I was glad to meet Joe Carter during the Washington Briefing this past weekend, but he raises a point that started to raise my eyebrows:
Right-leaning bloggers are out of touch with a large portion--if not the majority--of conservatives in America.
... the semantic distinction between "social conservatives" and "fiscal conservatives" presents a false dichotomy. Conservatism is rooted in principles (transcendent moral order, social continuity, prudence, etc) that naturally have implications for economics. If you are a conservative you are conservative about matters of society and thus likely to espouse economic policies that are fiscally conservative as well. But conservatism cannot begin with economic or fiscal issues as the primary concerns, much less push social issues to the periphery. Anyone who thinks tax reduction is essential while abortion and marriage are secondary or unimportant cannot rightly be considered to be "conservative", at least not by the standards of the American conservative tradition. Currently we don’t have a label for people whose primary philosophical concern is their pocketbooks. It is becoming increasingly apparent, though, that we can simply call them "Republicans."
Hooey. I've flipped through Joe's blog quite a bit and respect his views, but I'm having a hard time buying the argument that the non-adamantly pro-life conservative isn't a conservative, even if he is pro-life.
Rolling back taxes is fairly cut and dry from a rhetorical, as well as economic perspective. But when you're fighting abortion, you have to find ways to convince those who are in the middle of the road. That involves arguing about the beginning of life. Using more secular rhetoric to reach those who disagree. It might involve creating programs to offset the rise in single-parents that would inevitably follow a ban. Where you can argue with statistical analysis on the virtues of tax cuts, it's much harder to argue against abortion -- though obviously that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. Conservative leaders prior to Roe v. Wade weren't crusading against abortion on the state level by and large. The more recent, higher rates of it everywhere may be a call to arms, but a failure to reprioritize isn't a failure to be conservative.
This reminds me of this cartoon from Investors Business Daily:
And it reminds me that the pro-life movement has seen the biggest advances when it takes smaller steps, such as the ban on partial-birth abortion. Roe v. Wade has yet to be overturned, and that ought to be in sharp focus. Pro-lifers should be looking for ways to accomplish that first. In the meantime, state ballot initiatives are also fair game. As for marriage, my understanding is that the conservative consensus is against gay marriage, but divided over how to deal with it -- some feel it should be taken care of at the state level, some at the federal. The former would see no problem jumping for a candidate who would allow federalism to deal with the issue, and to call that unconservative makes no sense to me.
Perhaps the more divisive rhetoric is spilling out because it's primary season and there's a chance to get in the social conservative ideal, but as Gary Bauer said, evangelicals ought to be against suicide.
