Back in 2008 we were supposed to believe Mitt Romney’s repeated declarations that he was pro-life and a staunch defender of the God endowed family. We were supposed to accept the notion that he was a “conservative” champion of limited government and fiscal responsibility. But the true facts of his political record utterly contradict these falsehoods. Christie, Perry, Cain and Gingrich have been trotted out, endorsed by this or that supposedly “conservative” element, pundit or apologist. But in one way or another, by their own words and the true facts of their record, all stand exposed as “made men” who have been willing in some decisive way to serve the elite faction’s effort to overthrow constitutional self-government and replace it with elitist dictatorship. One has helped the effort to subvert the republic’s moral foundations; another has openly or silently abetted the attack on its constitutional integrity; another has gone along with the elitist takeover of education; or its subversion of the people’s political and territorial sovereignty; or its suffocation of the economic freedom and consequent material strength of the nation. And finally, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum ironically epitomize the depth of the elite faction’s subversion of the republic’s principles, and its substitution of leaders committed to that subversion in place of those, like America’s founders, determined to articulate, maintain and perpetuate them.

Ron Paul is touted by his supporters as a strong, principled defender of the U.S. Constitution. But the states’ rights doctrine he articulates is not based on the principle of residual sovereignty exemplified by the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment. It is based instead on a libertarian ideology that ignores the God revering premises of constitutional self-government. This ideology falsely conflates decent liberty with licentious individual freedom. It self-destructively confuses Constitutional government based on the sovereign right of the people, with Confederate government based on a specious notion of States’ “rights” which illogically includes the right to do wrong. It derives these specious rights by asserting at the State level an unlimited “popular sovereignty” that casts aside the republican idea of government limited by respect for God-endowed unalienable right. These are the “principles” that were advocated by Stephen Douglass, the fellow traveler of the pro-slavery forces, who defeated Abraham Lincoln’s bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Illinois; and by John C. Calhoun, the prolific apologist for slavery and the southern Confederacy; and by some of the anti-Federalists (people who campaigned against ratifying what became the U.S. Constitution.)

In many respects Rick Santorum’s candidacy is the most beguiling and instructive of the campaigns sanctioned by the GOP’s elite faction leadership.  He has without doubt spoken and acted as one of the most consistent advocates of the unalienable right to life in American politics. But he is also a prime example of the reason Christ admonished his followers to look beyond the words, and even beyond the actions, of would-be leaders in order to consider the fruit they bear. In politics that fruit includes the people legitimized and lifted up by someone’s actions.

Rick Santorum scored what he himself acknowledges to have been a miraculous victory when he first won a term as U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. His victory was the fruit of the faithful prayers and heartfelt work of grassroots supporters determined to raise to office someone they trusted to respect God’s endowment of right, beginning with the unalienable right to life. For a while, in word and deed, it seemed that Rick Santorum justified their God-revering trust.

But while they persisted in their effort to add good fruit to the political harvest, Senator Santorum chose instead to pick bad fruit and lift it up so as to appease the elitist faction’s agenda for power. It was bad enough that he touted openly “pro-choice” leaders like Christie Todd Whitman. But by endorsing Arlen Specter’s primary bid for re-election, Senator Santorum directly contravened the efforts of the very people through whose good faith God had fashioned his own Senate win. He put the calculations of political ambition above respect for hearts moved by simple obedience to God’s intention. In consequence he was favored with strong financial support by the money and media barons of the GOP wing of the elitist faction. Despite their largesse he went down to defeat. He had betrayed his faithful supporters. The impaired enthusiasm that resulted from this demoralizing betrayal deprived him of the level of support he needed from his God-revering constituents.

This was not just another political defeat. It signified the hard fact of what the GOP has become. Thanks to the dominance of an elitist leadership that rejects the God-revering principles of the Declaration, the Party’s culture of cynical ‘New Deal’ political opportunism creates an environment in which good political fruit, nourished by the sustenance of God-revering hearts, is damaged. This impairs both the leadership and the moral courage of the movement by which God is seeking to restore America’s last, best hope.

Perhaps Senator Santorum has repented of his surrender to the cynical realities of elitist GOP politics. Perhaps on account of that repentance he can be trusted not to abuse the powers of the Presidency to make new deals that empower and consolidate the tyranny of self-worshiping elitists. Perhaps he will not again advance people who betray the God revering Declaration principles that motivate his core constituents.

But in the end the moral of Senator Santorum’s story has less to do with him than with the GOP’s embrace of the elitist faction’s deeply corrupting paradigm for politics. Whatever Rick Santorum hopes to achieve, the hard fact is that he is more than likely being set up so that his eventual endorsement of the chosen GOP nominee will perfume Mitt Romney or some other Declaration rejecting, crypto-socialist,elitist faction toy. Given his past penchant for such endorsements, we can be morally certain that he will not hesitate to do so again. Perhaps he will play Sarah Palin to Romney’s John McCain. If so, the ultimate result will be that those who support him are again played for fools. They will comfort themselves with the excuse that at least Obama is gone. Yet like the tragic figures in the ancient plays, these well-meaning partisans of liberty will have helped the nation vomit out the Obama faction’s bitter tasting poison. But as they do so they will administer, in sugar coated form, the hemlock draft meant to put liberty down for good.  The more dangerous poison is the one falsely labeled as a remedy for illness.