Though it may not seem like it of late, the Republican Party is in some ways an uneasy coalition no less than the Democrats are. Richard Nixon's decision to commit the party to a "Southern Strategy" in 1968, an approach cemented by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, has wedded the GOP to a social conservative agenda that has been dominated by concern over issues like abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research. Those views make it almost impossible for a candidate who can gain the party's nomination to win in the Northeast and California.
I was talking to a moderate Republican the other day, a strong McCain supporter. He was pessimistic about McCain's chances of winning the election this year. We went over the electoral map, trying to figure which states the venerable Arizonan would need to win and could win, and it seemed a very difficult task. "When you can't win California it makes it awfully hard," my friend remarked. His basic thesis was that by putting their eggs in the social conservative basket, the Republicans can't win hardly any of the Northeast, Pacific Coast and Great Lakes states, and have to take almost everything in the South, Plains, and Mountain West. Slip anywhere and they're through.
That is true, but the strategy has resulted in Republican victories in 7 of the last 10 presidential contests. Their victories are sometimes narrow, but they have been winning most of the time.
Not all Republicans agree with those social conservative views. The Republican coalition is made up of social conservatives, defense conservatives, and economic/constitutional conservatives. The latter group has a very different perspective on things than the first two. My friend is one of these economic/constitutional types. His consistent view is that government power, especially federal power, should be limited. Economic and personal liberties should be infringed as little as possible by the government. This was actually the view advocated by the modern father of the conservative movement, Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, in his 1964 presidential race.
You can see how the other two groups are at odds with this. Defense conservatives favor aggrandizing the military power of the country almost without limit. But small-government boosters view this as an extremely dangerous threat to the future of liberty in the country. Social conservatives too, favor the heavy use of government power, in their case to discourage personal behaviors of which they disapprove or to promote others, such as evangelical religion, which they favor. Constitutional conservatives such as my friend see these stances as unwarranted infringements by the state into personal liberties and matters of individual choice.
When times were good for the conservative movement these differences have often been subsumed. In tough political environments for the Republican Party such as now, the coalition can become frayed. It is a truism that alliances suffer their greatest stresses and tend to unravel as they near defeat. My friend's greatest lament was that if McCain loses it will discredit the electoral chances of his brand of conservative, even though the environment created by the social/defense conservative George W. Bush is actually to blame. Ironically, it could pave the way for a new succession of Republican social and defense conservative candidates in the years ahead who would either continue to lose, or who, if they won, would continue increasing the power of the state.
Of course, McCain is also an avid defense conservative, so he doesn't fully fit into the small-government mold. Yet if he loses, expect the social conservatives to loudly proclaim the reason to be his inadequate ardor for their moral issues. The 2008 election is not just a battle between McCain and Barack Obama; it is also a battle for the soul of the Republican Party. If McCain does go down to defeat, economic/constitutional conservatives will once again have to hold their noses and vote for the next George W. Bush or find somewhere else to hang their political hats.
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