Back in June, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who many think would be an attractive 2012 presidential candidate, was quoted by Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard as saying the next president “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues.”
That quickly attracted some harsh criticism from opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage. But Daniels has declined to back down, telling the Indianapolis Star the other day that such issues are secondary to the economy and foreign policy.
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I think both Daniels and his critics have missed the point. The fact is that there is an ongoing truce on the social issues, because for most Americans they have been overshadowed by concerns raised by the weak economy and the Barack Obama Democrats’ vast increase in the size and scope of government.
Those with strong positions on both sides of the abortion and gay-rights issues don’t like to hear that. They base their views on strongly held moral beliefs that are intellectually defensible and not vicious in character.
And for more than a decade, they had gotten used to a politics in which the demographic variable most highly correlated with voting behavior was religion, or degree of religiosity, and in which positions on abortion were very highly correlated with partisan preference.
Our politics in the years from 1995 to 2005 or so was like a culture war between two approximately equal-sized armies fighting it out over small bits of terrain that made the difference between victory and defeat. In that context, abortion and other cultural issues were litmus tests in the contests for both parties’ presidential nominations.
I don’t think that’s likely to be the case in the future. You don’t hear potential contenders for the 2012 Republican nomination talking about cultural issues very much. And the intramural arguments among Democrats are over things like tax cuts for the rich and the public option in the health-care bill.
Even as economics is overshadowing all else, we seem to have reached a truce in the culture wars because important issues have been settled as a practical matter.
Abortion remains controversial. But we are not going to see abortion criminalized, not in a country where the Supreme Court has been ruling for 37 years that it’s a right.
At the same time, we are seeing abortion disfavored and restricted by state laws that are widely popular and have at least in some cases been upheld by the courts. Polls show that young voters, liberal on most cultural issues, have slightly more negative views on abortion than their elders.
On gay rights, we also see something in the nature of a truce. Polls suggest majority support for Congress’s repeal of the ban on open gays in the military, and the Marine Corps commandant, who opposed the change, promised to work hard to implement it.
This is true only so far as Obama made our economic crisis so dire that for the moment the issues are on the back burner. However that will not last. The Supreme Court is primed to change over and be able to vote down Roe v Wade and Bolton. If that happens the politics of Abortion will happily move to the State level.
Judges that impose changes on the rest of will continue to drive the culture war. Until communities are left alone to decide things and the Feds stop interfering in normal affairs the culture wars will continue. Besides there are many, many more links between the economic and social issues than people recognize. Ignore the culture and focus solely on the economics of the country you are doomed to fail at useful conservative reforms.
Perhaps you are correct that we have reached an acceptable status quo, but let me tell you the problem with this. "Values voters" comprise a sizable minority of the electorate. The GOP has had some success in attracting these voters. Despite what some people say, these voters are extremely hard to motivate to political action; mostly they prefer to stay at home with their families. If the GOP expects to prevail in electoral contests, it must energize these voters to the polls, and kicking them and their issues to the curb, yet again, would be a major mistake.
What is described in this piece is not a "truce" but a "stalemate" as the war settles down to a recognizable front. And it's really not even that given the social Left's huge victories this year repealing DADT and enacting Obamacare.
One thing Mr Barone didn't highlight is the fact that younger people just don't believe in marriage anymore. Co-habitation is the norm, whether the couple is well educated or not. I know that many people highlight the lower divorce trends in recent years. But this just underscores the plain fact that fewer and fewer people get married anymore.
It's not that younger people are necessairily more "tolerant"; they just don't care as far a marriage is concerned. The marriage bed no longer has the mystique or theological wieght it once had. From that perspective, it is not surprising at all then that people under 40 support "gay" marriage. You can expect people to defend an institution few believe is worth fighting for.
What Mr. Barone describes as a truce is really a defeat. The traditionalists have lost when it comes to homosexuality. Repealing DADT is just another milestone along the road to a societal consensus that homosexuality is of equal dignity with heterosexuality. I am very unhappy about this outcome because I think homosexuality is strongly correlated with societal decline, and I want to continue the good fight.
As for abortion, Mr. Barone describes only a binary outcome for this issue. He obviously hasn't given much thought to what the world will look like when Roe v. Wade is overturned. What will happen is that some states will keep their abortion laws as they exist today. I imagine that New York, California, the District of Columbia, and other liberal jurisdictions where militant feminism is a very important political force will fall into this camp. The rest of the states will outlaw some but not all abortions. I imagine that third trimester abortions will be illegal in the vast majority of states. Also, I imagine that second trimester abortions will be regulated in most states so that they become relatively rare. However, I predict that almost no states will seriously interfere with abortions during the first trimester. I strongly suspect that this will be the political compromise most states strike, and it will become an enduring state of affairs that no longer poisons our political discourse.
The U.S. Supreme Court did a tremendous disservice to the nation by ruling the way it did in Roe v. Wade and this has now poisoned our politics for over a generation. Abortion is like any other issue and should be resolved by legislation enacted by the people's elected representatives. This system works.
Cdscott. One thing the ERA looked like an absolute lock and it died. I don't think that homosexual marriage with so many electoral defeats behind it is going to win through soon. Even in Iowa where judges made up a law recognizing homosexual marriage the voters turned out all three judges up for re-election. We never do that in America but on this issue we did it. That battle is not lost nor as much of a stalemate as Mr. Barone thinks.
RNCCritic you are very right. Unless the Tea Party people learn this they will never achieve what they dream of achieving. Social and economic issues are linked ignoring that link will be deadly for the GOP.
What about the so-called 'conservative' desire to keep the govt out of people's everyday lives? Or does that take a back seat to denying rights to those who do things you consider icky?
Samuel what the heck are you talking about? Keeping government from destroying marriage is keeping government off our backs, allowing children to live and grow up, stopping abortion, is keeping government off our backs. What icky stuff are you talking about? No one here has asked the government to ban or stop anyone from doing anything we find "icky".
Gay "marriage" is not something icky it is something that can't be done without destroying the meaning of marriage. That means conservatives are on the side of restricting government action not asking for government action.
Hi Samuel, what wynguard said. Virtually all of my neighbors and I abhor 3rd trimester abortions and we don't want to live in a community that pretends they are ok. We have just as much right to be let alone as anyone else.
All philosophical points aside (such as the inextricable connection between social and economic issues), I think you are correct but only marginally so.
I think a substantial percentage of the electorate cares less about social issues in the face of economic uncertainty than they might in more stable times.
Yet those in the opposing camps of each hot-button social issue have hardly declared a truce, as several other commenters have pointed out. This explains, in part, the disappointment some have expressed (myself included) that NRO took a pass on the DADT debate.
As anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence can attest, it is at those times when the "silent majority" sits content that radicalism advances the furthest through the courts. (And that's not to mention changes to media, academia, Hollywood, etc.)
Yours was an admirable defense of the word "truce" which so poorly described the current state of affairs on social issues. But the best analogy here seems to be the "truce" on the Korean Peninsula--which is to say, a calm before the coming storm.
Just like Republicans, to call for a truce after their opponents seize critical terrain. The Democrats' rammed-through lame-duck repeal of DADT is an abuse that deserves to be reversed, or at least slow-rolled by the incoming Republican House majority. House Republicans should be insistent in holding SECDEF Gates and ADM Mullen to their legal obligation under the repeal law to establish that implementation will not adversely affect military readiness or effectiveness. They should use their oversight authority if necessary, including holding hearings and zeroing funding for implementation.
