I always here about the great pool of fiscally conservative socially liberal voters and it makes me laugh just a little bit. The reason for this is simple; they don't exist. In John’s post over on the home page, David Bose of the Cato Institute sights a poll indicating that 59 percent of the population describes themselves as “fiscally conservative and socially liberal”. Putting aside the fact that this number almost certainly under-performs other indicators (such as the Pugh Hispanic Study) which deal with minority communities, experience indicates that this polling basically means that people like the "idea" of fiscal conservatism, so long as their taxes and other people's spending gets cut. Nobody really wants less money coming to their district to build playgrounds, community theaters and even, in one district in Iowa, rain forests. It should not be surprising that these "social moderate" tend to elect congressmen who vote for tax increases and big spending bills.
This brings me to the chief irony around which this post is based: the most fiscally conservative congressman and senators tend to also be the most socially conservative. I challenge you Libertarian types to go find a solid fiscal conservative congressman who's also a social moderate. Better yet, find a whole caucus of them elected by Libertarians. But we'll start with a simple test; how many of the members of the house and senate who voted against the Medicare proscription drug benefit were pro-choice or pro-gay marriage? I'm waiting... In the meantime, the fiscally conservative heroes in the senate (Tom Cobern, Jim DeMint) and house (Jeff Flake, Paul Rian, Jeb Henserling and, at one point, Pat Toomey) all, to the best of my knowledge, have pretty solid socially conservative voting records.
How can this be? Isn’t social conservatism the attempt to impose 1950s-style morality on the country, to force women to get back-alley abortions and brainwash your kids not to believe in dinosaurs? Um… not so much. The truth that social liberal activists don’t want anyone to recognize, let alone make political hay about, is that Even on social issues there is a broad natural consensus between limited government advocates and traditional so-cons. How is a court decision which federalizes abortion law and violates the tenth amendment at all in line with either limited government or "choice"? How is government redefinition of a sacramental institution (marriage) in any way limited? How is it "imposing big government" to let local school districts determine their science curriculum (for the record I'm a Christian who believes in evolution, but since I actually, ya know, also believe in limited government and all, I've got no problem if a local school district wants to teachID in science classes, though I might consider sending my kids, if I had them, to a different school). Limited government means local choices; this is the essence of Libertarianism. Unfortunately, many modern Libertarians have conflated liberty with Libertinism, advocating for a government big enough to force all local communities to conform to their absolute notion of choice. This has nothing to do with John Locke, Adam Smith, Frederick Hayeck or any other giant of libertarian history. Indeed, the one thing which has always unified fiscal and social conservatives is our opposition to social engineering. Despite the media hype about so-cons imposing their views on people, social conservatism is, by definition, an attempt to protect the local community from social engineering. Perhaps this explains why, when it comes to voting in congress, the so-con fis-con divide is nearly non-existent.
