Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
A Hard Truth: Social Issues May Not Be Losers
Republican strategists may need to face up to an inconvenient truth: conservative social positions are no longer a thorn in the GOP’s side. We can win with them. Without them, it’s tough to say.
For some, this is a hard pill to swallow. Many Republicans are quite attached to a progressive social narrative, and strategic considerations have long been the justification for telling religious conservatives that they’re on the wrong side of history. Whether that’s true still remains to be seen. This most recent election, however, showed us Democrats desperately trying to gin up some resentment over social issues, and losing. Meanwhile we saw pro-life, pro-traditional marriage conservatives winning across the map, sometimes in fairly blue states.
While it would be wrong to see this election as a referendum on social issues, it’d be equally wrong to dismiss these issues as trivial or unrelated to the outcome. Actually, the social issues are reasonably well-aligned with the broader narrative of Democratic failure. Liberals got too much power, overplayed their hand, alienated much of the public, and were punished. As I explained at The Federalist earlier this week, our job now is to be reasonable, and make liberals pay for their excesses.
Hillary Clinton isn’t going to be able to rein in the wilder progressive factions as they crusade for gender eradication, polyamory, abortion parties and the like. We can profit from that in 2016 by presenting ourselves as responsible and reasonable and asking for explanations of the crazier liberal behavior. The goal here is not to put social issues front and center of the GOP’s platform, but rather to reinforce our aura of reasonableness. Also, if we play our cards right, we may put Democrats in the position of running for cover whenever social questions arise. Wouldn’t that be nice?
I realize of course that many will see marriage as the continuing weak point for Republicans. Hasn’t America basically embraced same-sex marriage, leaving us vulnerable to being tarred as bigoted reactionaries if we don’t comply.
I say more about this in my Federalist piece, but the short answer is that the issue has lost its thunder. Middle-of-road voters don’t seem to care that much about it anymore and — interestingly — the youngest new voters are trending Republican, even though most are fine with same-sex marriage. I think the main explanation is that they are products of their time in terms of their social mores, but so much so that they don’t see marriage as a major voting issue, and don’t seem inclined to punish the GOP for putting forward more traditional-marriage-supporting candidates. Second, many people are bothered by the grossly undemocratic means by which marriage redefinition is being imposed on the country at large. That fits nicely with the broader narrative of “Democratic overreach,” and offers some nice talking points for politicians in 2016, insofar as the issue needs to be discussed.
Third, I’m confident that we haven’t seen the end of the marriage issue. If you’ve paid attention to progressive social change, you know that these central issues never really die. They shift and present themselves again in different forms, generally recycling the same fundamental disagreements in slightly different clothing. Right now we’re moving into a relative lull on the marriage debate, and if we can allow marriage to slide to the back burner, that might be just as well for the moment. But it will flare up again, however — probably within the next decade or two — and it’s good to give at least a little thought to the future.
The precise timing and contours of the next confrontation are hard to predict from the present vantage point. Clearly, one relevant question concerns the Supreme Court, which may decide to “settle” the matter for us, in much the way it once “settled” the abortion issue. That might actually be a gift to the GOP, because court victories can sometimes — as in the case of Roe v Wade — give cultural momentum to the losers.
In any case, the worst thing we can do at this juncture is sacrifice our moral authority by making a formal act of submission to the overlords of Progressivism, at precisely the time when the voters have started to lose interest in the whole business. Voters mostly think it’s over, so we can allow it to slip lower on their priority lists for the next few years. When the next round comes (and it will), we’ll have a stronger hand if we have retained some semblance of principle. It could also help to have been obviously wronged by an overactive judiciary and corrupt, culturally imperialistic progressives.
Meanwhile, white Evangelicals have been turning out in strong numbers for the GOP. Let’s keep that party going.
Published in General
Seconded.
No. And this is where, I’d argue, that the true cultural conflict really is.
For example, what does it mean to say that “parents who are not capable of raising the children they conceive …?” Let’s examine that for a second. We can make two objections right away.
This conversation is also dependent on how the culture addresses responsibilities. I’d say the social conservative theory is different from contemporary society’s.
KC, I agree with all you say about parental responsibility, but I also think the biological connection is very important to kids and their sense of place and identity. It is wrong to deliberately deprive children of their biological heritage.
Tuck–parents, schools and churches should all teach kids that finishing HS, marrying before parenthood and staying married prevents poverty. It’s the truth.
While agreeing with KC’s larger cultural point, I am also directly offended by surrogacy, which brings a child into the world with the deliberate intention of ripping it away from its natural parents, all for the sake of satisfying someone else’s desire to experience parenthood. Children are instrumentalized here in a deeply objectionable way.
And, I think it’s interesting that people who are fine with surrogacy generally also support the massive distribution of contraceptives, fitting teenagers with IUD’s etc. So, things designed to prevent babies from coming into existence. Is it not better for *those* kids to exist than not? Not really consistent here.
Just because you are in favor of bringing children into the world does not mean that you have to favor bringing children into the world as a consequence of every sexual encounter. Not everyone buys into Catholic sexual moralizing.
I understand the moral objections to it, but does anyone think that opposition to surrogacy is a winning political issue?
When it comes to a “crusade for gender eradication, polyamory, abortion parties and the like”, both sides have their kooks. Both sides have their own versions of the Westboro “Baptist” “Church”. Maggie Gallagher’s horror stories haven’t had any greater effect than Wendy Davis’s.
If SSM isn’t a settled issue (which I doubt), you’d think the country would be seething with anger (it’s not), but I’ll give the OP the benefit of the doubt; opposition could come back. Sure, it’s possible. Anything’s possible in politics. But like marijuana legalization, at the moment it’s widely accepted without much pushback. There really is only one social issue left with any political salience: abortion. No, I’m not calling it “Life”, and I’m not calling it “Women’s reproductive rights”. We’re all in favor of life and of women, and the euphemisms can come across as cloying. “Social Issues” equals abortion, and almost nothing but, for the foreseeable future.
This is a rare case where the conventional wisdom is probably right: the public is uneasy about abortion but wants it kept around for the hard cases. There doesn’t appear to be much growth potential on either side of the debate.
I suppose so, but that doesn’t seem to me to be a rock-solid case against adopting in favor of a shotgun marriage (which is not to say I’m categorically against the latter, either). I do agree with you that what I’m saying could be used to enable bad behavior — “It’s okay for me to have sex because I can count on some other schlub adopting the kid if my girlfriend gets pregnant” — there’s also the matter of what to do about the many existing cases where it’s already too late.
Also, I guess I just don’t see the “connection” between biology and parenthood in the same way you and others do.
My general experience and understanding is that no human society has discovered a way to keep anything approaching a majority of its citizens virgins much past the age of 20. Now, one might say that the best solution is therefore to encourage early marriage and shotgun weddings in the event of a lapse, but those decisions come at a cost as well.
We’ve proven we can win with it since Ronald Reagan. There is no evidence that we’ve lost becuase of social issues. They have been secondary. I can tell you with absolute certainty, that we cannot win without them. If the Republicans dropped the pro-life plank, the sucking sound would be the vacuum of pro-lifers leaving. And you would hardly attract enough to make up for it.
Is that a double entendre? :-P Any mention of Clinton and screwing in the same sentence brings all sorts of thoughts to the fore.
While I understand and appreciate the moral arguments presented here by SoCons what I have yet to hear is why these should be political matters. Why should the force of law be put behind these particular SoCon bugaboos? With abortion there is a very compelling case: “protecting innocent life”. With contraception or ARTs or surrogacy the case is by no means clear and it is absolutely not compelling.
Electorally the SSM issue will not harm Republicans. It might actually help somewhat in certain districts. But we have been steamrolled on the issue as far as public policy. The courts have taken it over and there is almost nothing a legislator could do to alter the direction, even if he wanted to.
Nobody supposes that children should or could result from every sexual encounter. That’s not the point. The point is that the same people who argue for surrogacy on the grounds that “it’s better to exist than not” are pretty aggressive in discouraging the young and the poor from having kids they deem them unfit to raise. Clearly, they’re not consistent in valuing existence over non-existence for potential children. What it really comes down to is that they don’t care much about natural familial ties, and suppose themselves to be the best judges of who is or isn’t fit for or deserving of a child. Also, their interest in validating adult relationships far outweighs actual concern for children.
Wait… what?
Pertaining to contraception, the only issue I am aware of is public funding for it. As far as I can tell, there isn’t any ground swell for public funding. I think the argument to go and buy it yourself for $10 is a winner. This is an Obama side issue to provide rationale for the phony war on women. There is no activism to ban contraception.
As a SoCon, i would say you are right. The only place I would disagree is with SSM. But it is very difficult to articulate a compelling case against it, though i believe there is.
Tom, I think liberal progressives, having divorced themselves from traditional notions of natural family, judge parenting in terms of a certain fairly narrow idea of what sorts of childhood experiences and opportunities we want people to have. In that vein, they’re fairly judgmental about which sorts of people should be reproducing themselves and which shouldn’t. A pair of professionally successful gay men strike them as a very eligible parental pair; a middle-income religious couple that already has four kids, not so much. If you’re further interested in my ideas on this I have a piece on the Federalist from yesterday expounding at length… I’d link it but I’m phone typing. But the title is something about Neanderthals making better parents than modern people.
I think that was part of Rachel’s original point. As I said earlier, addressing social issues through politics or law is the worst way to address them. I don’t want them to be political, either.
But your question suggests that it’s SoCons who are trying to convert our moral preferences into law — and I strongly disagree with that. Instead, we’re the ones who are finding the law trying to silence us, intimidate us, making us pay for behavior we oppose, etc. Catholic adoption agencies are going out of business, not because Catholics are trying to impose anything, but because the secular state is demanding that children be placed with SSM couples. Sandra Fluke wanted her birth control subsidized, and Planned Parenthood wants abortions publicly funded … which we discovered that Obamacare does, even though they promised it wouldn’t.
I never thought I’d live in a place where wedding cakes, of all things, are being baked under duress.
As the midterm elections showed, we aren’t the ones trying to impose legality on anything. All we’re doing is reacting.
“Taking” is obviously the wrong word here. They’d not kidnapping. And that article, again, has almost nothing to do with your supposed point.
So are you against all adoption? Or just gay adoption?
Never mind, no need to answer that.
I have some misgivings about the whole gay adoption thing, myself. I’ve seen it turn into a bit of a mess—both dads wound up in prison for fraud. But was the kid better off going through that in a wealthy town in Connecticut with lots of friends than living in an orphanage in Vietnam or wherever he came from? I suspect, on balance, the answer is yes. I hope so, as he’s a nice kid.
I guess the best thing about these conversations on Ricochet is that it’s helped me understand gay aversion to Republicans…
Okay, got it. I thought you were referring to specific arguments others had made here.
I’ll read the Federalist piece, shortly.
As we religious conservatives never stop repeating, there’s no way to keep the law completely separate from matters involving property and parenthood, assuming you think that theft and kidnapping should be illegal. We’ve been over this a zillion times with marriage, but surrogacy opens whole new legal complications. Because I mean, it’s basically a contractual arrangement, or proponents want it to be. How much of this should the state be willing to back? Allowing people to buy children isn’t something most people would support; allowing them to transfer custody, with fill parental agreement, is widely agreed to be occasionally necessary. (Parental rights can also be revoked by the state but I think we’d all agree that should only happen in very extreme cases when a child is at serious risk.) If we’re going to recognize surrogacy as another, legitimate sort of transaction, we’ll have to spell out what sort of arrangement is acceptable. Okay to send state officials to take a baby away from the woman who just gave birth to it because the child is “under contract”? Okay to specify circumstances under which the intended parents can demand that the gestational mother get an abortion (or is it her body, her choice)? It’s really not at all clear what would be the most legally minimalist way to treat this topic, even if that were agreed to be our objective. And, to answer Sal’s question, I think public opinion on this is fairly unformed (and probably therefore influence-able) but I’m genuinely unsure where the general public is going to come down.
Tuck, in the piece I linked, children were taken from their natural mother (not totally but much of the time), over her strenuous objection, with the backing of the courts. The reason that happened was because the father preferred to be in a relationship with a man rather than remaining with his children’s mother. And the overwhelming public reaction was positive; people didn’t ask “are those children being denied full access to a natural mother who should be permitted to be with them?
I don’t think “taken” is obviously the wrong word, even granting that she wasn’t cut off from them completely.
And the point, going back to your question a few pages back, is that no, there really isn’t widespread agreement that giving kids access to dad and mom should be our priority. Some are disturbingly sanguine about prioritizing adult relationship preferences instead.
Well, that’s why I said this is the larger cultural conversation. Moral teachings and social principals are always wonderful ideals, but we have to live with the reality of individual weaknesses and … please indulge me … sinfulness.
I come from a Catholic religious background. The laws and catechism and teachings are absolutist and severe. My God, we can’t even masturbate for fear of eternal hell! But you know what? Psst … in real life, in actual practice, the church was always intended to balance that severity and rigidity with forgiveness. The law on the books was drastic. It said that you were eternally condemned if you were weak. But when you went into confession, all you really had to worry about was a couple Hail Marys and you were back in grace. And we all kinda knew that, ya know? You depended on the prudence of the pastor to restore sinners to grace without overturning the law itself.
A church can get away with having strict laws and yet merciful practice. In contrast, as civil society gets more and more secular, it’s becoming more and more legalistic. No mercy anymore. Equal protection means no discretion, and therefore no mercy. Every moral issue is being turned into a legal contest, to be decided by the Supreme Court.
Scalia’s question was eerily prescient: Do you really want nine lawyers to decide these things?
But not as part of a surrogacy arrangement, which was your last point. That was part of a divorce. You’re moving the goalposts.
From her account, it sounds like the judge should be impeached for not being impartial. It would be interesting to see what actually happened…
“…there really isn’t widespread agreement that giving kids access to dad and mom should be our priority.”
Sorry, I think that’s a ridiculous argument to make. One case doesn’t indicate the sky is falling, and there’s no evidence to support your argument here from a societal basis.
We’re not quite at Brave New World yet, and I see now indication of creches in the future any more.
Perhaps in whatever fantasy world you’re living it.
Out here in the real world gay marriage has no impact whatsoever on traditional marriages.
I’ve never heard a single person making the argument you’re claiming all “lefty” people make. I lived in NYC for years… You’d think it would have come up.
Let’s be fair. There’s no such thing as “secular”. There are two competing religions in this battle, watered-down Marxism and watered-down Christianity.
I think Merina and Rachel have a point, to an extent, because Marxists at one point did support doing a lot of the things that they’re afraid of.
But there’s just not a lot of support for breaking down marriage and the family. It never even happened in the hard-core Marxist countries. I can’t see any scenario where it happens wholesale in the United States.
There are lots of other things that are far more likely to happen, and which are already have a major negative impact.
Can you imagine white Democrat voters voting to do to themselves what the Democratic party did to blacks with the Great Society?
It’s never going to happen.
I fervently wish you were right, Tuck, but you’re living in a bubble. I hear it all the time–biology is not very important and children just need two parents. It’s a bad thing, but I will say it fits with the logic of redefining marriage. The definition of marriage goes hand in glove with the definition of family.
Tuck, suppose I made an argument that “nobody supports welfare dependency. Have you ever heard a liberal speak in favor of it? Ridiculous!”
Liberals are always doing things to achieve some ostensible good, but missing the bigger picture in ways that are reprehensible and selfish. As with welfare, so with marriage and family issues. Of course, nobody is proposing family-destruction as a deliberate goal, but that doesn’t by any means prove that nobody is culpably undermining the family.
I think tuck has a point. We won’t ever get to a Brave New World or 1984 level things.
Reality has a way of asserting itself back into the equation. We can really only get so far off in some progressive nightmare before we just decide to wake up.
And for Tuck, yes, those things aren’t said by normal people. They’re typically uttered by the overeducated, because to say things that profoundly wrong you have to go to college first in order to learn how.
Political entities cannot redefine a thing that is pre-political. The Family, Marriage, these types of things, they are beyond the power of the state, and there are no laws to be written that can change what they are.
That’s not an argument, it’s an assertion. Perhaps someone else can explain the difference, I have to be brief as I have to run.
I just read some stuff on marriage in North Korea and Cuba. They both have retained marriage as an institution. (But not SSM!)
So you’re arguing that Marxists are going to do here what they haven’t even tried to do in those two countries?
You’ll need to do better than mere assertion to convince me.