The cognitive dissonance among Democrats this fall if Rick Santorum is the Republican nominee will be deafening. Consider: one of the articles of the liberal creed is that any question of the liberal icon JFK's Catholicism when he ran for President was an unfortunate vestige of earlier American know-nothingism, to be derided along with Jim Crow and McCarthyism as diseases of the troglodyte right-wing. But the Democrats will be attacking Rick Santorum for holding beliefs on abortion, contraception, marriage, etc., that are simply mainstream Catholic doctrine. So why will JFK's Catholicism be celebrated, while Santorum's Catholicism will be denigrated? It's too easy to say that it's because JFK was liberal and Santorum is conservative, although that's certainly a huge part of it.
No, I think the reality is that liberals feel comfortable with JFK's Catholicism because they know he really didn't believe it, and didn't live his life according to its doctrines. He was a modern sexual libertine, a secularist. Santorum makes liberal uncomfortable because he actually believes and lives his faith.
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