**Interview conducted by Rush Limbaugh of Senator Rick Santorum originally published in the April 2007 edition of The Limbaugh Letter © 2007 Radio-Active Media, Inc. For more information on The Limbaugh Letter, go to www.RushLimbaugh.com.**

I was happy to be able to touch base with the former Senator from Pennsylvania, a staunch conservative who will continue to have a large impact on the political landscape -- having just been hired to head the new Program to Protect America's Freedom at the Ethics and Public Policy Center; reportedly writing a book about the threat of radical Islam; and having recently signed on as a contributor to the Fox News Channel.

RUSH: Let's just get straight to it. What have you been up to since last November?

SANTORUM: I made the decision that I couldn't walk away from the public policy arena in one particular area: the war. It was very clear to me from the November election that, in my opinion, the American public had gotten it wrong, had gotten the wrong message, and that we had failed them. I really felt that both the Administration and members of Congress had failed in the area of leadership, both in some respects in the conduct of the war, but just importantly, in the communication front here, winning the war at home, as much as winning the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. So after the election I dedicated myself to see if I could do some things in the private sector to better communicate to the American public the nature and gravity of the threat we face.

RUSH: It's almost as if there are two Americas. You've got an entire political party held prisoner by its fringe base, which is doing everything it can to convince Americans that there is no war, that there is no enemy.

SANTORUM: Yes, it's very troubling. As a student of history, Rush, you know there have been times in our history when we've probably had even more political differences than we do today. But what we see now is a result of a combination of things. Number one, technology and the pervasiveness of the media has really moved the parties to be a lot more acrimonious, because of the sensationalism around the news and the way it drives division. Number two, the parties have realigned. This is the first time since the GOP was formed in 1860 that the Republican Party is truly the conservative party, and that the Democratic Party is the liberal party. Just 40 years ago, half the Democrats in the U.S. Senate were conservative, and half the Republicans in the U.S. Senate were liberals. Throughout history, the parties were more regional. They're not any more. They're ideological. As a result, the divide between the parties has gotten greater, because they are based on ideology.

So you have this great schism. Interestingly, the major focal point, of that schism right now is the war. I make the argument that what we need to do as conservativatives who support the war is to go out on our ideological basis and challenge the Democrats, and say: Where are the feminists, where are the gay rights activists when it comes to radical Islam? Why aren't they out there complaining about how Islam treats women? Why aren't the gay activists talking about the role of homosexuality in the world of Islam? There are a lot of things we can do, and we need to be doing, to reach out to the other side and say, "Look, you need to be just as concerned about this, because elections come and go. But we're going to be dealing with this problem as Americans for a long, long time, and we'd better start putting this petty partisanship aside, and looking at this threat as it is, which is a threat to both the left and the right."

RUSH: Yes, but it's not petty to the people on the left. Rick, they are invested in our defeat.

SANTORUM: Yes. 

RUSH: The Democrat Party has gone so far out, they cannot allow a victory. Politically, they just can't allow it. They are doing everything they can to lose -- my phrase is, they own defeat. There's not going to be any persuasion possible on this. This is going to require a victory on the part of the U.S. military, which, we're entirely capable of, to shame these people and defeat them. If we do win, they can't even claim credit for having a role in supporting the country, with the position they've taken.

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