This post by Steve Sailer is good reminder that social conservatives are not small government people. In fact, they are not even conservative in the modern sense of the word. To be a conservative today means being in favor of small government, low taxes and free markets. You can throw in a bias toward global corporation over national small business. Social conservatives are none of those things. Some social conservatives are in favor of those things, but most are not all that interested in these issues.
I’ve always suspected that a major defect of the Republican coalition is that the social conservatives are in favor of big government, when it comes to their issues. They want the state to ban abortion and put prayer back into schools. That’s why they are engaged in politics in the first place. In the 1980’s when Farewell and Robertson were going strong, the argument they made was that good people will lead to good government. If they could get their guys in office, government would enact their agenda.
The trouble is the social conservatives are largely ambivalent about the small government, pro-business stuff, so they are not engaged in those issues. This allows the GOP to play a double-game on a major segment of the base. They promise to address the social issues and fight the culture war, but only after they take care of the tax cuts, sweetheart deals for business and so forth. Throw in the warmongering agenda from the neocons and the GOP is basically a long con by neocons and the chamber of commerce.
The Bush years proved that this formulation can’t work forever. Even social conservatives eventually figure out they are being conned. They got one of their own, George Bush, into the White House. He was the first Evangelical since Jimmy Carter and unlike Carter, he made his politics conform to his religion. He was supposed to be the final piece of the puzzle. Instead, the Bush years were nothing but giveaways to big business and trillions spent attacking half the world. The social conservatives got nothing for their support.
We are seeing it again with immigration. Evangelicals, Mormons and Catholics think the ticket to filling the pews is to bring in 30 million Mexican peasants. I see vans all over my part of the world for Baptist churches painted with Spanish and English writing. The local Catholic church does a service in Spanish now. Immigration is good for business if you’re in the church business. At least they hope it is, just like they hoped Bush would fill the bench with pro-life judges. The Evangelicals are now for open borders.
The trouble is, open borders are suicide for the party and probably suicide for the religious establishment. When the church members are seeing their towns ruined by immigration, they will have little patience for sermons in favor of open borders. The result will be what happened to main line Protestant churches once they sold out to the Democrats. Their pews are full of degenerates and the clergy is gays and lesbians. The Evangelicals are headed for a world where the pews are full of peasants looking for free stuff.
