The Timing of Santorum's Surge

Now before anybody gets stroppy about my being political, I'm not supporting any body publicly for president, but as a Catholic priest, and a former Evangelical it is pretty interesting to observe the timing of Rick Santorum's surge, so I'm making religious observations on a Catholic who's running for President.



It's like he was waiting in the wings. The debates were all about the economy and foreign policy. Those were the big topics right? Santorum was just this anti abortion, home schooling, right wing guy who was sticking up for family values. He was a quaint hold over from a bygone age perhaps. Someone to be respected and ignored.



So the other fellows and the press start scrapping and he rises above it. He's not worth their notice. Then people seem to get tired of the scrapping and Santorum is waiting there to be noticed, and noticed he is.



Just at the same time he gets a huge boost from the social issues end of things. Komen de-funds Planned Parenthood. PP jumps on them and bullies them into retraction. The same week the Bishops rise up in an astounding surge of national leadership over the question of religious freedom. It's like the issues were tailor made for Santorum. Romney can't say much about it because his own healthcare plan provided similar cover. Gingrich can't talk much about family values with his history of philandering.



Furthermore, Santorum has been pretty smart. He's the only one who can play the 'Aw shucks, I'm just an ordinary boy from Main Street USA" card. People underestimate how powerful this is in the American imagination. Americans love the plain folks appeal. Virtually every President in modern times, apart from JFK and the first Bush, has presented his personal story in this way.



Combined with this, he is effectively uniting two formerly divided voting blocs: Evangelical Christians and blue collar Catholics. He is a unique mix--a guy with blue collar Catholic roots who knows and understands Evangelicals. If he doesn't claim the title "Evangelical Catholic" he could. 



Santorum (whether he knows it or not) is riding a wave of some historic shifts in American Christianity. Evangelical Protestants have been historically distrustful of Catholics. For cultural and theological reasons Catholics and Protestants were worlds apart. However, for the last forty years the ecumenical movement has broken down some of the barriers. For the last ten years Evangelicals and Catholics have worked together, talked to each other and united on social issues. Evangelicals have come to accept Catholics as allies not enemies as they both stand against the common enemy--creeping atheistic secularism.



At the same time the Catholic Church has changed. American Catholicism used to be cultural Catholicism. For generations the Italians and Irish and Polish Catholics in the Northeastern cities were part of the establishment. They had hospitals and schools and convents and parishes and colleges. Their Bishops lived in grand residences in the suburbs and dined with the rich and powerful.



Evangelicals have always had a "persecuted minority" mentality--even when they weren't the persecuted minority. Now, for various reasons, the old cultural Catholic hierarchy is fading away. A new kind of Catholicism is emerging--what some call the JPII generation. These are not so much cultural Catholics as committed Catholics. They are fewer in number, but they are vibrant in their faith and don't care much for the old establishment. They're ready to embrace the "persecuted minority" identity with a certain astringent zeal.



As such they are suddenly perfect bedfellows with the Evangelicals. Santorum's surge can be put down to his success in appealing to both, formerly divided groups. He is capable of bringing together the old blue collar Catholics and the new Catholics and the Evangelicals. If he can pull that off--and so bring along the Catholic swing vote in the big swing states--and carry with him the Evangelical heartland of the midwest and South--he could not only win the nomination, but the White House.