Darwin
Friends of Darwin
MisfitBloggers

Categories

He loves and she loves

Just Causes


  • Support_denmark

  • Marykay_1

Password required

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

« Roughing it: Now she twitters, now she doesn't | Main | Dinner in a bowl: The mightiest Caesar of them all »

September 20, 2010

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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...)

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.

The comments to this entry are closed.

The Cold Turkey Cookbook

Look to the animals

  • looktotheanimals

Kudos

Blog powered by Typepad