“The Tory Party today is united by its fiscal conservatism whereas Republicanism today is principally concerned with social conservatism”: So wrote one James Kanagasooriam in the London Daily Telegraph early in the New Year. He was attempting to explain how it was that, in his view, “British and American conservatives are speaking a different language,” though the differences are pretty obvious and have been around for a long time. Much more interesting are the similarities—or at least they would have been if they hadn’t been obscured by the blaze of hostile publicity which accompanied former Senator Rick Santorum’s strong showing in the Iowa caucuses a few days earlier. Mr. Kanagasooriam, who disarmingly described himself as a “Westminster anorak with an interest in all things political,” may never have spoken to an actual American conservative, but his anorak—a sort of hooded winter jacket that Britons metonymically associate with nerdishness, rather as Americans do pocket-protectors—must have served as an echo chamber for the American media who had their own reasons for portraying the opposition to President Obama as being “principally concerned with social conservatism.”

To be fair, this impression was not created ex nihilo. The Republican candidates were, like most Republicans, to a greater (Mr. Santorum) or lesser (Mitt Romney) degree social conservatives and self-described Christians. So, ostensibly, is Mr. Obama. But few if any of them would have based their challenge to the President on the so-called “social issues” had they not collectively made a devil’s bargain with