It seems clear that, with the promotion of Rudy Giuliani for the Republican nomination for the presidency, and with the tolerance or outright embrace of such left-leaning cultural issues as homosexual rights by many nominal or erstwhile conservatives, social conservatives will have to look elsewhere for leadership on their concerns than the Republican Party, as they had to do and still have to do over the issue of affirmative action. Ryan Sager suggested the more libertarian path for the Republican Party in his book The Elephant in the Room, and so far the support seems to be lining up behind his idea.
Of course affirmative action seems a natural libertarian issue, since it involves government-sponsored social engineering, but corporate America has found that it can manage ”diversity,” and libertarians have been divided on this issue as far as I can tell. I think the burden has been carried mainly by the more socially conservative-minded types for whom the principles of fairness and equal treatment were more primary.