Lately a bunch of articles have been making the rounds blaming McCain's defeat on social conservatives who had "hijacked the party." The problem with all of these arguments is that McCain was the most liberal Republican Presidential nominee in decades. He certainly didn't run with a social conservative platform front and center. A hard core challenge to Obama on abortion and gay rights might have had unpredictable results, but it's not the route that McCain took.
It's far more plausible to argue that the lack of social conservativism did McCain in, than the other way around. But in this election the big issues for most voters were the economy and a dissatisfaction with Republicans, one that was rooted in the usual frustration with incumbents when things aren't going well.
Protecting traditional values is however a solid issue that continues to resonate with large numbers of voters on both sides of the aisle. Those who claim that Republicans lost the middle over social issues, forget that even Obama voters have demonstrated a tendency to fall more on the dreaded social conservative side of the aisle, as witnessed in California.
By contrast the sort of voter for whom support for gay marriage, abortion or evolution are do or die issues, is rarely the sort of voter who would consider voting Republican in the first place, absent a truly dire situation. That is not to say that the party should seek the furthest extreme or make them primary campaign issues in national elections, but soft-pedaling them only results in rejection by both sides... as the 2008 election demonstrated.
Social conservativism is not the problem, but neither is it the solution in and of itself. The average American will not go to the polls primarily on social issues. Social conservativism can only be part of a larger conservative worldview, one that stands for reducing government and increasing personal and commercial liberty and protecting authentic Constitutional rights at the expense of group rights produced by judicial activism.
the Federal government is a very poor tool for promoting conservative values and a very good tool for promoting liberal ones.
After multiple Presidents, the Department of Education, the NEA and any number of departments and institutions continue to promote a liberal agenda. Which means that the right solution is to dismantle the Federal government's ability to promote any values and reduce its local influence, rather than to try and use it to legislate social policy. Kicking social issues back to the states will allow Red States to be Red States and Blue States to be Blue States, which is as it should be in a democracy. Communities have the right to decide their own values and identity and people should have the right to choose a place to live that mirrors those values.
However even the Federal government can serve a valuable purpose by protecting against liberal attempts to write their own social agenda, one alien to most Americans into law. And that is in line with Conservative values. Innovations such as gay marriage or a constitutional right to abortion should be protected against, and the Federal government can fight judicial activism and resist the liberal Jihad against traditional American values.
Liberalism has succeeded in framing the debate as taking place between Tolerance and Intolerance. But the issue is not a matter of tolerance. It is a matter of respect for the values of the Constitution and the Republic and that of the average American citizen.
The entire Liberal notion of rights protection depends on extending the power of government over persons and institutions. The Conservative idea of rights protection must be to reduce the power of government over persons and institutions. And in doing so we will automatically negative the base and source of Liberal power.
The greatest Liberal fear is of Americans deciding for themselves what they want, not "special groups" deciding it, but ordinary citizens on a state by state and community by community basis. Their hardly hidden contempt for the average American, a creature they wish to displace through immigration and economic turmoil, when they aren't trying suppress, silence and brainwash him tells us they know as well as we do what the overall outcome would be, if their social policies were put to such a test. And even if they didn't, they have lost enough social referendums to draw them a map.
That then will become the true Conservative challenge in 2010 and 2012, to take Federal power only to give it up, by dismantling much of it, as they should have done in 2000, instead of using it as a great bipartisan pork barrel and a never ending source of new agencies and restrictions.
A new Contract with America, one that will commit to small government, individual freedom and state rights should be the ultimate goal for a new and revitalized Republican party and conservative movement.
