Should the GOP sell its soul

Jonah Goldberg:

BY now you've probably heard: The GOP is becoming too regional, too white, too old to compete nationally. Democrats look like the cast of "Rent," while Republicans look like diehard fans of "Matlock" and "Murder, She Wrote."

Fine. The GOP needs to win over more Hispanics, young people, suburban women. That sounds plausible. But what does "win over" mean?

To listen to many pundits, it means Republicans must become Democrats. The GOP has become too socially conservative, and if it wants to win the support of mainstream voters, it will need to become more socially liberal.

If only the party could be more like former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, these voices have been saying for years, the GOP would truly become the majority party. Remember the Alan Alda character on NBC's blessedly defunct "West Wing"? We were told that his pro-choice stance on abortion would make the Republican Party vastly more competitive in places like California and New York.

The problem is that Alda's TV character is only marginally more fictional than Christine Todd Whitman. Economically conservative social liberals are the "jackalopes of American politics," in the words of National Review's Kate O'Beirne. The press keeps telling us they exist out there in huge numbers, but when you go looking for them, they refuse to emerge from the bushes.

In fairness, many people do describe themselves this way. Most of the time we simply call them "Democrats." Those who call themselves Republicans should more properly be called "confused."

This isn't to say that one can't be a moderate on this issue or that and be a Republican. But the idea that social liberalism and economic conservatism can coexist easily is not well supported by the evidence. For example, in Congress and in state legislatures, the more pro-life you are, the more likely you are to be a free-market, low-tax conservative. The more pro-choice you are, the more likely it is that you'll be remarkably generous with other people's money.

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It should be noted that it's also difficult to be fiscally conservative and socially conservative if you've jettisoned the conservative dogma of limited government. We saw this in spades as President Bush embraced "activist government" and ended up wildly increasing government spending over the last eight years.

That should serve as a warning to those, on the right and left, who'd like to see the GOP defenestrate millions of actual party members - e.g., social conservatives - in order to woo millions of largely nonexistent jackalopes. The GOP would simply cease to exist as a viable party without the support of social and religious conservatives. But not so the other way around.

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As I note in the post below, referendums on social issues prevailed during the election. Clearly many Obama voters in California and Florida voted against gay marriage since he carried both states and both states banned gay marriage.

I think another dynamic was at work this time. Republicans failed to do a good job of fighting back against Democrat attacks on war policies. We were right, but our leadership mostly absorbed the blows of the left rather than attack those Democrats for their bad policy ideas on the war. For example, Obama was just dead wrong on the surge as were just about every Democrat not named Joe Lieberman. Yet they were not made to pay a political cost for being wrong and Republicans remained on the defensive. That is where we have got to change. We need to be more aggressive in going after the Democrats on national security issues.

We should be hammering Obama's return to the lawfare model of fighting terrorism. It puts us on the strategic defensive and it gives the enemy access to our intelligence operations. It is what led to 9-11 and made it difficult to stop attacks. These are all issues that Obama should have been hammered with during the campaign. It is his vulnerability and his policies will make us more vulnerable to attack.