RUSH: Santorum showed up yesterday on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer. And, folks, it was like Bob Schieffer, who’s, what, 90? Ninety-two? Bob Schieffer talking to Rick Santorum actually appeared as though Schieffer thought Santorum was from Mars. It was a space alien. What he thought, the things he had said, Schieffer could not believe that there was a human being alive on this planet who could think that way, who believed these things. He was shocked. He was stunned. And it goes to show the Republican establishment, clearly the Democrat Party establishment, do not have the slightest ability to relate to even half the country, probably more. They don’t understand us, don’t know us, have mischaracterized us and have lived under these mischaracterizations for so long now that they have just assumed that it’s all true. A guy like Santorum comes along who is simply a devout Catholic, and he’s nothing other than that, may as well be a three-eyed monster.

This Marvin Winans, the pastor at the church of the Whitney Houston funeral, to these guys he probably sounded as scary as Santorum sounds to them. I mentioned James Taranto. Best of the Web today has feature called Weekend Interview, and he talked to a guy named Jeff Bell, who is a well-known and accomplished, achieved social commentator. “Social Issues and the Santorum Surge,” is the title of the piece. Now, I can’t share the whole thing with you because it prints out to over four pages. It starts this way.

“If you’re a Republican in New York or another big city, you may be anxious or even terrified at the prospect that Rick Santorum, the supposedly unelectable social conservative, may win the GOP presidential nomination. Jeffrey Bell would like to set your mind at ease. Social conservatism, Mr. Bell argues in his forthcoming book, ‘The Case for Polarized Politics’ –” He points out, as we have on this program — before I read this to you I’m gonna remind you of this story. It’s the early nineties and I’m a guest at one of these dinner parties out in the Hamptons, and after dinner out on the deck of the host’s home, it’s all Republicans, and many of them huge donors, this was before the ’92 campaign began. And one of these donors comes up to me, pokes me in the chest, “What are you gonna do about the Christians?”

I’m totally taken aback. I’m still very young. I’ve only been doing the radio program for four years, and I’m, frankly, a little bit intimidated being in this group of people in the first place. “What are you gonna do about the Christians?”

“What do you mean what am I gonna do?”

“Well, hell, they’re embarrassing us, man. We’re not gonna win anything with ’em. This abortion stuff, I’m telling you, gonna kill the party. We’re never gonna get women to vote for us, the independents, you can kiss ’em good-bye. And they listen to you.”

I said, “Well, they’re only 24 million votes. Do you realize you wouldn’t have been winning anything, from Reagan on, if it weren’t for those people?”

“We don’t need ’em, we don’t need ’em. They’re gonna end up destroying the party.”

So Mr. Bell, Jeffrey Bell, The Case for Polarized Politics, argues in this book that social conservatism “has a winning track record for the GOP. ‘Social issues were nonexistent in the period 1932 to 1964,’ he observes. ‘The Republican Party won two presidential elections out of nine, and they had the Congress for all of four years in that entire period,'” ’32 to ’64. Basically 30-some-odd years. “When social issues came into the mix — I would date it from the 1968 election . . . the Republican Party won seven out of 11 presidential elections.” Another pull quote from Taranto’s piece. “In Mr. Bell’s telling, social conservatism is both relatively new and uniquely American, and it is a response to aggression, not an initiation of it.” And he’s exactly right.

“The left has had ‘its center of gravity in social issues’ since the French Revolution, he says. ‘Yes, the left at that time, with people like Robespierre, was interested in overthrowing the monarchy and the French aristocracy. But they were even more vehemently in favor of bringing down institutions like the family and organized religion. In that regard, the left has never changed. . . . I think we’ve had a good illustration of it in the last month or so.'” This is Mr. Bell. It goes all the way back to the French revolution. The left is vehemently in favor of bringing down institutions like the family and organized religion, and they’re doing it.

One other pull quote. “American social conservatism, Mr. Bell says, began in response to the sexual revolution, which since the 1960s has been ‘the biggest agenda item and the biggest success story of the left.’ That was true in Western Europe and Japan too, but only in America did a socially conservative opposition arise,” and its party win elections.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I mentioned it last week. Look around, folks, at the abysmal state of our culture. How on earth could reasonable people not win any debate on social issues? The left is intent on destroying every institution out there except for the state, every one of them.

Related Links
Wall Street Journal: Social Issues and the Santorum Surge 

        

                                

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