Time to Send for Santorum: Could the Candidate Left in the Field be Chosen?

There is only one who has been left in the field, given little or no chance by the media elites, Rick Santorum

One by one, the candidates in this Republican Presidential primary process have been presented to be figuratively "anointed" to oppose the President in the 2012 campaign. One by one their once soaring poll numbers quickly descended. There is one who has been left in the field, given little or no chance by the media elites, Rick Santorum. It is time to send for Santorum. He is correct "Social issues are central to every issue we deal with in America. Unless we get the moral issues right, we will never get the economic and foreign policy issues right."

P>DES MOINES, IA (Catholic Online) - After the Republican Candidates Presidential Forum hosted by former Governor Mike Huckabee on December 3, 2011 I wrote an article asking whether there could be a "Santorum Surprise" at the January 3d Iowa Caucus? Now, the question is being asked by more than just me. 

Rick Santorum has worked harder on the ground in Iowa than any of the candidates and his "little engine that could" campaign I wrote about back in September is gaining steam, whether the professional pundits, on the left and the right, recognize it or not.

At the Huckabee Republican Presidential Candidate forum held on December 3, 2011, he was the last to give a concluding comment. Rick Santorum refuses to separate the moral issues from all of the other issues. He knows they are foundational to America, which he rightly calls a moral enterprise:

"Everyone says we need a truce on social issues that we need to focus on jobs and the economy.  But what is at the heart of this country is that America is a moral enterprise and we are sick at the heart of our country - when we see millions of children being aborted and marriage not being defended.  A truce is not a truce, it is surrender.  I will not surrender; I will fight and defend America."

This past week, Santorum spoke before the debut of the documentary film "The Gift of Life", along with Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry.  In his remarks, Rick Santorum once again showed this moral consistency. He spoke of the connection between big government and the breakdown of the first government, the family:

"(I)f family and moral values break down, government gets bigger and bigger. Social issues are central to every issue we deal with in America. Unless we get the moral issues right, we will never get the economic and foreign policy issues right."

Reiterating his unwillingness to compromise on the "social issues" and only address economic issues he sounded the theme of his campaign -  they are connected.  He again rejected the calls to enter into a "truce" on social issues saying, "It is surrender, not a truce. Under a Santorum presidency, there will be no surrender."
 
The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued an instruction back in 2002 entitled a "Doctrinal Note on some questions regarding the Participation of Catholics in Political Life." It called upon Catholics to be "morally coherent" in the exercise of their citizenship and in public office. Many Catholics who hold public office in the United States have hidden moral incoherence behind what I call the "Kennedy Mistake."

Former Senator Rick Santorum is one Catholic candidate who actually understands this call to moral coherence. The speech he gave in Houston on Thursday, September 9, 2010 entitled "Charge to Revive the Role of Faith in the Public Square" exposed the Kennedy Mistake and offered a different model for Catholics and political participation. Santorum is not embarrassed to speak of morality because he knows that it forms the core of a truly free society.

We are living under what Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, rightly called a "Dictatorship of Relativism."  When there is a wholesale effort to deny the existence of anything objectively true, any objective moral values, which can be known by all and form the basis of our common life, then there is no real freedom. Instead, we teeter on the brink of anarchy. Senator Rick Santorum offers a corrective which is long overdue. He does so with courage and clarity.

Santorum showed this courage when he refused to back down in the face of blistering attacks against him for a free flowing and insightful interview he gave in January of 2011 to CNS news. The perpetrators of those attacks tried to take his accurate exposition of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s references to the Natural Law in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and use them against Santorum.

In that letter Dr. King cited the Catholic Natural Law tradition to argue the Natural Law as the basis of fundamental human rights. I wrote back then - and reassert now - that Dr. King would have agreed with Senator Santorum.

The Senator responded to the attacks against him with these words, "For decades certain human beings were wrongly treated as property and denied liberty in America because they were not considered persons under the Constitution.

"Today other human beings, the unborn of all races, are also wrongly treated as property and denied the right to life for the same reason; because they are not considered persons under the constitution. I am disappointed that President Obama, who rightfully fights for civil rights, refuses to recognize the civil rights of the unborn in this country."

Santorum's muscular moral message is expressed on a "No Surrender Moneybomb Appeal" which now appears on his campaign web site: "The day we stop fighting for the unborn child, or fighting to protect the sanctity of marriage, expel God from the public square, or decide we will no longer enforce the laws of our land, is the day we surrender all our founding fathers created."

"I believe what makes America exceptional is not just our economic potential or our remarkable innovation, but the fact that we are a moral enterprise. As President, I will protect America's moral foundation, empower American families and build America's economic freedom. And I won't compromise on my values to do it."

Rick Santorum reminds me of the biblical story of David and Goliath.  David was the youngest of the sons of Jesse. He was finally chosen to lead Israel and the story is recorded in the Old Testament. (1 Samuel 16):

"In the same way Jesse presented seven sons before Samuel, but Samuel said to Jesse, "The LORD has not chosen any one of these." Then Samuel asked Jesse, "Are these all the sons you have?" Jesse replied, "There is still the youngest, but he is tending the sheep." Samuel said to Jesse, "Send for him; we will not sit down to eat until he arrives here."

"Jesse had the young man brought to them. He was ruddy, a youth with beautiful eyes, and good looking. The LORD said: There-anoint him, for this is the one! Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand, anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and from that day on, the spirit of the LORD rushed upon David."

One by one, the candidates in this Republican Presidential primary process have been presented as the ones to be figuratively "anointed" to oppose the President in the 2012 campaign. However, one by one their once soaring poll numbers quickly descended. There is only one who has been left in the field, given little or no chance by the media elites, Rick Santorum. It is time to send for Santorum.

Could the candidate left in the field be the one who is chosen? 

My favorite story concerning David was his defeat of Goliath, the Philistine giant who evoked such fear in Israel. David was unafraid. He gathered five smooth stones from the brook for his sling. However, it only took one stone in the hands of this man of courage to slay Goliath. Goliath has become symbolic since that great showdown. The term is used frequently to refer to an unlikely match up.

I use it deliberately. The Goliath of our day is what Blessed John Paul II rightly labeled the "Culture of death". This mindset views the human person as an object to be used rather than a gift to be received. It results in a full array of evils, including what the late Pope called "the cutting edge' of the culture of death, abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy.

There is no candidate more clear, courageous, eager and ready to slay that modern day Goliath than Rick Santorum. His position on all of the issues is informed by his uncompromising view of the dignity of every human life from conception throughout all of life - up to and including a natural death. In addition his profound respect for marriage and the family and society founded upon it is equally clear and informs his small government philosophy. He properly views the family as the first government.

Among his responses to the questions posed to him in the December 3, 2011 Huckabee Presidential forum he made these comments- "I support a Personhood Amendment to our Constitution to ban abortion, and that certainly involves the states through ratification.  I have always been a supporter of uniform laws on values that undergird the family.  That's why I supported the Federal Marriage Amendment - you cannot have 50 different marriage laws.  And you cannot have 50 different abortion laws."

"The President has an obligation to defend the laws of this country, and the Defense of Marriage Act passed overwhelmingly.  When a law is challenged it is the obligation of the President to defend it...  I would do everything to go around the courts if they struck down DOMA, and I've already done it.  Look at the Partial Birth Abortion Ban.  The Supreme Court called it unconstitutional, so we passed an almost identical bill, where the first two sections of the bill told the Court why they were wrong, and five years later the Court ruled that it was constitutional." 

Back on Saturday April 9, 2011 in Greenville County, South Carolina, Santorum signaled where he was headed in his campaign - and he has done exactly what he said. He was the last to speak to a small gathering of Republicans and said, "We have people talking in our party that we need to go away from the moral issues.  America, ladies and gentlemen, is a moral enterprise at its core." 

In 1947, C.S. Lewis addressed the decline of his beloved Britain in "The Abolition of man: How Education Develops Man's Sense of Morality."  He warned of the relativist trends in the British educational system and reasserted the timeless moral truths of Christianity.  Lewis called for a return to the classical Christian vision of the human person and the cultivation of virtues as the path to true human flourishing and freedom. 

Lewis defined what he called "the chest" in this work as the "higher emotions organized by trained habit into stable sentiments or character."  He wrote that without this "chest", men and women devolve into self idolatry losing their human dignity and true freedom. They become slaves to disordered appetites.

The West is declining, just as Lewis warned. With its decline we face the eclipse of true freedom. Lewis' words in this book are timely: "And all the time - such is the tragicomedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more 'drive,' or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or 'creativity.'

"In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."

Rick Santorum is a man with a chest. He is a man of courage, substance, conviction, and competence. No matter how hard the media attempted to shut out coverage of his campaign, they did not succeed. No matter how often the Republican establishment tried to dismiss his chances, he continued on. No matter how often the political left ridiculed his character and his chances, he stayed steady.

It is time to send for Santorum.

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