Why is Santorum failing?

Jonah Goldberg poses the question:

The most interesting question not being asked by social conservatives and MSNBC liberals is: Why isn’t Rick Santorum catching on. According to both groups, Santorum should be doing better. We all have theories about why Romney can’t close the deal. But no one has really explained why Santorum can’t close the deal. Liberals think the GOP is hardcore conservative (albeit with more pejorative labels), but the hardcore conservative in the race isn’t taking off. Social conservatives say that evangelicals care about Santorum’s issues. He was even endorsed by evangelical leaders recently. But it’s not working. Why?

Perhaps it's because even GOP social conservatives find this sort of thing a little extreme. To quote the most frightening Santorum episode thus far, "In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be…If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

Santorum's exact sort of failure is a little harder to pin down than you might think, as it seems that many are largely unfazed by this sort of abject bigotry. It's degrading, to say the least. Santorum's greatest hits were not the campaign-ending blunders they should have been; they don't even qualify as gaffes, because they were so clearly formulated at an earlier date and delivered as intended. His views might be more conservative than others, but you might say he's conservative on the wrong issues. It would be too soon to say that the GOP, like the Tories in Britain, have moved on from their childish prejudice when it comes to gay rights — earlier remarks on DADT surely disproves this contention — but they're not jumping, either, to support the guy who made the comparison between homosexuality and incest.

It has long been understood that the person whose views are most congruent with those of a particular ideology will scarcely win over that ideological group automatically. Thus, the fact that Santorum's social conservatism is commensurate with that of a large number of others means surprisingy little, and Santorum's insistence that this is a race with Obama, not other Republican contenders, is yet more surprising: surely he'll need to be at least a little more measured if he's going to beat Obama, assuming the race really is about Obama at this point.

But I don't think we'll ever have to worry about a Santorum v. Obama race for the White House. All eyes on Gingrich and Romney from this point forward.