Paul Gigot: This week on "The Journal Editorial Report," Rick Santorum's three-state sweep upends the GOP race once again. Can he build on his momentum in the states ahead, and what is Mitt Romney's comeback strategy? Plus, the furor over President Obama's birth-control mandate. Religious freedom clashes with feminist politics. We'll tell you why religion is losing. And growing trouble across the Middle East, as Syria sinks deeper into chaos and Egypt brings charges against American pro-democracy workers. How should the U.S. respond?


Santorum: One of the great gifts that I've had in my political career is that no one ever thinks that I could ever win anything. The gift of being underestimated is a wonderful gift, and I think we might have seen a little bit of that last night.


That was Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum after his stunning sweep of Tuesday's contests in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado. The former Pennsylvania senator upended the Republican race once again and highlighted the weakness of the presumed front-runner, Mitt Romney. But can Santorum build on his momentum in the weeks ahead?

Let's ask Wall Street Journal columnist and deputy editor Dan Henninger, Political Diary editor Jason Riley and editorial board member Dorothy Rabinowitz.

So Dan, how big a threat to Mitt Romney is Rick Santorum?

Henninger: I think it's a significant threat. Once again, it's a problem of subtraction for Romney. Conservative voters are looking for another person, obviously. That's been the story from the beginning as the one candidate after another rose and fall. And Rick Santorum, when he finally got from stage left to stage center, is showing that he is a formidable political debater and fighter. And I think the problem for Romney is that he could continue to erode his support. I don't know if he can defeat Romney. I think he's in the game, I think he's got a shot. But Mitt Romney has shown himself, other than dumping negative advertising on opponents like Newt Gingrich, not to be very good at responding in kind to the kind of criticisms that Santorum has been leveling at him.

Gigot: So Dorothy, will Santorum--why would you think he would do better now than Gingrich did when he went one-on-one against Mitt Romney? What are Santorum's strengths that would allow him to be a more formidable competitor?

Rabinowitz: Well, the fact that he hasn't had the dumping of negative advertising on him to deflate him. But there is a problem. The people who--if you look at him in that victory speech which he delivered the other night, you saw a very different Santorum, and you say to yourself, "If only he could be this person"--this ebullient, cheerful and very incisive, excellent speaker.

Gigot: Well, if he could do it on that evening, why can't he do it other times?

Rabinowitz: Because he has--carries with him a history that would, compared to Newt Gingrich--if Newt Gingrich had eight marriages, it wouldn't equal this kind of baggage.

Gigot: What are you talking about, some comments about social issues?

Rabinowitz: Yes, we're talking a list of quotes that are deeply felt. Let me give you the first one that strikes to mind. He appears in New Hampshire and he says to a group, You know, I saw--I read John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech on absolute separation of church and state, and, you know what, I wanted to vomit when I read that. Because this was the beginning of the secularization. This--

Gigot: OK, you're saying this social-cultural issue, that is a big liability for him. But wait a minute. It's carrying him right now. He did well in Iowa because of it. He won in Missouri because of it, in Minnesota because of it. And in Colorado his vote was bigger, frankly, than that social conservative base. That's an asset.

Riley: It is an asset right now among certain segments of the GOP. But Dorothy's got a point. Rick Santorum has distinguished himself politically as a social conservative. The question, is: Can he bring in other parts of the GOP coalition--the fiscal-folks, the free-market folks, as well as the defense hawks and so forth? You need all three stools of the leg to make this work. And the question is: Does Rick Santorum--and we'll find out if Rick Santorum has some staying power in the upcoming contests in Arizona and Michigan, because that's where Romney will actually be contesting. One of the reasons he did so well this week is because, let's face it, Romney did not spend a lot of time in these states. Santorum pretty much had them to himself. He gave these states a lot of face time, and they rewarded him.

Gigot: All right, so Dan, Rick Santorum called me this week after our editorial, and he said, "Look, you guys got it wrong. My message is broader than being social conservative. I start with freedom. I start with the economic context we're in. My social message is crucial, but it's only part of that." Were we unfair to Santorum?

Henninger: I don't believe so, because he hasn't really emphasized the things he was describing to you, up until this point. He's been running mainly as a social conservative, and the family-values guy. But what we're describing here, or trying to describe, is politics at a very high level. If the politician is going to compete for the presidency of the United States, they have to be adept. They have to be able to adjust. They have to change their game plan. And the question is whether Rick Santorum has the political skills to do that. I suspect that he does. He's a very smart guy. He's been in politics for a long time. He knows the issues. It's going to be really interesting to see in the primaries ahead what kind of game plan he runs.

Gigot: Let me give you another, Dorothy, a question. I think Santorum--one of his major assets is, there's nobody who doubts he believes what he says, all right? And that's a very different thing when they look at Mitt Romney. People do doubt whether he means what he says. With Santorum, they say, "You know what? I think this guy is going to do what he says."

Rabinowitz: But Paul, they say the same thing about Ron Paul: "Look how consistent he is and how much he believes in--"

Gigot: Yeah, but Ron Paul is--he's out there on so many issues. Santorum--

Rabinowitz: Let's put it this way. He believes these things, and let me say it is not an inclusive message to continue to say--and this is not going to be lying hidden forever in the states that he ran in.

Gigot: But could it win him the Republican nomination? That's what we're talking about here as the first order of business.

Rabinowitz: I don't think so.

Riley: No. I don't think it's enough to win him the nomination. It is enough, however, to make Romney a very crippled, bloodied nominee when he becomes the nominee.

Gigot: So Romney just--the same issue keeps coming up, Jason. He can't win over the conservative populist wing--you know the tea partiers, the social conservatives, the people who aren't part of the main line Republican Party. Why not?

Riley: He's running as a competent manager. It's not the most inspiring message. And I will say this about Santorum: His victory speech the other night--I liked what he said there. He went after Obama as an elitist. He said, "This guy thinks he's smarter than you." I think that is a much more effective message than what Romney's been saying. Romney's been saying, "Obama is in over his head." I think Obama's vulnerability here is arrogance, not ignorance, and I think Santorum is sending the right message, particularly in the heartland, where I think that will resonate.

Gigot: All right, we're going to be watching. Thanks, Jason.

When we come back, backlash over President Obama's birth-control mandate leaves the administration scrambling for a compromise. But has the damage with Catholic voters already been done?



Gigot: Well, whatever you do, don't call it a compromise. But after enduring another week of bitter backlash over its mandate requiring religious employers, including Catholic hospitals and universities, to cover birth control, including the morning-after pill, in their health-care plans, the White House on Friday announced what it calls an "accommodation" that will require insurers to pay directly for women's contraception if an employer objects to doing so on religious grounds. So will church leaders go for it, and has the political damage already been done?

We're back with Dan Henninger and Dorothy Rabinowitz. And Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn joins the panel.

So this was turning into a political disaster for the administration. Let's deal with the substance first. Does this solve the religious liberty problem?

McGurn: Not really. It expands it in a way. To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi, we had to enforce this bill to find out what's in it. They're telling us, if you're a Catholic diocese, you don't offer this in your plan, they'll say, "OK, what happens is your insurer will offer the plan. It will offer it free to--"

Gigot: They must offer it.

McGurn: "They must offer it, and it will be free, and you won't be paying for it." I don't understand the heavenly economics behind that.

Gigot: It's the Immaculate Contraception.

Dan, what kind of economic world is there where somehow it's free--if you don't pay for it, nobody will pay? Won't the premiums for the insurance go up over time that the religious institution will end up having to pay?

Henninger: I can't imagine that anyone out there absorbing this news can be sitting there and be saying, "Let me understand this correctly: This coverage will be free for people rather than"--what world does this belong in? This is the world of Washington, Paul. If there's one issue out in the presidential campaign now that everybody seems to agree on, is that Washington's a mess and Washington doesn't work--the things Washington does don't work. This is a textbook example of why Washington performs so poorly. They get an idea in their head and they decide they're just going to cram it through the system regardless of the economics, and indeed, in this case, regardless of the politics. This is going to be litigated--right?--and the politics is not going to go away. It's just going to grind on, and people are going to see another example of a system that is dysfunctional.

Gigot: But if you're a religious institution, can you in good conscience say, now, "Oh, this doesn't intrude on my religious liberty"?

McGurn: No, you're just not telling people. It shifts the burden to someone else.

Gigot: It's indirection. It's a third-party-payment issue.

McGurn: Right. And it's--sort of my inner Ron Paul. I sort of feel like, why do we have federal mandates and unelected czars, and--I mean, why can't we just follow the Constitution and equalize the tax code and solve the problem?

Rabinowitz: But this is like the health-care package that you don't know what's in the health-care bill. Now, I tell you, it's more than Washington. This is really a view of the administration that is an exceptional clear picture. You know, the totalitarian mindset comes in many forms. You could see it. Everything leading up to this moment, in the past few weeks: "Look, we're not doing what you think we're doing." I see before me the picture of David Axelrod whining.

Gigot: The chief--former White House political adviser.

Rabinowitz: Yes.

Gigot: Now campaign adviser.

Rabinowitz: Yes. On the air--as soon as the flak began to hit, on the air last week saying: "How could you think we were doing this to Catholics?" The denial of the reality is there every day, including at today's conference.

Gigot: Press conference call.

Rabinowitz: Press conference call. And you listen to a representative of the administration saying, "We planned this all along--this day, this compromise," in the face of all truth. "This has nothing to do with what happened to us in the last few days."

Gigot: Directly contradicting previous--

Rabinowitz: Directly--

Gigot: --the previous conference call that they gave, when the rule had been made final.

But Dorothy, let's talk about the politics. Is this going to solve the political problem for the administration with Catholics?

Rabinowitz: Here it is. As Catholics who were inclined to say, "OK, well, you know, let's accept this." But there is a bitterness about this moment that I think is permanent and enduring, because you cannot say to people, "We are not doing this to you," and go ahead and do it. The fact is that this tone--"We can condescend to you, we can tell what you we're going to do, we can say 2 and 2 equal 5, and we believe in little our ideological bubble that you will accept it."

Gigot: Some of the Catholic left, Bill, are saying, "Hey, great, they finally, you know--no damage to political--to religious liberty here."

McGurn: Right, he's captured back some of the people that have very large doubts about the pope but have perfect faith in the infallibility of the federal government to make the decisions. And they wanted the fig leaf. And Sister Carol of the Catholic Health Care Association has already celebrated this thing.

Further to Dorothy's point, I think it muddies the situation a little bit. It widens the question about conscience rights for individuals, not Catholic institutions. And it leaves a lot of Catholics that may be sort of in the middle with the impression that Obama really dislikes their church and is at war with them.

Gigot: What about the bishops, Dan? Because they had led the opposition to this. Their response so far has been muted. Where do you think they'll come out?

Henninger: I think that's a little hard to predict. They were very angry about this. I think what the bishops understood finally, and what I think you're going to hear a lot more of now, is that there was a mandate to force them to do something beneath this. Now ObamaCare--this health-care plan was a thing that the president didn't want to talk about. I think the presidential candidates now have a hook to explain the nature of the mandate beneath the Obama health-care law.

Gigot: The basic problem is this is what happens when you have government health care. Some higher authority in Washington--I've got to go, folks--is going to determine who gets covered and how much.

When we come back, growing trouble in the Middle East as 19 Americans face trial in Egypt, and Syria sinks deeper into civil war. So how should the Obama administration respond?


Gigot: Trouble is brewing across the Middle East for the Obama administration after Egyptian authorities announced this week that 19 American pro-democracy workers, including the son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, would face trial. This as Syria sinks deeper into civil war, with forces loyal to President Bashar Assad continuing its assault on the opposition stronghold of Homs.


So Matt, is it fair to call these Americans hostages? They can't leave the country.

Kaminski: Well, sure. I mean, they can't leave because they're being held under a fairly transparently illegitimate act by the government. I think the bigger picture here is that Egypt is in the middle of a very messy transition. They have to write the constitution still, they just seated a parliament. The military's trying to blame someone for a lot of the problems they're been having. Don't forget that there's a lot of nationalist feelings also in Egypt, going back to Nasser.

Gigot: But this is not something that the Muslim Brotherhood is doing.

Kaminski: No.

Gigot: This is the military government that is doing this, a government that has gotten billions in aid.

Kaminski: Right.

Henninger: But the State Department is putting out that it may not be the military government that's doing it.

Gigot: Well, who is doing it?

Henninger: The interior ministry and this woman Faiza Abu Naga, who is a former Mubarak associate, is the one who apparently has been driving this. That's part of the problem. It is not clear who's responsible for grabbing these people and who we should be negotiating with, because Egypt is in such a state of political disarray.

Gigot: But if the military wanted it to go away, it would go away.

Kaminski: Look, the military is responsible for this. The military runs the country. The problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is that they haven't said anything about this, because I think they are trying to get a deal for the military to hand over power to them. And the Muslim Brotherhood got training from, including Sam LaHood's group, on how to be a more democratic and a better campaign, you know, group.

Gigot: We can't--the United States provides about a billion and a half dollars a year, much of that military aid. Will we be able to sustain that if this case does go to trial and Americans end up in jail?

Kaminski: I think there's obviously going to be problems on the Hill almost immediately.

Gigot: Capitol Hill.

Kaminski: Yeah, Capitol Hill. But also to Dan's point, I think what the State Department put out is a very worrying signal that they're trying to--they may blink here--that the U.S. may blink and try and say, "OK, we'll pull out our democracy promotion help in Egypt. Let's try and make this problem go away." I think there's a way to de-escalate, but we shouldn't give up on trying to push Egypt toward being a more open and more democratic place.

Gigot: Because these Americans who were arrested there, they're doing what Americans do all across the world at different countries through these nongovernment organizations. This is hardly radical stuff.

Kaminski: Right, they help--

Gigot: Free press, yeah.

Kaminski: --media, parties--how to organize, all parties.

Gigot: All right, well, this is a messy business. Let's talk about Syria. The administration seem to have been caught by surprise by the Russian and Chinese vetoes at the United Nations, and Bashar Assad has taken the veto, it looks like this week, as an invitation to just escalate against the opposition. What--should the U.S. have been surprised?

Kaminski: Of course not. I think the Russians signaled early on, throughout the last few weeks, they are not going to give up on their last Arab ally, who is Bashar Assad, especially at a time--in Russia itself, Vladimir Putin is facing his own popular uprising.

Gigot: Don't want any ugly precedents for--

Kaminski: No, certainly not.

Gigot: What can the United States do, Dan? I saw Secretary of State Clinton issued a statement calling this a travesty and saying--hinting that maybe the United States needs to go outside of the United Nations, which is something, you know, the dastardly Bush administration would have done.

Henninger: Yeah, even the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said let's get past the politics of this thing and do something effective, almost suggesting that she's inviting military action. The problem is, I don't think the Libyan solution's going to happen here, because that was based on a U.N. Security Council resolution to "take any effective measures."

Gigot: So are you saying that because the administration will not want to do something like that without a U.N. resolution, or because it's just not possible as a practical level?

Henninger: I think Barack Obama, having announced that he's pulling out of Afghanistan, is not going to send American troops into Syria before the November elections. He's just not going to go there.

Gigot: Briefly, Matt.

Kaminski: But they may have no choice, because Turkey is pushing for some kind of intervention. I wouldn't rule out a no-fly zone. Certainly there is now a lot of talk about arming these opposition groups, because it's really getting out of control there.

Gigot: All right. Thanks, Matt.



Gigot: Time now for "Hits and Misses" of the week. Jason, first to you.

Riley: I'd like to give a hit to the Obama administration for looking into complaints that Harvard and Princeton are discriminating against Asian student applicants. Asians are already overrepresented on their campuses. This is akin to what happened to the Jews in the first half of the 20th century, and it's a reminder of what happens with affirmative action policies. When you try to discriminate in favor of some groups, like blacks and Hispanics, who inevitably end up discriminating against other groups.

Gigot: You mean overrepresented in terms of the population in general.

Riley: Yes, yes.

Gigot: There's more of them than in the general population. OK. Matt?

Kaminski: Paul this is a hit to the people of Moscow, who earlier this week came out in the tens of thousands in arctic weather to protest against Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime. Now Vladimir Putin's probably going to win--almost certainly is going to win elections in March, but something has truly changed in Russia. And I think this bodes for possibly a more open and more pluralistic Russia in months and years to come.

Gigot: The next 20 years, or no?

Kaminski: No, I think earlier. I think there's been a real revelation, so to speak, in Russia itself.

Gigot: Bill?

McGurn: Paul, we're batting 1.000 here. I have a hit for a federal judge in San Francisco, Susan Nielsen, for allowing Barry Bonds to keep his baseball bats. You probably remember that he was convicted last year of lying to a grand jury about a steroid investigation. He got two years probation for that. Normally on probation, you're not allowed to have weapons or things called "destructive devices," which can include baseball bats for most people. But this judge made a common-sense exception for Mr. Bonds that allows him to keep his lumber. And it's a rare bust of common sense. So I would say the judge gets a home run for this one, not just a hit.

Gigot: Ah, boy, Bill, thanks.

And remember if you have your own "Hit or Miss, please send it to us at And be sure to visit us at the Web at That's it for all of us here. Thanks to my panel and to all of you for watching. I am Paul Gigot. We hope to see you right here next week.