DelawarePolitics.net

Nov 9th, 2009 by David Anderson

The results of the referenda in liberal Washington and Maine would suggest so. Marriage is more popular than limiting government spending. Civil Unions bearly squeaked by in WA and Traditional Marriage won in Maine. President Obama is not hesitant to take propose a four fold increase in the deficit, but realizes repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or funding abortion is poison. What is the solution abandon fiscal conservatism? No, Bush tried that with some success, but in the end it bit the party when the bills came home. The best way to win is have a full spectrum coalition as Christie and McDonnell showed. Fiscal Conservatives need their social conservative siblings. The voices that say otherwise happen to be inspired by those who want both to fail.

Posted in Conservatism, Election 2009, Social Conservatives

35 Responses to “Is Social Conservatism more popular than Fiscal Conservatism?”

on 09 Nov 2009 at 14:521noman

Is Social Conservatism more popular than Fiscal Conservatism?

Yes it is.

And in other news, in the fifth-grade cafeteria, making fun of people is more popular than doing your homework.
on 09 Nov 2009 at 15:462Anon

Neither McDonnell nor Christie made social conservatism a primary plank in their campaigns. Both ran on fiscal conservatism first and solutions to local problems second. McDonnell even said on the Sunday talk shows that his first priority was the economy and jobs.
on 09 Nov 2009 at 16:253Ed Heath

I have to agree with Anon on the recent elections. I feel if the Republicans are going to over-throw the Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 elections, they have to get back to their base of fiscal conservatism and less government as the main issue! If a candidate is also a social conservative, fine, but should they push that as their top issue, I feel they will jeopardize their chances of winning.

I know I will vote for the candidate that has fiscal conservatism and upholding the Constitution as their main platform!
on 09 Nov 2009 at 16:584David Anderson

I think the key is to build a coalition. Naturally, you address the pressing issue of the day. It is the economy.
on 09 Nov 2009 at 17:315Dave Burris

One really unique thing that I didn’t see coming: the war on abortion and gay issues inside the Democratic Party. The Stupak amendment opened a chasm inside the party, and now the liberal bloggers have declared a boycott on donating to the DNC until their issues are dealt with.

Two very serious and potentially damaging fights inside the Democratic Party.
on 09 Nov 2009 at 18:126Frank Knotts

David, as I have said many times , a straight line conservative message from a candidate that believes in it will attract more voters, or as you call it a coalition.
To Dave , the Stupak amendment may seem to have opened a chasm, but the sausage isn’t done being made just yet. Don’t be surprised to see it come back in some re-worked , back door funding for that holy shrine of liberalism, ABORTION !
on 09 Nov 2009 at 20:067Tennessee Walker

I’m with anon and Ed. Mc Donnell on Sunday’s interviews stressed jobs and fiscal conservatism. If the question is which is more popular based on the 2009 results, I would say fiscal conservatism.

The other proviso I would offer is that 12 months is an eternity in politics.
on 09 Nov 2009 at 22:308Tyler Nixon

It was “social conservatism” (an oxymoron, if you ask me) along with “neoconservatism” (also an abberation of real conservatism) that drove away independents and more-centrist voters from the GOP, leaving us a shambles after ‘06 and ‘08.

Now limited government, fiscal (i.e. true) conservatism is seeing a revival and leave it to the zealots, once again, to scare people off with pseudo-religious

The bulk of the country clearly wants as little social collectivism (i.e. “social conservatism”) as it wants the economic collectivism.

Some of us are unwilling to let the theocon/neocon zealots once again scare off the budding political/electoral coaltion needed to halt the economic collectivism that means a whole hell of a lot more damage to a whole hell of a lot more of our freedoms than abortion and gays.

Will you people never learn? You can’t have your social collectivist cake if you want also to taste economic freedom. All you do is drive voters into the hands of those you claim to abhor, yet whose statism you emulate however it suits your social control/uniformity agenda.

For the love of God, back off! Your zealotry handed Obama et al their opening. Your culture battles are not worth losing the war against central statism.

There, I said it.
on 09 Nov 2009 at 22:339Tyler Nixon

“scare people off with pseudo-religious statism, that is every bit as divisive and destructive to liberty as Obama-styled statism”

…is what that incomplete sentence should read.
on 10 Nov 2009 at 09:3610Delaware Republican

Workable solutions to everyday challenges seem to escape both parties and it was voters want. Not big and bigger government which comes in the form of taxes and ineffective programs.

Mike Protack
on 10 Nov 2009 at 11:2011Rick

Obama is doing a great service to the cause of conservatism- wait until ‘10. He has miscalculated.

I wonder who paid for BO’s college education?

Answer; don’t know, but probably the taxpayers.

And, why is he afraid to demonstrate his vast intellect by releasing his law school writings?

Answer; he’s a dumbass Marxist ideologue, and his hate-America musings would demonstrate that fact- that’s why.
on 10 Nov 2009 at 19:0312Frank Knotts

Tyler , I will give you that we lost in “08″ due to the fact that we cast off our conservatism when it cam to tax dollars. Pres. Bush in the last two years seemed to fall prey to legacy building and spent like a liberal.
But the answer is not to swing completely back the other way and throw our social issue over board . We need down the middle conservatism. That means that we approach all issues with a conservative mind set.
I have never once suggested that we not push for fiscal responsibility and smaller government, but I have read and listened while those such as yourself propose that those of us that feel strongly against the killing of an inocent life should shut up and show up on election day.
It is your view of conservatism that is exclusive !
on 11 Nov 2009 at 00:1513Tyler Nixon

Whatever you say, Frank. Either you are for individual freedom or not. Your pick-and-choose approach to the use of expansive government power over the individual and matters of private life is not conservative, it is as statist as the pick-and-choose approach of the leftists. You just don’t like what they pick and choose, and want us all to ignore the where you pick and choose an invasive government hand.

I will take allowing women ownership of their bodies, letting education and persuasion eventually end abortion, if it means consistency in severly limiting the reach of an all-powerful state. Your ideology opens the door to leftist invasions because you are inherently hypocritical in condemning their brand of state control over individuals, when you would one just as invasive.

The government that can take away the autonomy and physical self-determination of any person can and will inevitably take it from us all, as history bears out over and over.

No one is denying your right to your social(ist) conservative views in your “culture war” battles and your right to advocate what you do.

But let’s not pretend you are anything but maybe a 20 out of the 40% self-proclaimed conservatives, cnnstituting the ideological flip side of the 20% self-avowed harccore leftists with their own self-reinforcing version of busy body statism to match yours.

And let’s especially not pretend that your social(ist) “conservative” ideology is anything but repellent to the general electoral polity of modern America, which won’t and never will share it.

Your views are always welcome. But the state action you propose is not conservative unless consistent in advancing the maximum expansion of individual freedom, without narrow ideological qualifiers that are fundamentally leftist by nature.

You can’t be a true conservative if a practitioner of leftist-type qualifiers seeking to define limits on how others may peaceably exercise their liberty and pursue their happiness in a free society.

It’s real simple and we’ll just have to see whose views are most fundamentally consonant with America’s singular form of human liberty such that people embrace the freedom it affords, rejecting the encroachments of any officious state, whether to carry out leftist dictates or social(ist) “conservative” dictates.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 00:1614Tyler Nixon

[Sorry for the typos and syntax errors. Speed typed that...]
on 11 Nov 2009 at 07:1215Frank Knotts

Tyler , let us take your view of as you call it a woman’s right to choose. Why do we feel that a woman has a right to choose to kill a child still in her womb and yet we would prosecute her if she murdered her child of a month old ?Well let me answer for you, because in your view and that of many like yourself, once the child is born to the world it has seperate rights than that of the mother.
We have laws against murder , which is the ending of a life, correct ? We have laws protecting children from predators , and women from rapist. We protect all citizens from bodily harm.
Except we draw the line for some reason when it comes to protecting life in its earliest stages.
Too often those such as yourself focas only on the woman’s right to choose to kill her child. I prefer to on protecting the life of the child.
I and others believe that life begins at conception, for myself this has nothing to do with my religious beliefs, but with facts.
The fact of the matter is , that once the egg is fertilized , it can become nothing but a human being.So in my view that makes it life.
If nothing interupts the natural progression of life then that fertilized egg will grow into an embryo and then a fetus, and then , once again if there is no un-natural interuption, such as a vacuum hose, or surgical clamps or some chemically induced miscarriage, that fetus will be born as a human child.
So as someone such as yourself who is always talking about individual rights , and championing them, why do you draw the line at the womb? That child has every right to be protected from a mother that would kill it the same as a month old baby does or a three year old child , or a forty something man.
Tyler , I don’t know your life style or your life history. I don’t know if you have children or if you have ever lost a child. So let me give you a little background on my life.
I have a daughter that is the light of my life, my entire world changed the very first time I held her in the delivery room. After holding her I can never again understand how someone could cut short that life. My wife and I also lost a child to a misscarriage and have never been bleesed with another. So I find it hard to believe that people can argue in favor of murdering children in the name of a woman’s right to choose.
I am not arguing against a woman’s rights, I am arguing for the rights of the millions of babies muredered every year.
And as for your comment about education lowering the number of abortions, dig a little deeper my friend and you will see, that while the number of surgical abortions has been reduced somewhat, the number of chemical abortions is rising.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 07:1916Frank Knotts

Sorry, one more point about the chemical abortions or the so called moring after pill. The popularity of this form will grow due to the fact that women can decieve themselves by saying that , “well maybe I wasn’t really pregnant anyway” .
And just for the record, I do support a woman’s right to choose, I believe that every woman has the right to choose to not have sex !
on 11 Nov 2009 at 08:4217Tyler Nixon

Frank - I’m not interested in getting into the weeds with you in a debate over abortion. I think abortion’s abhorrent. It’s a pretty damn bloody choice for birth control.

But more abhorrent is an all-powerful government (at any level) that can dictate what women (or anyone) can do with their bodies.

I am pro-life, but refuse to turn that into being anti-choice, as it regards physical self-determination — the most fundamental form of human liberty, before any other liberties even become possible.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 14:0918David Anderson

The weeds? How about answering the fundamental issue instead of talking about crap like choice. If it is alive, then he or she is worthy of our compassion and protection, if it is just a tumor or something than it is an issue of choice. This issue has nothing to do with individual liberty and everything to do with human dignity and the protection of the innocent.
on 11 Nov 2009 at 16:2719Tyler Nixon

Bait all you want, David. I am not biting, and will not let your abortion dogma distract and detract from advancing individual freedom in the long slog against creeping (and now accelerating) statism. This statism has only been enabled by social(ist) “conservatives” and their penchant for authoritarianism over the individual as long as it serves their own inflexible dogmas.

You give the leftists every opening they need to expand state power and control when you claim “conservatism”, claim to defend liberty against their encroachments…and yet embrace statism wherever it meets your own demands for the particular social order you seek to impose.

Just because your mania for control (suiting your own rendition of religion-based moralism) is loaded with terms about “human dignity” and “protection of the innocent” doesn’t make it any less invasive, statist, and counter-conservative.

I am not indifferent to the horrors of abortion, by any stretch. But I am not about to abide the hypocrisy of self-styled “conservatives” who, with self-delusional ignorance, cede all philosophical and moral consistency by mimicing1 the statist left, different only in those areas of human life you seek to control.
on 12 Nov 2009 at 06:4620Frank Knotts

Tyler, you say you understand that abortion is bloody, and that you are pro-life. Then you say that you cannot support policy that infringes on a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body.
If we were to take your libertarian ideals to their logical end , we would have to allow one person to kill another if that were their choice.We would have to allow people to do any type of drug they wanted. They would be allowed to not only own hand guns and rifles , but tanks and nuclear weapons.
Tyler, I hold the Constitution in high reguard, but we are a people governed by laws. These laws like the Constitution must be guided by moral judgement (moral judgement doesn’t have to mean religious faith ) , of right and wrong.
If you believe that abortion is bloody and that the child in the womb is a life , it is our moral obligation to protect it from a mother that has obviously lost her moral compass. The same as we would pull a child back from the edge of a street to keep it from being hit by a truck.
When you stand by and allow something to happen that you know to be wrong then you are a part of the problem, no matter how much high minded rhetoric you attempt to cloak yourself in.
And the reason you don’t wish to “get down in the weeds of abortion “, is because those weeds are covered in the blood of millions of babies, who’s lives were ended for the sake of a mothers “choice”.
on 12 Nov 2009 at 07:0621Frank Knotts

Let me add that as far as politics go, I don’t care if a singal mother who has aboted a child ever votes for the GOP, if we save one child’s life . This is beyond party affiliation ! At least for myself.
on 12 Nov 2009 at 08:4622Tyler Nixon

Knotts : If we were to take your libertarian ideals to their logical end , we would have to allow one person to kill another if that were their choice.

This is pure drivel, Frank, and you know it. It is the same absurd argumentative hyperbole that leftists’ employ against libertarian and liberty-oriented advocates, e.g. “if we cut government to your (libertarian) ideals, old people and children will be dying in (run-down, unmaintained) streets.”

You really reveal yourself as quite in-league with the statists and their basic hostility to true liberty (rather than what you/they would dole out) when you precede your arguments with such intellectually-dishonest nonsense.
on 12 Nov 2009 at 09:3123noman

if we cut government to your (libertarian) ideals, old people and children will be dying in (run-down, unmaintained) streets.

There must be many successful refutations of this drivel. Can you link me to one or two of them?
on 12 Nov 2009 at 09:4024Tyler Nixon

You’re the resident example, noman. Can you link to yourself?
on 12 Nov 2009 at 11:0325noman

You’re the resident example, noman. Can you link to yourself?

Here you go. Same question - find a good answer yet? The libertarian community must have a good one.
on 12 Nov 2009 at 12:0026Tyler Nixon

Frankly, I don’t even understand your question, from how you phrased it…
on 12 Nov 2009 at 12:4727Perry

Tyler, noman’s question is pretty clear in #23. So far, you have managed to duck it.

Libertarian ideals sound robust until one attempts to reduce them to practice, which is where some modifications become necessary.
on 12 Nov 2009 at 13:1128Perry

That said, I am in complete agreement with you on your pro-life view on abortion, and your view regarding a woman’s right to choose, which you articulated very well. The “moral judgment” to which Frank refers must be left up to the woman, a point that Frank will probably never understand, as he continuously positions himself as the absolute moral decider.

Frank, you can preach all you want, and that’s fine. But you have no business telling a woman unequivocally what she can and cannot do with her body. That is off-limits to you!
on 12 Nov 2009 at 13:3129h.

Perry, should all “moral judgements” be left to the individual ?
on 12 Nov 2009 at 13:3430David Anderson

with all due respect, Frank is right. The only difference between you and a fetus is time. There is no difference in inherent rights. Your right to control your own body ends when it takes my right to live especially when you choose to engage in human reproductive acts.
on 13 Nov 2009 at 07:0831Frank Knotts

I would ask the same question as h did in post # 29.
This whole thing now revolves around a woman’s right to do what she wishes with her body. So prostitution should be legal,and we should just ignore the facts that prostitution spreads diseases and breaks up marriages and families.
People should be allowed to sell their organs on a free market or better yet why can’t a woman sell her fetus for scientific experiments ? I mean as long as she is aboting just a mass of tissues, why not allow her to make a buck along the way?
This is going to be off topic, but this libertarian thing has become just a bunch of people who want to do as they please, whether it be abortion, drugs or what have you. So they cloak what amounts to anarchy in the Constitution.
And so I ask my libertarian friends, show me in the Constitution where murder is sanctioned .
on 13 Nov 2009 at 09:1732Tyler Nixon

Anarchy? Drugs? Abortion? Murder? “What have you”?

Righto, Frank. Please elaborate further on the “what have you” part of your statement you so blithely throw out there to complete your ridiculous reduction of libertarianism.

I have no doubt every tyrant in history, as prelude to subjugating and controlling others, has wholly shared your sentiment, toward the object of their tyranny, that “this whole _______________ thing has become just a bunch of people who want to do as they please, whether it be _________________ “.

Libertarianism at core is about freedom as the exercise of individual liberty to PEACABLY do (yes, horror!) as you please, without using force or fraud upon others.

Why do you so hate freedom, Frank, that you want it to exist only on your terms?

The Constitution is NOT a grant of liberty, it is a statement that government exists to protect innate liberty that is the God-given right of every human being. It is horribly clear that you fundamentally misunderstand what the Constitution is all about.

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals–if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.” - Ronald Reagan
on 13 Nov 2009 at 09:4433David Anderson

There is no right to violate another’s fundamental rights such as the right to life. That is the entire purpose of government’s foundation. It was to provide for collective security to prevent the strong from preying on the weak. Otherwise no other rights matter.
on 13 Nov 2009 at 11:2234Tyler Nixon

Well said, David. But none of that applies to abortion.
on 14 Nov 2009 at 08:1435Frank Knotts

Tyler Nixon says, “The Constitution is NOT a grant of liberty, it is a statement that government exists to protect innate liberty that is the God-given right of every human being.”
Tyler , I am drawn to the part about protecting the innate liberty that is the God-given right of every human being.
So Tyler, tell me my friend, who gets to decide what is and isn’t a human being ? You ? Some doctor ? Some politician ?
You say that I am over reaching in my attempt to protect the life of the child, I would say you are over reaching in an attempt to seem as if you are protecting individual liberties. It’s just that you are very selective in who’s liberties you choose to protect.
To make your argument you devalue the life of the child by creating a faulse line in the sand of when life actually begins.
By convincing yourself that the child isn’t actually a child it allows you to make theoretical arguments based on your belief of what is or isn’t in the Constitution.
Tyler , I am not sure of your age , but concider the fact that if a society is willing to devalue life at its earliest stage, what is to stop it from doing the same thing at the other end.
What if our society decides that a non-productive octogenarian can no longer actually be concidered “LIFE”. Will you stand by and argue that their children have a right to abort their lives because the old people have become a burden and an expense in their lives?
Would you stand by as millions of seniors were taken to centers where they would have their brains sucked out with a vacuum, or to have surgical scissors shoved into the base of their brains ? Or maybe you would prefer a more “HUMANE” death for the old folks, like a chemical abortion of their lives ?
This is going to seem harse so let me say that I say this in general and am not directing it at you specifically Tyler. It seems that for many who argue a woman’s right to choose abortion and who do so at the expense of the child’s life, that they are more interested in the woman’s rights because she can vote .
You are correct when you say that government should protect all of its citizens. For myself this includes those citizens who are not rich , who have no real political clout and who cannot speak for themselves. The same as we would not sanction euthanasia of the mentally handi-capped , we should not endorse the euthanasia of babies in the womb.
It is our resposibilty as thinking human beings to protect those who cannot protect themselves, we are not a herd that just continues on when one of our own falls behind. We cannot turn a blind eye on the genocide that abortion has become in this nation and around the world.