Which Brand Of Conservatism Will NH Republicans Choose?

E.J. Dionne compares Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman’s dueling philosophies and previews the upcoming New Hampshire primary in his column, “Santorum, Hunstman And The Future Of Conservatism:”

I love watching Republicans engage in class warfare. They condemn it as a sin when Democrats come within 100 miles of even mentioning the sharp and growing class inequalities in the United States. But when conservatives play the class card, they see doing so as a high ethical calling involving the defense of good and moral folk against the depredations of a liberal elite.

Blatant hypocrisy is instructive.

Rick Santorum gave by far the best speech Tuesday night after his boffo performance in the Iowa caucuses. Among the Republicans, he along with Jon Huntsman — and, yes, Ron Paul who is really a libertarian — knows who he is and why he’s running. Santorum has a philosophy (and a theology) that holds his views together. It’s a retro philosophy but no less interesting for that. So comparatively speaking, he comes by his class warfare honestly, even if he panders shamelessly on guns and gays and talks about the straight-laced President Obama as if he embodied the moral sensibilities of Woodstock and Gomorrah.

If the Republicans want to have a genuinely searching debate about the future of their party, they’d send Santorum and Huntsman off for the long fight. Huntsman is a forceful economic conservative, but also resolutely modern. He’s a defender of science, a hard-eyed realist on foreign affairs who rejects Santorum’s neoconservative moralism, and he speaks the policy language of an upper-middle class that likes its politics to focus on deficits and our future competition with China.