Of course, the polls could be wrong. Incumbent Republican Sen. Rick Santorum could pull off a stunning come-from-behind victory; certainly, we know that Santorum, and many of his most ardent supporters, believe in miracles.


But Santorum may need a miracle to beat Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. Casey has outpaced Santorum throughout the campaign; last week, two new polls showed Casey’s lead increasing. Quinnipiac University had Casey over Santorum 52 percent to 42 percent among likely voters; a Franklin & Marshall College poll had Casey’s lead at a whopping 15 percent.


I suspect the margin of victory will be smaller than that. Still, it seems almost certain, now, that Santorum will lose. The question is why.


Certainly, the Democratic base is fired up for this election. The Iraq war, in particular, is perhaps the most galvanizing factor in a generation; and Santorum is a big supporter of the war. Indeed, he’s more hawkish than Our Leader himself, hinting darkly on several occasions that the war may need to be expanded to Iran. And Pennsylvanians just aren’t real keen on marching deeper into the quicksand of the Middle East.


Still, if voters send Santorum home to Pittsburgh, or northern Virginia, as the case may be, the real key may not be the number of Democrats who vote against him, but the number of Republicans who do.


There has long been a growing sense among pragmatic conservatives that the GOP, which initially courted the religious right to attain power, has handed the culture warriors too much power. And if you believe in the restraint of federal authority, long a tenet of conservatism, the culture warriors’ growing influence is a cause for concern, even alarm. For the culture warriors would indeed expand the federal government’s authority to intervene and interfere in private lives.


And Rick Santorum, frankly, has been a poster child for this.


It was Santorum who rushed to Terri Schiavo’s bedside, who took the lead in ensuring that the federal government interceded in a family’s personal end-of-life decision. It was Rick Santorum who famously quipped that the repeal of sodomy laws, the mere decriminalization of homosexuality, would lead to “man on dog” and other bestialities.

It is Santorum who argues that Americans have no right to privacy, and thus no right to an abortion; and ostensibly, that Americans should have no right to privacy.


And while one suspects he still supports life and liberty, it was Santorum who, in an interview last year, said that the pursuit of happiness “is harming America,” when those pursuits, according to Rick Santorum, are insufficiently moral.


If Santorum loses, then, it may be seen as a repudiation of this idea, his idea, that it is the job of the federal government to impose values and responsibility, to dictate what goes on in private homes and individual bedrooms.


Santorum’s defenders, the latest, most prominent of which was New York Times columnist David Brooks, claim that regardless of the political “theater” in which Santorum engages, he has been a consistent advocate for the less privileged, and it would be a shame to lose that.


Perhaps. But what Brooks misses, and what Pennsylvania voters perceive, is that for Santorum, the culture war rhetoric is not mere theater. He means it, man.


And I suspect most Pennsylvanians, including a sizable number of Republicans, think the job of saving souls is best left to the churches, not the federal government.


Gil Smart is associate editor of the Sunday News. E-mail him at gsmart@lnpnews.com, or phone 291-8817.