Yet he hopes to remain in the public spotlight as director of the EPPC’s brand-new America’s Enemies program.

“It’s a stark name,” says Santorum. “But we wanted to be candid about the fact that America really does have enemies and to point out that the nature of these enemies is much more complex than what people realize. It’s not just Islamic fascism, but also Venezuela, North Korea, and, increasingly in my opinion, Russia.” ~John Miller

Yes, it’s all terribly complex, especially when so much of it is made-up.  If Mr. Santorum would just leave the world alone, the world would leave him alone, but still he persists.  So we see that Mr. Santorum’s list of our major foreign foes ranges from the delusional (“Islamic fascism” as such doesn’t exist, so it has to be an imaginary distortion of the real jihadi threat) to the silly (Venezuela) to the blindingly obvious (North Korea) to the absurd (Russia). 

I don’t doubt that Hugo Chavez despises the U.S.  Like his hero, Castro, he is reflexively hostile, but while we’re listing inconsequential tinpot dictators and demagogues we might list the dictators of Burma or Robert Mugabe or Evo Morales as our enemies.  Do any of them actually have the ability to threaten the United States or our legitimate, just interests?  Not really, no.  Not unless we insist on defining our interests as including those things that these governments do threaten, which are mainly their own populations.  As for Russia, Moscow will pursue its interests, which may sometimes conflict with Washington’s, but we would be fools to resurrect the old dynamic of antagonistic rivalry between our governments by heeding the irresponsible voices of people like Mr. Santorum. 

There is some consolation that Mr. Santorum’s ideas will not get very far in today’s Washington.  He tells John Miller that his expertise for EPPC will be in the realm of ideas and communication:

“This is a very impressive group of folks who share my worldview more than any other group in town,” says Santorum. “We’re going to have a lot of synergy. I know that I’m not the foremost scholar in the world, but I can offer a lot of ideas and help put together a communications strategy to describe the threats we face. Communication is a big problem, as the results of the elections in November show.”
 

I suppose he has confidence in this because effectively communicating the message that Venezuela and Iran are trying to take over the world worked so well for him in the past.  Still, you have to admire the conviction that it isn’t the horrible message of confrontational interventionist foreign policy that failed so completely in his own campaign and around the country.  In this view, it is simply the method of communicating this vision that needs improvement.  If only the true believers could get the Truth to the people, they would finally get it!  That’s a communications strategy!  Who better to advise EPPC on effective communication than Rick Santorum?  This should be a big success, just like his re-election campaign.