Santorum Time?

It appears after his caucus sweep last week, Senator Rick Santorum is finally getting what he wanted all along - a two man race against Mitt Romney.

Santorum has surged, tying Mitt Romany in the Gallup polls and Pew shows Santorum actually beating him in Michigan.

Also helping to move Senator Santorum into a solid position was a successful appearance at CPAC, as opposed to Governor Romney awkward characterization of himself as a 'severe conservative.'

As I mentioned a long time ago, Rick Santorum is a likeable man of high character who is also a big government style conservative, and one whose insistence on pushing social conservative issues is going to hurt him badly with the electorate:

One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea … Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay … contraception’s okay.”

It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal … but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it—and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong—but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.

Again, I know most presidents don’t talk about those things, and maybe people don’t want us to talk about those things, but I think it’s important that you are who you are. I’m not running for preacher. I’m not running for pastor, but these are important public policy issues.

No, senator,these are private matters, not public policy issues. The idea is to get government off our backs and out of our lives to the degree possible, not to bring them into our bedrooms. There's far too much of that already.

I admit to being a bit dispirited over the events of the last few weeks. Given how both front runners have handled themselves, I almost think that the movers and shakers in the GOP have already conceded this election and are setting their sights on 2016. I hope I'm wrong.

Given that the budget for the first two years of the next president's term has already been spent and squandered, their thinking just might be to let President Obama fully inherit and own the abysmal mess he has made for us all rather than saddling a Republican president with it.

The problem there is that Supreme Court justices go on for a long time, that I'm not certain how the country will weather four more years of misgovernment and that if the Republicans blow this election, it might just end up being their last.