United Liberty

If you missed the debate on CNN last night in Arizona, count yourself lucky. It was miserable. I only watched it because I discovered—much to my chagrin—that a recently purchased WiMAX adapter allowed me to stream video directly off the web at a framerate that wouldn’t make my brain explode. (It instead left that job up to the candidates.)

If you were a conservative turning in to your first presidential debate, you may have been surprised. Up on stage was one Rick Santorum, former senator from Pennsylvania, who in a number of statements said that he voted against spending and was dead set against the big government philosophy of Barack Obama…only to then say that he wanted to use the power of the government to force his own view of family life on people, and that he was for the big government philosophy of Barack Obama.

Just, you know, for his things. Riiight.

If you were still unswayed by the arguments by myself or Kevin or anyone else that Santorum was not a friend to libertarians or even fiscal conservatives, well, Santorum should have swayed you tonight. Let us focus on his whopper of a quote during one of his numerous tirades against Mitt Romney:

[C]ongress has a role of allocating resources when they think the administration has it wrong.

Newsflash, Santorum: Neither Congress nor the administration has the role of allocating resources. We have this thing called the “free market” that does that. Now, one could say that I was misconstruing Santorum’s argument, because he was only talking about resources that were justly appropriated for government use (though that is a whole Pandora’s box right there.) But as Alex Roarty over at the National Journal points out, the whole thing came in over a discussion on earmarks, something that Santorum has defended.

That’s right: the guy claiming the conservative mantle openly defended the use of earmarks, or the practice of Senators and Congresscritters spending even more of your taxpayer dollars for some side project or interest of theirs, then fitting it in and attaching it to a bill.

So the way to check government power, according to Santorum, is…to use more government power.

He also wants the government to somehow “fix” children being born out of wedlock, and all the ills of society. He argued that

We can have limited government, lower tax — we hear this all the time, cut spending, limit the government, everything will be fine. No, everything’s not going to be fine.

There are bigger problems at stake in America. And someone has got to go out there — I will — and talk about the things.

So wait a minute—there are more important problems right now than an overreaching federal government, than an unbalanced budget, than over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities, than a crushing debt burden that will turn us into Greece? Really?

Nearly every one of these problems comes from government. Children being born out of wedlock? Government tax breaks for children (and in many cases, welfare payments for children.) Kids dropping out of school and becoming criminals? A drug war that glorifies the life of gangsters in pop culture (while costing $6 billion a year and an untold number of ruined lives and destroyed civil liberties.) Of course just cutting spending isn’t going to lead us to the Promised Land, Mr. Senator—but holy cow, a reduced government will put us much farther on the road to a healthy society than any of your proposals.

Santorum may have used the term “limited government” and might have even said the word “liberty” in the middle of the debate, but make no mistake: this guy is not for limited government whatsoever. He just wants government to focus on things he wants. In that respect, Rick Santorum is no better than Barack Obama.