Social and Fiscal Conservatism

There are some who argue that the Republicans have tricked poorer American voters into supporting social conservatism.  While it is true that some poor voters are convinced that they should vote Republican based on values, there are in fact many more rich voters who decide to support Republicans because of social issues.  The authors of this book have come up with persuasive polling data to indicate precisely that.

Their argument makes quite a bit of sense.  People who have less money would be more likely to place an emphasis on economic issues.  The more money you have, the less important additional money is likely to be when compared with other things.

This is one reason why I find it deeply disturbing that Newt Gingrich has taken it upon himself to come out so strongly in favor of religious bigotry against secularists.  It is fortunate for the Republican party that he is unlikely to win the nomination.  The most likely nominee, Mitt Romney, favors a more mild form of bigotry, which is really nothing that goes further than the common stance on this subject.  By retaining the motto "In God we trust." we are essentially saying that if you don't believe in God, you're not one of us.  Clearly most Americans either don't see this or don't care.

The Cato Institute has come out in support of Mitch Daniels' "truce" on social issues, and pointed out that criticism of this stance drew a negative response by readers of the Wall Street Journal.  Unfortunately Mitch Daniels is not quite immune to anti-secular bigotry.  His ideas about atheism causing brutality are given a quite skillful and thorough refutation by Johnathan Turley.  You can find a summary of Tim Pawlenty's positions on issues that are important to the religious right in the Minnesota Independent.  Since he is the second most likely Republican nominee, the generally conservative stances that he has taken on these issues are unlikely to appeal to secular Americans.

I believe it is bad from the standpoint of promoting free market economics that the Republicans have emphasized their social agenda so much.  Perhaps this is part of the explanation for our nation's steady drift into socialism.  I have put out a spreadsheet showing social spending going up under Republicans as well as Democrats.  Even conservatives who earned quite a reputation for social spending, like Ronald Reagan, actually increased spending in this area.  I suspect that the reason for this is that there were other aspects of the Republican party platform that they wanted to emphasize, like social issues and expanding national defense.

The dynamic goes like this.  The Republicans appeal only to rich and middle class religious people and the Democrats appeal to everyone else.  Because the Republicans answer to a constituency that is more affluent than average, they are even less likely than the average voter to care about economic issues.  In contrast the Democrats are very interested in economic issues, since their constituency is poorer than average.