The Santorum deal has me steamed because it proves that Republicans haven’t yet figured out how to make their points in ways that don’t draw fire from everyone in the center and left, uniting them against us. It also proves we can’t win big without immediately squandering that win on something trivial. Yes, trivial. The whole thing is trivial. Win the war, drag your party down because you let some AP hack trap you. Santorum may have ruined his political career over a law that, in the grand scheme of things, doesn’t matter much. It’s hardly enforced, and doesn’t stop anyone from doing anything. It’s just there, like laws about buggy whips and Helen Thomas. It’s not really worth the political capital being invested to save it, for the simple reason that it has zero effect on behavior and because it’s utterly unenforcable. Unless you really do want police in every bedroom, which no one does.
According to my email, it’s not quite “no one.” I like the Helen Thomas line, though. And this issue is hot enough to get Andrew Sullivan to do some rare Friday-night blogging. That alone makes it non-trivial, doesn’t it?