The Official Break

"Santorum takes Bush to task over Social Security strategy," reads today's headline in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Looking back on the last year, Santorum, R-Pa., said he had struggled to understand President Bush's decision to come out "right after the campaign" -- without allowing the 2004 presidential election fervor to cool -- "with this mandate that you're going to change the sacred cow of the [political] left, who've just been energized beyond belief.

"You've just defeated your opponent, and, you know, you take a 3-iron to the beehive," Santorum said. "You go out there and whack the beehive, and you wonder why all these bees are buzzing around your head. And not only do you whack the beehive, but then you don't do anything [more] for two months."

Santorum, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference as well as head of a Senate subcommittee on Social Security, said that as soon as White House officials told him that they were going to roll out Social Security reform initiatives in 2004, he urged them to construct a plan on the order of a presidential campaign, believing that "it was bigger than anything we've tried to do."

Santorum can't back down on the substance of privatization, so the only way he can separate himself from Bush on this is by going after the strategy.

But what's really interesting is not just that Santorum said all this -- after all, he has a history of saying things in conversations with reporters that might not be, um, official policy -- but where it came from. The story was e-mailed out widely to reporters at 9:08 this morning by the Senate Republican Conference itself.

This might be the official declaration of the end, not just of Social Security but of deference to Bush. And members of Congress, especially those like Santorum who are worried about reelection, have so many years of docility to make up for that if they really want to separate themselves from a highly unpopular president, they will have to make a very fast, very decisive break.