Re: The Political Season

Chase, you state, "Republicans are either the opposition Party to Democrats, and define themselves so by their policies and principles, or they will be the minority Party in American politics for many years to come." What can I say? I agree.

But there are some questions. When it's all said and done, we lost NY-23 to a liberal Democrat where a clearly conservative candidate ran explicitly against the Obama agenda. Chris Christie is conservative - but only by New Jersey standards, which is not a very high bar.

It seems, at least in the northeast, there has to be some mitigation of the conservative standard to be competitive. Where do we draw the line? I have heard some commentators say the line is between fiscal and social conservatives; that is, northeastern Republicans would be conservative on taxes, the size of government, regulations, Federalism, and the like, but would play to whatever the local politics dictates on abortion, gay marriage and other social issues.

This makes some sense, but feels a might too pat. I suspect this line is most embraced by our Republican intellectual elites, who tend to look down their patrician noses at the social conservative wing of the Party, often wishing on some level that the socials cons would just leave the Republican Party altogether. But social conservatives are an absolutely necessary component of the Party, without which we lose every Presidential election since 1980 (possibly excepting only Reagan's 1984 landslide).

Besides, the social's do the heavy lifting in branding the Republican Party as the Party of Life, a critical philosophical core of conservatism, and an important complement to the fiscal conservative foundation in Liberty. In fact, fiscal conservatives, left to themselves, tend too much towards dry economics and wonkishness, leading them to be less skeptical of government solutions than they should be.

Any thoughts?