Riding the Tiger

Conservative blogger David Frum weighs the cost of a Romney-Santorum battle in the GOP primary on The Daily Beast.

The Santorum candidacy pushes Republicans toward an election in which the issues are religious, cultural, and sexual, not economic. It's a candidacy that pushes the party away from metropolitan areas, away from areas of growing population, and rebases the party everywhere that is not dynamic, not growing. The concerns of hard-pressed America are deeply worthy of attention and respect. They call for responses and solutions. That's not what a Santorum candidacy offers. (As we've seen with the Santorum proposals to spur manufacturing with one single change in tax law, this is not a policy-serious campaign.) Instead, a Santorum candidacy offers an airing of resentments and grievances. Is that really where party conservatives want to go?

This is who your party has become, David, one of "resentments and grievances" that is not "policy serious." Intelligent observers like Frum, Joe Scarborough and Charles Krauthammer have all bemoaned Santorum's turning the campaign away from jobs and the economy and toward culture war issues. What did they expect? According to conservatives like Pat Robertson and Ann Coulter, the Republicans have allowed the more extreme voices in their coalition to take over. Now they will reap what they have sown.

--Ballard Burgher