Back at you, Santorum

By Brian McGrory, Globe Columnist

Please allow me to offer Senator Rick Santorum a hearty Boston welcome to the world of the depraved.

It wasn't all that long ago when Santorum, a conservative Republican from Pennsylvania, was blaming our entire city and seemingly every resident within it for the Catholic priest pedophile scandal that was unraveling all across the country.

Those were dark days, here and elsewhere, though we were fortunate enough to have someone like Santorum shed a little bit of his moralistic light. Specifically, here's what he wrote:

``When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm."

A Santorum spokesman was kind enough to provide even more clarity last year, telling me, ``It's an open secret that you have Harvard University and MIT that tend to tilt to the left in terms of academic biases. I think that's what the senator was speaking to."

So do I. Priests rape young boys, the church hierarchy hushes it up for years, and academics and other assorted Democrats in Boston are to blame. That fact should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, which I think Santorum may have.

So, of course, I find it surprising -- no, make that shocking -- that the center of the storm has shifted from Boston to, of all places, Capitol Hill, and not just any part of Capitol Hill but specifically the offices of the Republican congressional leadership.

The scandal in Washington so mirrors what's happened in Boston and other Catholic dioceses the nation over to the point of being surreal. A rank-and-file member of an organization does wrong by a minor. The hierarchy, in turn, does nothing. Now, rather than a priest, it's a 52-year-old Republican congressman -- or make that a former congressman, given Mark Foley's resignation on Friday. Foley, by the way, has pulled the Patrick Kennedy defense, checking himself into rehab, as if everyone is supposed to applaud the courage of self-awareness.

And rather than a bunch of archbishops and cardinals, it's the House leadership, which showed a breathtaking lack of curiosity after they learned of Foley's e-mails to a 16-year-old page. They contend to have never learned of Foley's exchange with a page in which he wrote: ``Well, strip down and get relaxed."

Humiliated church leaders ended up in Rome, or at least Cardinal Law did. Humiliated Republicans will probably end up in the minority party, this scandal coming at the worst possible time for a party already under siege over things like Iraq and Jack Abramoff.

Which brings us back to Santorum. How bad are things for him? He's down by 7 to 14 points in recent polls in his reelection bid. And more telling, his campaign website has a section called ``Around the water cooler," in which he tries to debunk common myths about him, among them, that Santorum thinks women shouldn't work, that abortion is like slavery, and that unwed mothers shouldn't go to college. According to his own responses, some of them don't seem to be myths at all.

The guy doesn't need a new strategy, he needs a different personality.

I called his campaign yesterday to ask whether he might have changed his stance toward Boston. A spokeswoman called back and left a voicemail saying, ``He was deeply saddened and found these actions to be despicable."

His is probably the best lesson in what goes around, comes around. Santorum seemed to be all but gloating when he blamed Democrats, liberal academics, and everything Boston for pedophilic priests. Yesterday, White House spokesman Tony Snow was urging all parties to allow investigations to proceed, rather than, in his words, to say, ``OK, how can I get political advantage out of this?"

Even in defeat, Rick Santorum and others like him will never come to understand one true thing: The world of the depraved is a nonpartisan, non-ideological world indeed.

Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. His email is mcgrory@globe.com.