Now that Rick Santorum is finally having his turn at a poll surge, I guess we should talk about him, at least for a few minutes. Alas, I think this assessment of him as a "big government conservative" is correct:
A list of the government interventions that Santorum endorses includes national service, promotion of prison ministries, “individual development accounts,” publicly financed trust funds for children, community-investment incentives, strengthened obscenity enforcement, covenant marriage, assorted tax breaks, economic literacy programs in “every school in America” (his italics), and more. Lots more.
From both his words and his actual governing record, Santorum seems very strong as a social conservative but weak as an economic conservative. That's sort of backwards from what I'm looking for. It's also noted at the link that Santorum explicitly rejects "the whole idea of personal autonomy" and the "idea that people should be left alone." Not cool.
