Matt Steinglass shakes his head:
Mr Santorum's social-conservative views, particularly those on sexuality, have been limned in recent weeks as "a return to the 1950s". This is misleading. In the 1950s, Americans trusted their government, as they trusted most social institutions. Mr Santorum's campaign, like that of all the other Republican presidential candidates, is predicated on a radical mistrust of government, along with the other authoritative institutions Americans used to trust in the 1950s: science, the courts, the medical profession, schools and academia, unions, and of course the media—pretty much everything apart from business, churches, and the military. This is a certain kind of conservatism, one that plays on Americans' fears and divisions and exacerbates the decline of our social capital and mutual trust. It's a far cry from the confident, high-trust conservatism of the Eisenhower-era Republican Party.
The Dish 