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{Colorado Springs Gazette, 2012-01-11}

If you’re a social conservative, then I apologize for what you’re about to read. I’m particularly sorry if you believe in limited government. I know you’re out there, but too many of your pals still support [[Rick Santorum]]. Let’s hope his poor numbers in New Hampshire will be even worse in South Carolina. If you think Santorum wants smaller government, then you have taken leave of your senses.

Don’t take my word for it; ask the non-partisan Club for Growth. CFG’s web site calls Santorum a “big-government conservative”. That’s because Santorum voted to raise the national debt five times. He supports federal legislation that requires employees to pay union dues if they want to work. He supported “No Child Left Behind,” the largest expansion of the federal government into education in three decades. And he voted for the Medicare Prescription drug benefit, which will cost $1.2 trillion dollars in its first 10 years alone.

None of this should be particularly surprising, because plenty of social conservatives don’t favor smaller government. Quite the opposite.

A constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage? Santorum wants it. But what could be more “big government” then banning any state from recognizing same-sex marriages? Aren’t conservatives the ones who care about states’ rights? Doesn’t federalism as envisioned by the Founders include allowing the states to serve as laboratories of democracy?

Ditto with nationwide bans on abortion. Doesn’t returning abortion to the states make more sense, from a conservative, limited-government perspective, than a constitutional amendment to ban it?

Why in the world would the conservative movement waste its blood and treasure on anti-states-rights, big-government projects like these? With the economy in shambles and America producing its first generation of youth whose standard of living could be lower than their parents, don’t conservatives have better things to do? Why fiddle with cultural issues when America’s economy is in flames?

Here’s an unpleasant math fact: social conservatism + political power = big government. Just look at the federal budget from 2000 to 2006, when Republicans controlled Congress and the White House.

This was an era when social conservatives ran the show. [[Ted Haggard]] talked to the president once a week. Bush brought the federal government into the state of Florida’s legal battle over [[Terry Schiavo]] based on faith-based end-of-life issues. The attorney general of the United States anointed himself with holy oil on a regular basis. And Rick Santorum was the junior senator from Pennsylvania.

The results? Far from being the models of restraint and prudence we might expect from social conservatives, they spent like drunker sailors on leave. Federal spending increases averaged $150 billion a year. Spending as a percentage of GDP was higher than any peacetime period in history, including the heyday of the Great Society. Sure, Obama is worse, but he just gave a few more twists to the spigot that Bush gleefully opened. By most measures of fiscal conservatism, Clinton was a better president than either.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to gloss over differences between libertarians and social conservatives. I think people ought to be allowed to sleep with, fall in love with and marry whomever they please. I think an 8-month baby is a person, an 8-cell blastocyte isn’t, and regardless of what lies between, threatening women with jail can’t possibly be the right answer. I understand these are profound and perhaps irreconcilable differences between me and my social conservative friends. So be it.

But can we at least agree that the right way to promote civil society, moral behavior and public virtue is not through a still larger and more intrusive federal government? If so, then Santorum never was your guy. The only thing worse than a big-government liberal is a big-government conservative.

But don’t take my word for it. Google him and find out for yourself. Be careful, though. You may not like what you find.