Rejectionist Conservatism, which comes in tea party and libertarian variants, would use current political controversies to fundamentally reorder the role of the federal government. At least in theory, it would repeal not just Obamaism but also the Great Society, the New Deal and much else in pursuit of a minimal state.

The United Kingdom is in the midst of the great pasty crisis of 2012 — which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the garb of exotic dancers. The pasty is a hot, meat-filled pie, which Prime Minister David Cameron proposes to tax. His recently announced budget both decreases the top income tax rate and increases the cost of a finger food generally eaten by laborers. Class warfare has ensued.

In a global anti-malaria movement I saw begin in Oval Office meetings and international summits, Mongu is at the end of a very long road. Located in western Zambia, about 75 miles from the Angolan border, the town is not close to anywhere. The rivers of the region are more like swamps filling a flood plain, their courses hidden by tall grasses — from the air, wide, serpentine bands of lime green. If rivers are like arteries, these are clogged.

Bush is the conservative policy innovator. Rubio is a symbol of youth and outreach. Ryan is the budgetary idea leader. Romney does not benefit from comparison in any of these categories.

Rick Santorum, who is partial to the prohibition of many things, argues that the demon autocue should be next. “I’ve always believed that when you run for president of the United States,” Santorum recently said in Mississippi, “it should be illegal to read off a teleprompter, because all you’re doing is reading someone else’s words to people.”

On Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney secured more convention delegates than all of his opponents combined, making a good case for his mathematical inevitability. Once again, the candidate who looks like a Boy Scout won a political knife fight.

Rick Santorum is an authentic social conservative who seems to believe that the nation can be argued into moral self-improvement. It is the high calling of a Jesuit high-school teacher but is less appealing in a presidential contender.

The first is the gap between the obsessions of the media and the challenges of the country. So Rick Santorum explains his views on the pill and Satan, while nuclear inspectors leave Iran in failure and the president again enters the Situation Room to clarify his flawed options.

It is increasingly difficult to argue that the GOP is benefiting from the struggle between Mitt Romney and the challenger — alternately outsider and insider, hefty and svelte, conservative and more conservative — who isn’t Romney. Internal Republican ideological debates, while interesting to Republican ideologists, have little relationship to electoral needs. The longer these controversies continue, the longer President Obama has to regain his political balance.

Rick Santorum’s surge tracks with recent precedent. His support is about the same as Rick Perry’s at his peak. A little higher than Herman Cain’s crest. A little lower than Newt Gingrich’s pinnacle.

Some of them are now suggesting that his contraceptive mandate on religious institutions was a skilled political stratagem. “I’ve found by observing this president closely for years,” argues Daily Beast contributor Andrew Sullivan, “that what often seem like short-term tactical blunders turn out in the long run to be strategically shrewd. And if this was a trap, the religious right walked right into it.” Religious conservatives are now identified, he says, with “opposition to contraception.” Republicans have achieved “fusion with the Vatican.” Obama is evidently playing the very deep game.

In December, its government conducted a series of armed raids on respected human rights and democracy organizations. Egyptian courts are pursuing transparently fraudulent prosecutions against several dozen employees of those groups, including 19 Americans. Six U.S. citizens are being kept in Egypt against their will. One is Sam LaHood, the son of the transportation secretary.

The initial reaction concerned the rights of institutions. Catholic organizations naturally resent being forced to buy health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and drugs that can end a pregnancy soon after conception. The Obama administration seems to have calculated that, since contraceptives are popular and the Catholic Church is not, the outcry would be isolated.

Francoise, age 16, talks quietly, revealing a shy smile only after praise for her tight cornrows. While walking to school four years ago, she and some classmates were captured by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The girls were distributed to soldiers as “wives.” In the mornings, Francoise cooked. In the afternoons, she carried packs on the march. When she tried to escape, the soldiers melted a water container and poured the plastic on her shoulders. Once, when the fighters saw two infants along the path, they crushed them with a pestle. “I witnessed that,” she says.

The former House speaker stands second to Mitt Romney among Republicans in national polling. He ties for second in South Carolina. He is a clear second in Florida. With Rick Perry finishing just 800 votes ahead of Buddy Roemer in New Hampshire, Gingrich can claim to be the last viable Southerner in the race. He commands money for ads. And he has secured the all-important Todd Palin endorsement.

But the political accomplishment of Willard Mitt Romney should not be underestimated. The moderate, technocratic former governor of a liberal state is poised to secure the nomination of the most monolithically conservative Republican Party of modern history.

No other recent candidate hailing from the party of Lincoln has accused Abraham Lincoln of causing a “senseless” war and ruling with an “iron fist.” Or regarded Ronald Reagan’s presidency a “dramatic failure.” Or proposed the legalization of prostitution and heroin use. Or called America the most “aggressive, extended and expansionist” empire in world history. Or promised to abolish the CIA, depart NATO and withdraw military protection from South Korea. Or blamed terrorism on American militarism, since “they’re terrorists because we’re occupiers.” Or accused the American government of a Sept. 11 “coverup” and called for an investigation headed by Dennis Kucinich. Or described the killing of Osama bin Laden as “absolutely not necessary.” Or affirmed that he would not have sent American troops to Europe to end the Holocaust. Or excused Iranian nuclear ambitions as “natural,” while dismissing evidence of those ambitions as “war propaganda.” Or published a newsletter stating that the 1993 World Trade Center attack might have been “a setup by the Israeli Mossad,” and defending former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and criticizing the “evil of forced integration.”

With love so pure and pringlish,

And how I hate the horrid French,

Who never will be English!

— G.K. Chesterton

The two current Republican front-runners, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, come from the same political territory — the land of at least minimal presidential credibility. Both are economic conservatives without being demolition-derby libertarians. Both are Reagan-inspired internationalists. Both have interesting records of ideological deviance — Romney on health care, Gingrich on the environment. Both display a knowledge of history and current events and the capacity to reason in public — attributes that can’t be assumed of all of the Republican field.

The cause is likely to be climate policy. It is not only that Gingrich appeared next to Nancy Pelosi in a 2008 commercial calling for “action to address climate change.” A year earlier, Gingrich argued, “The evidence is sufficient that we should move toward the most effective possible steps to reduce carbon-loading in the atmosphere.” To that end, he supported “mandatory carbon caps combined with a trading system, much like we did with sulfur.”