Amazing Grace: Libertarians in bed with Gary L. Bauer?

"Kindness effects more than severity" is the moral of the story of Aesop's Fable "The Wind and the Sun, exemplified in our own day in the coming together without compromise of social and fiscal conservatives (see below for more) in the fight to reignite the lights of the Shining City. Above, a retelling of the ancient tale in The Baby's Own Aesop (verse fables by W.J. Linton) 1887. Illustrations by Walter Crane.

Gary L. Bauer, President of American Values — "Your Voice to Help Protect Life, Marriage, Famly, Faith and Freedom" — is following us on Twitter, an unlikely bedfellow for this Darwinian Libertarian. [See our post of last summer, "The opiate of the dopamine-dependent blogger," for what we mean by that.] We've always shied away from what we took to be social conservatives' impulse to impose upon the rest of us their family values — whether or not we agreed with them, it wasn't government's job to force entry into our private moral universe — a kind of obverse of the left's impulse to impose their politically correct moral-equivalence "values" upon the rest of us. But we're seeing Mr. Bauer & Company with new eyes in the morning light of the Third Great Awakening that is the Tea Party movement, as Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote last February in what we called "one of Instapundit's great distillations of what's 'happening here'":

America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature. Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.

This time, it’s different. It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble: It’s America’s politicians and parties. They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent. So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.

Back to our strange new bedfellow, Gary L. Bauer, who opens our eyes further with an intriguing thought experiment in his latest Human Events column, "GOP Establishment, RIP?:

Imagine if an inside-the-Beltway consultant met with national Republican leaders and presented an innovative strategy to develop a new political movement that would add millions of voters to the Republican coalition. And what if that consultant assured those GOP leaders that their party would not have to alter its views in order to capture and retain those voters.

He's talking, of course, about the Tea Party itself:

The Tea Party movement has attracted millions of new voters (as well as millions of formerly disaffected Republican voters) to the GOP. And all that Tea Party members ask of the GOP is that it acts according to its own principles by supporting lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and less government. So why are many in the Republican establishment recoiling in horror at the most powerful new force politics has seen in at least a decade? Perhaps it is because these self-appointed leaders are beginning to realize that a fundamental change to the party’s power structure may cause their own political demise.

The Republican establishment’s response to Christine O’Donnell’s surprise win in the Delaware Senate GOP primary was symptomatic of the change. Instead of embracing O’Donnell, the initial reaction of some Republican figures was to impugn her character and write off her chances of victory. This is a page from the same playbook that's been used to marginalize social conservatives.

Not that social and fiscal cons will ever be soulmates. It's a matter of emphasis. O'Donnell herself captured the momentary Zeitgeist — to a standing ovation! — at the Value Voters Summit in Washington Saturday, where Gary L. Bauer was a featured speaker:

But Ms. O'Donnell … has already said social issues won't top her agenda if she wins in November, despite her prior work speaking against premarital sex and masturbation. Instead, the first thing she wants to do is repeal the new health-care law and fend off cap-and-trade climate legislation.

Ms. O'Donnell's appearance …  put a spotlight on the challenge facing social conservatives, prominent in GOP politics earlier in the decade, as they try to hitch themselves to the fiscal insurgents of 2010. They may [or may not!] be ideological soulmates, but that doesn't mean they'd govern the same way.

"My sense of the average tea party-endorsed candidate this year is that what motivates them is their concern over spending and the national debt," said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. "If a gay-marriage ban came before Congress, they'd probably vote for it, but that's not what motivates them."

Update: Instalanche!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Comments

[dsr33d]

As a life-long libertarian, I've come to the same place as you [in bed with Gary Bauer, so to speak]. I will cast votes for social con Republicans this year for the first time in my life. We urgently need to join forces to reverse the country’s slide into bankruptcy, or nothing else will matter.

[David Aitken]

Most social conservative legislation doesn't pass the Amendment X smell test and is therefore unconstitutional. All of these social conservative legislators will have a legal and ethical obligation to vote against it.

[M. Simon]

Christine O'Donnell was at a Libertarian Party Meeting last summer discussing her position on drug legalization. States Rights. Do a search.

These are not your father's socons.

[David R. Block]

Let's just say that trying to live in both groups at the same time has not been, well, a pleasant experience.

[MikeC]

Being both Christian and "small-l" libertarian, I can attest that fiscal and social conservatives have more in common philosophically than we might think. Where we disagree is in the practical implementation of conservative principles.

Someone once stated that "you can't do the LORD's work by using the sword of Caesar", and in this realization, I think, we can begin to find more common ground.

[Gary Rosen]

Bauer is someone I have always respected even though I disagree with many of his stances on "social issues". My impression of him is that he is very sincere, and he presents his views forthrightly without demagoguery.

[Russ]

Folks, it's called the Reagan Coalition. When the Socons don't blow up the bridge, the bridge works fine.

[BobInFL]

Really, this whole "socon vs fiscon" debate is artificial. There's just "conservative" -- and not. In http://archive.redstate.com/story/2005/11/11/145253/48/ the author presents an analysis of several high profile bills: the Federal Marriage Amendment (socon), the "No Fed Funding for Embryonic Stem Cell Research" bill (socon, arguably fiscon), and the Coburn anti-pork/anti-earmark amendments in the Senate, coupled with the similar House bill HR4241 (fiscon).

Short version of the results: the most reliable indicator of whether a given House Rep or Senator would vote in favor of the the anti-earmark legislation was whether they voted in favor of the socon bills -- and conversely, those that voted against the FMA and AntiStemCellFunding legislation also typically voted against the anti-earmark legislation.

That is, the evil divisive Social Conservatives (DeMint, Kyl, Sessions, Coburn) were big anti-earmark supporters. In fact, they aren't "socons" as opposed to "fiscons" -- they are just plain old across-the-board CONSERVATIVES. The so-called "fiscally conservative but socially liberal" moderates -- the sort of folks who like to call themselves "fiscons" because they just can't hang with those (ick!) social conservatives -- weren't. At All. The Snowes, Chafees, Specters, Grahams...are just not conservative in any way (as was made extremely clear by Chafee/Specter's later actions).

It's not about "socon vs fiscon". It's CONSERVATIVE vs not. (And contra Russ, above, the "socons" don't usually blow up the bridge. It's the Kathleen Parker/David Frum/Christie Todd Whitman/ it's-all-the-fault-of-the "evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP" chorus -- http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=YTk3NTUxY2IxYmJkNjhhZjMyYzhhYzg1YjU1ZTkwZTY= -- that continually tries (a) divide conservatives into these warring groups, and (b) send the ones they call "socons" to the back of the bus. Thanks for voting for our smart-set-approved candidates, you neanderthal troglodytes, now please go away...)

[richard40]

This article makes a good point. I'm not a fan of the socons myself. But if given a choice between a socon who is also a reliable fiscal conservative, vs a moderate, who will sell us out on both social and fiscal issues, I'll take the socon.

The real probem with Bush though, with his "compassionate conservatism", is he was reliable on socon issues, but not on fiscal issues. That is the worste possible combination, and in that case I'd just as soon have a dem.

I have a single yardstick, are they reliably conservative on fiscal, spending, and size of government issues. After that, their socon views are no longer a consideration, whether moderate or conservative or even liberal. I noticed the tea party has that same yardstick, and I beleive that is why they are winning.

The way to answer the big tent vs small tent for republicans, is to be small tent on fiscal conservatism, but big tent on other issues. That approach, the Tea Party approach, will give the repubs a chance at a permanent majority. And if it also results in some truly fiscal conservative dems (a rare species under obama), it might result in an even larger fiscal conservative cooalition.