ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, February 17 2011

Conservatism can win
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

The 2012 Republican National Convention is 18 months away, which means it's time for the GOP's quadrennial feud over social issues. Should Republicans nominate a social-conservative stalwart who rallies the party's deficit hawks while defending the unborn and man-woman marriage? Or should they choose a fiscal conservative who keeps his views on hot-button issues under wraps for fear of alienating swing voters?

Aspiring nominees already have begun to assume their positions. At last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels delivered a hard-hitting speech on America's economic woes but skirted social issues, signaling that he stood by his earlier statement that the next president must declare a "truce" on abortion and same-sex marriage. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, who seconded Daniels' remarks last fall, struck similar notes in his fiscally-focused C-PAC speech, though he threw in a quick plug for his pro-life record to answer critics. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum took a decidedly different tack, arguing that "the moral and cultural issues … are the issues we cannot retreat on." Meanwhile, Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann tried to bridge the gap, calling for Republicans to unite around the conservative principles of fiscal restraint, national security and traditional moral values that produced past victories.

Sensible as Bachmann's strategy may sound to the average Republican voter, it inspires angst among many party elites. They hear the verdict of the chattering classes — that social issues are losers in these days of economic turmoil — and worry that perhaps all those pro-lifers and traditional marriage defenders and religious types flooding the polls on Election Day are not such a gift to the GOP after all. They see the media adulation lavished on occasional conservative apostates like erstwhile Republican Gov. Charlie Crist and former media darling Sen. John McCain and covet it for the party's next nominee, forgetting that the positive press enjoyed by a Republican maverick rarely survives primary season or translates into electoral victory.

Media-anointed "moderate" Republicans may win a few plaudits on CNN, but they rarely inspire enough passion to propel them to the Oval Office. One reason may be the inherent suspicion that voters harbor toward candidates who appear too malleable. According to a study published by The Economic Journal in 2008, sharply defined political positions often build more trust among voters than middle-of-the-road positions, even when the latter are more popular. University of Southern California economist Juan Carrillo, co-author of the study, put it this way: "A rational electorate is reluctant to support someone who does not exhibit commitment to some ideology. Voters rightly perceive that someone without ideological commitment cannot have developed a valuable political program."

Polarization may be a dirty word among political pundits, but sharp differences on key issues can make candidates more appealing to voters. That's especially true for Republican candidates. When social issues play a prominent role in a presidential election, the conservative usually wins.

There's a reason that President Barack Obama's supporters did not want to talk about abortion in 2008 and do not want to discuss it in 2012, either. In a nation in which a 2009 Gallup Poll found 51 percent of Americans identifying as "pro-life" and 42 percent identifying as "pro-choice," abortion is a losing issue for liberals. Same goes for same-sex marriage: A 2009 Gallup Poll found 57 percent of Americans oppose it and 40 percent support it. As for the general ideological tilt of the electorate, Gallup found that for every one American who said his political views were drifting leftward in 2009, two more said their views were moving to the right. Four in 10 Americans now describe themselves as conservative, while only two in 10 say they are liberal.

So why do Republicans still hear constant warnings about the electoral disaster that awaits them if they nominate a full-blown fiscal and social conservative in 2012? Perhaps they should consider the source: Members of a mainstream media establishment who routinely describe Obama as the second coming of Ronald Reagan and nearly everyone to the right of Sen. Olympia Snowe as an archconservative. It's no coincidence that the print and broadcast media elites telling Republicans to run from their social platform are the same ones who gave Obama and his fellow Democrats 88 percent of their campaign contributions in 2008, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of Center for Responsive Politics data.

Republican leaders should ignore the Beltway peanut gallery and listen instead to the party's rank-and-file. If they do, they will learn that backing a nominee who forthrightly defends a conservative social platform is not merely a principled move. It's a pragmatic one, too.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.