Jennifer Rubin is alarmed that Rick Santorum is getting so much traction in the Republican primaries. She says that he’s not conservative, but a reactionary. To prove her case, she quotes Rick Santorum explaining the precise doctrine of the Catholic Church on birth control and conjugal love. If there is a problem with Santorum, it’s not that he’s confused about the teachings of the Church. His problem is that he wants to impose those teachings on all of us through the American legal system.

Most Catholics don’t follow the teachings of the Church on birth control and conjugal love, but I don’t know if you want to go around calling those who do ‘reactionaries’ or denying them their right to call themselves ‘conservatives.’ In any case, I’d think a Washington Post columnist might want to be a little more careful to distinguish Santorum’s beliefs from his political platform. She makes an effort, but this doesn’t quite get it done, in my opinion:

Santorum is reactionary in his discomfort with women working outside the home (other than his own working mother, presumably), who he claims were bamboozled by greed or “radical feminists” into seeking fulfillment and equality in the workplace. He is reactionary in declaring that women in the military are fit only to “fly small planes,” but not take on the duties they have been assuming under battlefield conditions for years. He is reactionary in telling women (married ones, even!) that contraception is harmful to them.

Unlike a think tanker or pundit who wants to elucidate the adverse impact of social trends, he is running for president where, through policy and the bully pulpit, he intends to wage war on post-1960 America.

I’d probably be more sympathetic to Rubin’s concerns if I thought there was a whiff of difference between Santorum’s social conservatism and the rest of the party’s. Okay, there’s a pontifical scent to Santorum that doesn’t hover around the ravings of Michele Bachmann or Tom Coburn, but their positions are largely the same. The only movement conservative I see who doesn’t want to roll everything back to 1960 is Ron Paul, who wants to roll things back to 1912.