Posted by
Pete Chase on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 3:00:00 PM
Shortly after the 2004 election, the Democratic Party undertook to figure out why their message and the promise of free stuff didn’t resonate inside the thick skulls of the lumpenproles. After what I can only assume was a painful process of critical self-examination the party was finally able to fix the blame where it belonged: evangelical Christians. Turns out there was never anything wrong with their message; Americans were dying to move to the left, but the Christianists scared the red state mouth-breathers about abortion, religious persecution, and gay marriage.
Now, after The Great Republican Drubbing of 2008, the GOP is itself in a similarly reflective mood. And many in the party believe they’ve found the reason for our current funk: evangelical Christians.
There’s no evidence the party is taking on water, but some in the GOP are already looking to lighten the load by tossing evangelicals and social conservatives over the side.
That’s ironic for a party founded specifically around a social issue – the abolition of slavery. It’s doubly ironic because the issue perhaps most identified with social conservatives – and the one some Republicans most want to offload – is one many have identified as the modern abolitionist movement: the pro-life plank. Never mind, time to give those pesky social cons the old heave-ho.
Political parties exist to get elected, and the problem for any party is not unlike that of a fisherman who must decide where to cast his net to catch the most fish. By casting in one spot over another he will lose some while gaining others. But does the Republican party itself stand for any particular set of principles? Does the fisherman care what kind of fish he finds in his net?
That’s the age-old question, of course, but the fisherman will do well to remember that certain species are always found in close proximity to each other. Where you find one, you will often find the other. I’ll go further and say that there is no meaningful divide between social conservatives and small government, fiscal conservatives.
In fact, there are several practical reasons why it would be unwise to shun evangelicals and the social right in favor of so-called moderates.
First is the recognition that liberalism is largely a social program, implementation of whose policy goals necessarily entails massive state intervention in the private sphere, hence scrapping any theoretical upper limit on the size and scope of government. Thus, the concept of limited government is fundamentally incompatible with social progressivism.
Second, because liberalism is a social project – rather than economic or political – it must be opposed on that basis. Whenever the social good is found to be in conflict with the limits of government power, it is the principle of limited government that must yield. Therefore liberalism cannot ultimately be countered by constitutional or fiscal considerations, but only on the basis of conservative social values.
The third reason that a move to the middle on social issues is flawed is that the middle, as imagined by some, simply doesn’t exist. This is a topic that this blog has alluded to before. Although a seemingly target-rich environment, there is little in the way of ideological consistency that would allow the GOP to scoop up large constituencies.
There is also little there in the way of an overarching philosophy that would save the party from ideological creep. Moving to the center – wherever that might be – would simply allow liberals to redefine the center as the new far right. Conservatism claims to be a philosophy based on certain unchanging truths about the human condition, but the same cannot be said of liberalism. Static liberalism simply does not exist – it is a philosophy of perpetual revolution. A move to midfield by the GOP would only result in a concomitant leftward shift of the goal posts.
The Republican party is welcome to cast its net elsewhere. But it may soon find that doing so on social issues costs them not only elections but any credibility about being a principled party.