He has a response to my post from yesterday.

In his latest post, he offers examples of religious extremism and intolerance at CPAC. “1) I couldn’t count on all my fingers and all my toes how many times speakers said either directly or indirectly that God had chosen George W. Bush as president. . . . 2) There was plenty of rhetoric about how God should be front and center in our civic and political cultures. 3) There was plenty of ranting about ‘Will & Grace’ and other immoral popular culture.” I have to say that none of this strikes me as particularly extreme; it would depend on how these things were said. But since Sager was at CPAC and I wasn’t, I’ll defer to his sense of its overall tone.

Obviously, our disagreement goes beyond CPAC. Sager thinks that the Republican party’s reputation for intolerance is an electoral liability. It alienates swing voters. “It seems to me that there was a huge chunk of the electorate that, under different circumstances (i.e. no War on Terror), would have voted for Kerry over Bush without batting an eye. These were people who were disgusted with runaway spending, disgusted with the Republican fear-mongering regarding gays and none-too-impressed with the rest of the Bush presidency. . . . Given a slightly better Democratic candidate, or given less concern about terrorism, the Republicans would have lost the presidency this time around. And there’s no reason to think that with a credible Democrat on the top of the ticket in 2008 — and even Hillary Clinton is busy fashioning herself into a strong-on-defense moderate — that the Democrats won’t win big.”

Let me start off my response by saying that I think libertarians are right about the proper functions of the federal government 90 percent of the time. I would certainly like for there to be a lot fewer federal programs. What follows is my take on the electorate we have, not the one we might wish for.

Most sets of positions on contested political issues bring advantages and liabilities to the party that holds them. It is certainly true that social conservative positions–and the attitudes these positions are perceived to signify–alienate some voters. (I’m going to set aside illegal immigration, which Sager mentions but doesn’t quite fit in with the social conservative vs. libertarian divide.) But they also bring in voters. The same can be said of opposition to big government: It too appeals to some voters and alienates others (at least when it’s put in terms of opposition to specific government interventions).

I think at this point we have quite a lot of evidence, however, that the social issues are net winners of votes and the size of government issues net losers.

–Republicans’ biggest setbacks over the last decade occurred in 1995-96, when they were associated, fairly or unfairly, with anti-government extremism rather than social-conservative extremism–and particularly with hostility to Medicare.

–Bush seems to have strengthened the party partly by giving ground on the size-of-government issues but not on the moral ones.

–In 2004, which issue set was Bush most defensive about and which was he most aggressive about? During the debates, he seemed much happier to talk about abortion and even stem-cell research than about outsourcing, the minimum wage, or prescription drugs. I think his relative enthusiasm for these issues reflects basic political facts on the ground, not something specific to his philosophy or record.

–Over the last two presidential races, the Democrats have acted as though the social issues were more damaging to them than the economic ones, too.

–What are the issues Hillary Clinton is “moderating” on? The war; abortion; the role of faith in public life. She’s not moderating on size of government issues.

By the end of his post, Sager is tacitly conceding that many swing voters in Ohio–I would add Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Minnesota, among others–are attracted to the Republican party because of its social conservatism. When “swing voters” aren’t just a media abstraction–when parties are actually competing for them–they don’t turn out to be social liberals who want less spending. They are much more likely to be socially conservative union members and blue-collar hunters.

If you want some of conservatism’s libertarian elements to be strengthened–and I join Sager in wanting this–getting a clear view of our actual political circumstances is a prerequisite. Sager’s a smart guy, but I think that his political prescriptions reflect wishful thinking on his part.