Barone: There Already is a "Social Truce"
Michael Barone writes:
Back in June, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, who many think would be an attractive 2012 presidential candidate, was quoted by Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard as saying the next president “would have to call a truce on the so-called social issues.”
That quickly attracted some harsh criticism from opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage. But Daniels has declined to back down, telling the Indianapolis Star the other day that such issues are secondary to the economy and foreign policy.
I think both Daniels and his critics have missed the point. The fact is that there is an ongoing truce on the social issues, because for most Americans they have been overshadowed by concerns raised by the weak economy and the Barack Obama Democrats’ vast increase in the size and scope of government.
Those with strong positions on both sides of the abortion and gay-rights issues don’t like to hear that. They base their views on strongly held moral beliefs that are intellectually defensible and not vicious in character.
And for more than a decade, they had gotten used to a politics in which the demographic variable most highly correlated with voting behavior was religion, or degree of religiosity, and in which positions on abortion were very highly correlated with partisan preference.
Our politics in the years from 1995 to 2005 or so was like a culture war between two approximately equal-sized armies fighting it out over small bits of terrain that made the difference between victory and defeat. In that context, abortion and other cultural issues were litmus tests in the contests for both parties’ presidential nominations.
I don’t think that’s likely to be the case in the future. You don’t hear potential contenders for the 2012 Republican nomination talking about cultural issues very much. And the intramural arguments among Democrats are over things like tax cuts for the rich and the public option in the health-care bill.
