I nodded along to much of John Avlon’s essay. If my reaction surprises him, it is because he has misread my own article in ways large and small.

I do not believe, for example, and did not actually say, that social issues won the 2002 and 2004 elections. Obviously Avlon is correct to say that national-security issues put Republicans over the top those years. What I would say is, first, that the social issues helped Republicans in those years and, second, that given that Republican losses in 2006 and 2008 coincided with a decreased emphasis on social issues, it is a bit peculiar to react to those losses by making a priority out of changing the party’s position on social issues. (I don’t, on the other hand, buy Avlon’s overall interpretation of the 2006 elections: He claims that unnamed polls proved that fiscal irresponsibility played a bigger role than the chaos in Iraq in that election.)

I agree with Avlon, as well, that Republicans cannot build a majority merely by appealing to their base and that they must also attract voters who consider themselves moderate. Again, I never said otherwise. I continue to think that Avlon is mistaken in regarding “the center” as a singular bloc made up of socially liberal, hawkish fans of the flat tax, and in thinking that the wisest way for Republicans to expand their appeal is to move left on the social issues.

Avlon asserts, while giving us no reason to believe, that social issues were not Rudolph Giuliani’s chief problem in the primaries. If that is the case, then why does Avlon insist that the Republican party abandon “a social-conservative litmus test for its leadership”? If the social issues did not keep him from getting the nomination, then there is no such litmus test to abandon.

Avlon cites several pieces of evidence to prove what nobody is controverting: that the public is not in lockstep agreement with social conservatives. It is true that voters rejected initiatives to declare that state governments would have to treat conception as the beginning of life — that is to say, initiatives to enact the entire pro-life agenda. It is also true that voters in California, a relatively socially liberal state, rejected a more modest pro-life initiative. And it is true, finally, that on some important questions pollsters regularly find pro-lifers in the minority (although Avlon could have found better examples than a FabMac poll with clearly loaded wording).

None of these data points does anything to strengthen the case that Republicans should move left on or downplay social issues. If a state rejected an initiative to abolish the income tax, would we conclude that tax cuts were now an issue that hurt Republicans?

Avlon’s philosophical argument is no more persuasive than his political one. He says that Republican positions on social issues limit freedom and thus contrast with the party’s libertarian positions on other issues. His claim is a classic case of begging the question. Whether protection for unborn children is a restriction on a right or a defense of one is, after all, pretty much the nub of the abortion-policy debate. Nor are any Republicans campaigning to bring back the sodomy laws.

There may indeed be ways in which Republicans should modify their approach to the social issues. But they ought to be way down the list of things Republicans ought to address in the aftermath of two successive wallopings, because there is just no reason to think that the social issues played any role in those defeats.

– Ramesh Ponnuru is senior editor of National Review and author of The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life.