Raise your hand if you think Santorum is truly sincere in his praise for Romney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I get how politics works, and so I get that what you say during a campaign may not be what you really mean, or that you might not really mean anything, that it may all be situational, and so I get that what, say, Romney's former opponents are saying about him how is vastly different, if not the exact opposite, of what they said back during the heat of the primaries, but this is just ridiculous:

One-time GOP presidential contender and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum on Saturday told conservative voters that Mitt Romney's message on social issues was "solid," vouching for his one-time rival before a gathering of social conservative voters.

"I've talked to Gov. Romney, and I have no doubt, and I mean this in all sincerity, I have no doubt he understands the centrality of family. He understands the importance of family for our culture, for our economy, and for our future," Santorum said at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., according to media reports.

Really? No doubt? All sincerity? Please.

This is just the sort of bullshit you expect from any politican, perhaps, but it always seems even more extreme in its Republican form, given that Republicans always seem to fall into jackbooted lockstep behind their leaders, a typical right-wing thing to do, even with less-than-desirable leaders like Mitt, and it shows that Santorum is more partisan than ideologue, a man more of party than of principle, which those paying attention always knew, what with his long career in Republican politics, but which during the primaries was lost when he was spinning himself, with the media playing right along, as a man of great moral conviction.

Don't get me wrong, I do think Santorum is generally consistent, at least these days, now that he's out of office, in his ideological, theocratic extremism, but that just means this pro-Romney cheerleading is all the more transparent. It's all for show -- and it's all about the lesser of evils.

Sure he wants Romney, as he would have any Republican, to beat Obama, but that doesn't mean he likes Romney. Indeed, I suspect he was being more honest when he was slamming Romney, just as Newt and the others were, for being, to put it mildly, insufficiently conservative and not at all the right person to lead the party against Obama.

And -- think back -- he slammed him hard, suggesting even that Romney was really no different than Obama.

Unless Santorum is completely shameless, in a Romney sort of way, there's no way he meant what he said about Romney being "solid" on social issues. Well, unless "solid" means "yeah, okay, I guess he's better than the alternative, and, yeah, I guess I have to say something positive about our guy because I want to have a future in conservative politics and don't want to be seen as disloyal."

And it's pretty clear that's how he meant it.