Conservatives Eat Their Own

With the swearing in of Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services yesterday came swearing from the social conservatives. It's time for them to grow up.

Before the 2006 election cycle, the two most prominent social conservatives in politics, without a doubt, were Senator Rick Santorum, and Senator Sam Brownback. They were publicly Catholic, vocally and articulately pro-life, anti-gay marriage, and pro-home schooling and school choice.

And, according to so many of my social conservative friends yesterday, both are pathetic sellouts that prove that mainstream electoral politics is pointless. And not because of their positions on any issue. No, it was their alliances.

You see, Rick Santorum supported his colleague Arlen Specter in 2004, now a Democrat. Sam Brownback supported his governor Kathleen Sebelius for Health and Human Services, who was confirmed yesterday with 60+ votes, as she was always, always going to be.

Both Specter and Sebelius are pro-abortion, of course. They are also both more popular politicians than Santorum and Brownback in the states they represent. Or once represented, anyway.

Seriously: does being pro-life require supporting risky primary challenges to pro-choice Republican politicians? Does it require the full support of quixotic crusades against Democratic politicians like Sebelius that will slit your throat and smile in your home state if you dare oppose them?

I think not. There's a difference between supporting a position and supporting a person. A pro-life vote is a pro-life vote; it's unambiguous. Support for a pro-choice person, though, can be justified by a pro-life person in some cases. "Better a pro-choice Republican than a pro-choice Democrat", and "Better that Sebelius be in the Obama administration than running against us in Kansas," strike me as good enough reasons.

However, for the socially conservative voters who dropped off in 2006 and 2008, Brownback and Santorum just prove that all mainstream Republican politicians are weasels, no matter what they say.

And then they wonder why Republicans aren't more vocally socially conservative.