Social Issues

The Republican disaster of 1992 doubtless will be closely examined. And as with most calamities, amid the wreckage are the seeds of the party's rebirth. As we sift through the ashes, we find both what went wrong and what we can do to sow a Republican renaissance. WHAT WENT WRONG The economy. As long as the nation was chugging along, people were unconcerned with whether President Bush was proposing economic improvements. But when indicators showed a recession, it became politically untenable when economic stimulants were not immediately prescribed.

By Arthur Caplan When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Boston in the late 1960s, I had little firsthand contact with minorities. But I knew a lot about one African American man who kept showing up on our new color television and in the sports pages that I devoured every day: Muhammad Ali. Due to chronic illness, Ali can't speak as eloquently as he once did. But that doesn't mean he hasn't been heard. During my youth, there was no more prominent athlete than Ali. His every deed and word - and there were plenty of them - was news.

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio - Philosophical differences between the top two Republican presidential candidates are sharpening as Rick Santorum drives harder on religious and social issues that Mitt Romney rarely discusses in detail. In recent days, Santorum has questioned the usefulness of public schools, criticized prenatal testing, and said President Obama's theology is not "based on the Bible. " On Monday, he likened Obama to politicians who spread fear about new oil-extraction technologies "so they can control your lives.

AIKEN, S.C. - Rick Santorum yesterday branded Mitt Romney a liberal, said Newt Gingrich's policy positions have been "all over the place" and laughed that Ron Paul has been running for president "since 1938," looking to capture the GOP presidential nomination even if it takes harsh words for fellow Republicans. Santorum, a longtime footnote in the GOP contest now attracting scrutiny, tried to punch his way to the top of the pack with scathing critiques of his rivals ahead of Saturday's South Carolina primary.

Robert W. Patterson is editor of the public-policy journal the Family in America When Sen. John Kerry sought to unseat President George W. Bush eight years ago, journalist Thomas Frank thought he could help the challenger from Massachusetts. In a 2004 bestseller, What's the Matter With Kansas? , Frank claimed Republicans were playing dirty tricks by leveraging cultural "wedge" issues to dupe voters in his native state from voting their economic interests - in other words, for Democrats.

GRAND JUNCTION, COLO. - Sensing a possible threat, Mitt Romney criticized Rick Santorum's time in the Senate as "not effective" because of his past support for pork-barrel spending as he worked to fend off an unexpected challenge in the next states to vote. Santorum countered that Romney, the front-runner in the GOP presidential race, "should not be our nominee" because he was "dead wrong on the most important issue of the day" when, as governor, he signed a health-care overhaul in Massachusetts.

By Jennifer Rubin TAMPA, Fla. - There are a lot of pundits here in Tampa with no real politics to report on. So I thought now would be a good time to do some explaining about the odd natives (well, natives for only a few days) whom the punditocracy has ventured out to poke and prod and report back on like so many 21st-century Margaret Meads. Much of what the observers "know" is wrong, so simply dispelling 10 of their misconceptions about Republicans should be useful: 1. The GOP has been taken over by tea party.

Focusing on wrong issues First, let me say that I couldn't care less whom a person marries. On the list of issues in this country, gay marriage is probably about No. 12,454. Yet it has been on the front page of every newspaper and the lead story on all TV news shows for the last week ("Obama backs same-sex marriage," Thursday). I can understand President Obama wanting it that way, given the $15 trillion debt, the $1.5 trillion annual deficit, the high unemployment rate, a failed strategy in the Middle East, and 50 percent of the population paying no federal income tax in an ever-expanding entitlement society.

RICHARD Mourdock, a conservative Republican who is favored to win a U.S. Senate seat in Indiana, pulled a Todd Akin on Monday night, pontificating that pregnancies from rape or incest are "something God intended" - and therefore the victims should not be able to obtain abortions. But this time, the reaction of the Republican Party establishment was quite different from the reaction to Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin's assertion in August that, if a rape is "legitimate" (that is, the woman didn't secretly want it)

Sister Marie Lucey of the Sisters of St. Francis in Philadelphia gets on Donald Fried's nerves. But the Philadelphia nun needn't take it personally. Fried doesn't have much use for Greenpeace; New York City Comptroller Elizabeth Holtzman; the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, or anyone who, like Sister Lucey, lobbies stockholders to vote in behalf of social-conscience resolutions brought before corporate shareholder meetings. In fact, Fried and the group he represents, the American Society of Corporate Secretaries, feel so strongly about the issue that they are lobbying the Securities and Exchange Commission to limit the ability of activists to bring social-responsibility proposals to the attention of America's shareholders.