A Coming Political Re-Alignment?

We could be in the midst of an historic political realignment in this country. "Moral conservatives" and "fiscal conservatives" have always made strange bedfellows, since enforcing morality requires a big, intrusive federal government, something that the fiscal conservatives are dead set against. Also, for moral conservatives, fiscal restraint is simply not an issue, while it is the whole nine yards for the fiscal conservatives. With Bush's ironclad hold on the Republican Party starting to slip badly, these fault lines are becoming increasingly obvious. See this: GOP Leaders Try to Soothe Conservatives. And this: Deep Pockets, Small Government and the Man in the Middle .

According to an Op-Ed piece by Brendan Miniter in yesterday's WSJ Opinion Journal, as "traditional" Republicans (those favoring small government, low taxes and low deficits) become increasingly disenchanted with the "borrow and spend" policies of their party, the Democratic Party is positioning itself to pick up the pieces:

If Democrats retake the House next year, we can mark the start of the party's resurgence to a speech Nancy Pelosi delivered on Capitol Hill last week. It was there, at a press conference called to attack Republicans over their response to Hurricane Katrina, that the House minority leader actually used the words "waste, fraud and abuse" in talking about government spending.

What Ms. Pelosi and a few other Democrats seem to be figuring out in the wake of Katrina is that Americans aren't happy with their government throwing billions of dollars around with little if any accountability. Therefore she's laying out a legislative agenda aimed at capturing the mantle of fiscal responsibility.

As if to confirm Miniter's point, the Washington Post (never a particular bastion of fiscal conservatism) published an editorial that same day comparing the Louisiana Congressional delegation to looters:

Like looters who seize six televisions when their homes have room for only two, the Louisiana legislators are out to grab more federal cash than they could possibly spend usefully. . . . The Louisiana bill is so preposterous that its authors can't possibly expect it to pass; it's just the first round in a process of negotiation. But the risk is that the administration and congressional leaders will accept the $250 billion as a starting point, then declare a victory for fiscal sanity when they bring the number down to, say, $150 billion. Instead, Congress should ignore the Louisiana bill and force itself to think seriously about the sort of reconstruction that makes sense.

When Nancy Pelosi starts railing against "waste, fraud and abuse" in federal spending and the Washington Post issues a call for "fiscal sanity" in helping vicitms of a natural disaster, something important may be going on.

The American electorate can, I believe, be broken down into three roughly equal groups. First, there are the traditional "liberals," more properly referred to as "progressives," who form the base of the Democratic Party. For these people, the political imperative is to assist the underprivileged, and they believe government programs are the best or at least only available instruments for furthering that goal. Second, there are the proto-libertarians who have, at least traditionally, formed the base of the Republican Party. These people believe that the best, maybe even the only, way to effectively help the poor is through economic growth and that economic growth and even freedom demands small government, low taxes, and low deficits. Finally, and newly come upon the scene, there are the social conservatives: those for whom the political imperative is to further and if necessary enforce a particular moral code. On issues other than morality, this group is amazingly diverse, including everything from ultra-progressive Minnesota DFLers to ultra-conservative John Birchers. But for all of them, morality now trumps any other domestic issue. The Republican Party has achieved its current political dominance by keeping most of the proto-libertarians within the Party while adding the social conservatives.

But, the proto-libertarians aren't all that happy with the arrangement. Being libertarian, they are pretty tolerant on social/moral issues. Moreover, the social conservative desire to see government take on an ever expanding role in enforcing morality is fundamentally at odds with the central premise of proto-libertarianism: that government governs best when it governs least. For this reason, I do not think that the current Republican coalition can endure.

In almost any other country in the world, the solution to this problem would be easy: form a third party designed to appeal to those who believe in being "liberal" on social issues and "conservative" on fiscal/monetary issues; a party of, say, "responsible liberals" and/or (truly) "compassionate conservatives." But in America, third parties just don't happen in any meaningful way. Rather, these sorts of tensions are resolved by shifts within the two major parties themselves.

Perhaps it is only because I am one of them, but I think the next few federal elections will be battles for the votes of what I am calling the proto-libertarians. It seems doubtful that the Republican Party can soon free itself of the influence of the social conservatives. And, more and more, the positions the Party takes in deference to that faction will tend to drive the proto-libertarians away. Whether they just give up or move to the Democratic Party probably depends to a large degree on whether the Democratic Party can move toward them on issues of fiscal responsibility, taxes and deficits. If Miniter is right, that movement is already starting to occur. And, if it continues, many more voters who (like I) once counted themselves as staunch Republicans will end up finding in the Democratic Party much the lesser of two evils. At that point, if it occurs, the rise of Republican political power that began with Richard Nixon will begin to wane.