a heavy satellite. That high cost, not bureaucratic timidity, is why fewer than 600 people—the number of passengers on one Airbus 380—have orbited the earth since 1961. Space travel cannot become cheap until the age of rocketry is replaced by an age of new propulsion technology—and only government investment can make that happen.    

Pity the Poor Billionaire: Interview with Thomas Frank

by David Austin Walsh

Thomas Frank is one of the Left's most strident and articulate voices—the New York Times called him "the thinking person's Michael Moore." A journalist by vocation (he co-founded The Baffler in 1988, wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal from 2008-2010, and currently writes a monthly colum for Harper's Magazine), and historian by training (he earned his PhD in history from the University of Chicago in 1994), Frank has become a prolific writer of social and cultural history and criticism. His 2004 book What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America was on the New York Times bestseller list for eighteen weeks and earned him international acclaim.

Conservative Populism has Burned the GOP Before

by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

Flat taxes, income tax moratoriums, and budget cuts have been proving themselves the least scintillating parts of the current Republican presidential primary, a contest strewn with revelations about sexual impropriety, open marriage, and religious zeal.

Obama's No FDR, But He's Making the Case for a "New" New Deal

by Ira Chernus

No matter who the Republicans nominate to run against Barack Obama, it seems clear that we’ll have a kind of presidential contest we haven’t seen in more than seventy-five years: a referendum on the government’s proper role in economic life. the mass media are already framing it as a contest between the super-rich and the rest of us. If the GOP picks Mitt Romney, as seems most likely, the candidates themselves will offer us a choice between heart and soul.Romney announces himself as the savior of “the soul of America ... a free and prosperous land of opportunity,” where everyone can pursue their own individual prosperity to the hilt, unfettered by higher taxes and “job-killing regulations.” Government serves best, he argues, when it gets out of the way so that innovators and entrepreneurs can fulfill the nation’s economic potential.

Please Keep Your Government Hands On My University

by Christopher P. Loss

In the midst of the national shouting match over healthcare reform three years ago, an irate South Carolinian famously stood up and warned then-Representative Robert Inglis (R-SC) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare!” Would it be a surprise to anyone if the next angry citizen to confront her representative was a professor demanding that the federal government keep its hands off her university? It’s already happening. Academic leaders’ chilly response to President Obama’s recent call to clamp down on higher education—to link student aid to costs and outcomes—has been loud and clear: Keep your government hands away!

How to Think About Corporate Personhood

by James Livingston

In Zuccotti Park on October 5, 2011, I saw a young woman holding a scrawled cardboard sign that read: “I’ll believe corporations are persons when Texas executes one.” It made me literally laugh out loud, so I took a picture of it. Six weeks later, November 17, on the night of the second big Occupy march to and from Foley Square, you could see those words everywhere you looked, now neatly stenciled and mass produced, a sign of the times.

Why Conservatives Never Cry Voter Fraud Against One of Their Own

by Timothy Stanley

Rick Santorum is turning out to be one of the Republican Party’s great coulda-shoulda-beens. He was denied the Iowa caucus—and all its precious momentum—by bad math. On January 4, Mitt Romney was declared the winner by just 8 votes. Over the next two weeks, rumors trickled out of Iowa of ballots being miscounted and entire precincts disappearing off the electoral map. On January 19, local GOP officials adjusted the results and pronounced Santorum the winner, by 34 votes.

Mitt's Verbal Gaffes Shows That When It Comes to Politics, He's Not His Father's Son

by Ian C. Friedman

Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, lived an extraordinary American life. Born in Mexico in 1907—the grandson of a Mormon who fled the anti-polygamy laws in the United States during the 1880s—he spent a humble childhood in Texas, Idaho, and Utah before improbably rising to become the successful CEO of an automobile company.Romney then turned his attention to politics, winning the governorship as a Republican in the traditionally Democratic state of Michigan three consecutive times. He was a frontrunner for the 1968 GOP presidential nomination when he uttered a quote explaining his opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War that famously undid his fledgling campaign. But placing this quote in context redeems George Romney and contrasting his words those of his son is illuminating. And the light it casts is not kind to the son.

How A Crackpot Theory of Education Reform Became National Policy

by Mark Naison

Future historians are likely to tell the following story: some time during the early twenty-first century, a cross-section of the American elite began to panic. They looked at the growing chasm between the rich and poor, the huge size of the nation’s prison population, and the growing racial and socieconomic gulf in education, and decided something dramatic had to be done to remedy these problems.But instead of critically examining how these trends reflected twenty years of regressive taxation, a futile “war on drugs,” the deregulation of the financial industry, the breaking of unions and the movement of American companies abroad, America’s leaders decided the primary source of economic inequality could be found in failing schools, bad teachers, and powerful teachers unions.

Memo from Red-State America: We're Not Stupid!

by Robert Wuthnow

If Newt Gingrich were to win the 2012 Republican nomination for president, historians would argue that January 19 was the turning point. That was the evening when CNN’s John King asked him to comment on stories about his marital infidelities. Gingrich shot back, “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.” The audience roared with applause, chanting “Newt, Newt, Newt.” Two days later, Gingrich won the South Carolina primary by a wide margin.Why did the audience respond so explosively? Is it just that people in red states hate the “liberal media” that much?Maybe. But why?Kansas history provides some interesting clues. Kansas has voted Republican over a longer period and by wider margins than any other state. If Gingrich were to deliver a similar retort in Kansas, I suspect the response would be the same.

No, Newt, the U.S. Cannot Make the Moon a State. That's Illegal Under International Law.

by Daniel S. Margolies

Leaving aside the technological challenges, fiscal unreality, and sheer oddity of Newt Gingrich’s proposal to build a “permanent base on the moon” by the end of his theoretical second term, historians might wonder: would such an American moon base or colony even be legal to construct under international law? Is Gingrich’s call for “putting a marker down” on the moon merely futuristic neo-colonialism or would such an act demand novel extralegal approaches to the projection of American power?  

A Brief History Of Debt

by Louis Hyman

If you listen to our grandparents, in the old days nobody ever borrowed. Angelic models of virtue, they bought only what they could afford. The Great Depression had instilled values in them that these young people today just do not have. On some level, older Americans consider all this borrowing to be a moral failure without precedent.