What saves America from the imposition of religious edicts in the public sphere is its two-party, winner take all political system. Imagine, though, that America also had a proportional system, with a staunchly social-democratic and dovish Democratic Party on the left and a fanatically free market and hawkish Republican Party on the right, both waging a never-ending political world war on the economy and America’s place in the world. Now imagine that between these two poles there is a third party, a single-issue party, made up of Catholic fundamentalists like Santorum and Protestant Evangelicals and perhaps even a rabbi or two thrown in for good measure, whose main raison d’etre was to eradicate godlessness and instill religiosity in American life…
Chemi Shalev writes in Ha'aretz:
…American presidential candidates, if they are to win elections, have to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters, including moderate and mostly secular independents, which means that extreme conservatives such as Barry Goldwater or fanatic liberals such as George McGovern generally lose elections badly. For the same reason, many Republicans are increasingly worried that Santorum might also be too radical to beat Obama in the November elections, (although his increasingly controversial statements in recent days suggest that he’s doing whatever he can to make sure that he doesn’t get the nomination).
In Israel’s proportional system, however, ultra-Orthodox parties don’t need to pander to the general public or to bother with formulating policy on such irksome issues as the economy or national security: they can afford to think only of their own narrow constituency and its parochial interests. Given that the two main political blocs, left and right, are always short of an absolute majority, perennially at loggerheads over the “cardinal” issue of peace and territories and wouldn’t trust each other if their lives depended on it, they have no choice but to rely on the religious parties to be their coalition partners. Secure in the knowledge that they will always hold the balance of power and be the kingmakers, the religious parties allow their secular colleagues to get on with their business of pretending to make peace or trying to annex the territories, whichever the case maybe, and all they ask for in return is influence, religious laws, autonomy, and enormous amounts of cash that will guarantee their predominance in a few short decades.
What saves America from this imposition of religious edicts in the public sphere is its two-party, winner take all political system. Imagine, though, that America also had a proportional system, with a staunchly social-democratic and dovish Democratic Party on the left and a fanatically free market and hawkish Republican Party on the right, both waging a never-ending political world war on the economy and America’s place in the world. Now imagine that between these two poles there is a third party, a single-issue party, made up of Catholic fundamentalists and Protestant Evangelicals and perhaps even a rabbi or two thrown in for good measure, whose main raison d’etre was to eradicate godlessness and instill religiosity in American life.
Of course, the natural alliance of this third party would be with the Republicans, but if the Democrats got more votes, there is no doubt that the two sides would be able to reach an accommodation, with the Democrats being allowed to pursue their policies in exchange for far reaching concessions on abortions, say, or contraception, or religious education. If this doesn’t sound plausible to you, it's because you haven’t been exposed enough to the absolute cynicism of proportional coalition politics, which can make for the strangest of bedfellows (though not of the type that Santorum finds so offensive).
In any case, even in the current setup, if I were a Republican religious conservative, especially the “Jesus candidate” that Santorum has described, I would urgently dispatch an emissary or two to the courts of some of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox rabbis and to the backrooms of their political representatives. If one is going to do battle in the confrontation between church and state - or synagogue and state in this case - one might as well learn from the pros who have been winning at this game for many, many years.