After bestowing on Rick Santorum a host of kudos ("knowledgeable, articulate, experienced"), Charles Krauthammer, nevertheless, hammers him where it hurts.
His fundamental problem is ideological: He’s a deeply committed social conservative in a year when the country is obsessed with the economy and when conservatism is obsessed with limited government. Republicans, after all, swept the 2010 election on economic concerns and opposition to big government. The Tea Party revolution was not about gay marriage.
Emphasis my own; argument my own, too. He's not a natural fit, whatsoever, with the tea party.
In fact, the main tea party thing going for him is that he's not Romney. Other than that, there's very little of Santorum that appeals very much to the tea party.
Krauthammer moves on.
He is no austere limited-government constitutionalist. He participated in George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism, which largely made peace with big government. Santorum, for example, defends earmarks and supported No Child Left Behind and the Medicare prescription drug benefit. It’s a perfectly defensible philosophy — but now he’ll be called upon to actually defend it.
But here's the problem for Mitt -- it's dangerous for him to go after Santorum, if only because he'd have to move Right on a lot of controversial things to go negative.
Go ahead and attack Santorum for supporting the prescription drug benefit, but the DNC will come after you hard for it, and it doesn't sound great for a general election.
Santorum's threat to Mitt isn't electoral; it's ideological. Remember how Romney bashed Perry with immigration and consequently threatened any significant support from Hispanics in November? Same thing here.
