Double Standards - Santorum, Obama, Belief and Hypocrisy

William McGurn of the WSJ identifies two double standards at play in analyzing how the mainstream media reacts to Rick Santorum's social conservatism:

When Barack Obama was campaigning for president in 2008, he declared that marriage is between a man and a woman. For the most part, his position was treated as a nonissue.

Now Rick Santorum is campaigning for president. He too says that marriage is between a man and a woman. What a different reaction he gets.

There's no mystery why. Mr. Santorum is attacked because everyone understands that he means what he says.

President Obama, by contrast, gets a pass because everyone understands—nudge nudge, wink wink—that he's not telling the truth. The press understands that this is just one of those things a Democratic candidate has to say so he doesn't rile up the great unwashed.

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 When Mr. Obama used a prayer breakfast earlier this month to suggest that the Gospel of Luke was a call for raising taxes on the wealthy, the press corps yawned. When Mr. Santorum complained about the "phony theology" behind the president's worldview, suddenly it landed on every front page and lead every news show.

None of this comes as any surprise to the Regular Guy.  The set of unspoken signals that Obama puts out says to liberal elites "I'm one of you, I won't do anything that you would think was uncool."    They know that he is a hypocrite, in other words, which is a good thing to them, because that means that he really doesn't believe those retrograde religious beliefs he pretends to believe.   By contrast, the set of  signals Santorum puts out says to liberal elites "I'm not one of you, I'm not cool, and I don't care what you think."   They know that he's not a hypocrite, and that terrifies them.   Their actual positions don't matter so much as the secret handshake-tribalism that defines them as part of the secular elite or as part of the unwashed middle America of "bitter clingers."