Sort of political Monday

The ebbing of social conservatism
I'm increasingly convinced that social conservatism is ebbing away. Which isn’t to say it is going away, just that it is in decline and may go into eclipse for a while. One of the prime reasons I am convinced of this is the way the Republican field for 2012 is shaping up. There isn’t a single sunbelt candidate in this field. That is staggering when you consider that since 1960, only two GOP leadership candidates (Gerald Ford and Bob Dole) have come from outside the Sunbelt. All the others came from the sunbelt.

Sunbelt candidates project authenticity and social conservatives value authenticity.

But this year none of the sunbelt contenders have been able to get any traction with the Republican base. And I emphasize that “Republican base”. Huckabee was always a long-shot with the general electorate but he dropped out when he realized he was a long-shot with the Republican base. Even Republicans have gotten tired of this kind of authenticity.

I think there are two reasons for this:

1. A lot of people are now scared of social conservatives. They scare fiscal conservatives, they scare independents, they scare libertarians, they even scare a lot of other social conservatives who publicly support social conservatism but secretly hope that it never gets to be too successful. And the reason for this is simple: people worry that social conservatives want to turn back the clock on the sexual revolution and fiscal conservatives, independents and substantial subset of social conservatives just don’t want to do that. (I think this is most true of the Catholic voter who often will feel compelled to provide lip service for traditional sexual morality in public but privately is deeply grateful for the sexual revolution.)
2. Social conservatism is often just a mirror image of liberalism and a mirror image is a lot more like the thing it reflects than anything else. A guy with a mole on the left side of his face becomes a guy with a mole on the right side of his face in the mirror but, either way, he’s a guy with a mole on his face. For example: social conservatives are addicted to social spending. They don’t want it decreased—in fact they always increase it when they get into power—they just want to move this particular mole from the left to the right.

I think there are a lot of people who’ve wanted to jump away from social conservatism for a while now. They’re just looking for a way to do it.