A social disease?

IT HAS QUICKLY become a media "fact" that the Bush campaign's focus on a divisive social conservatism, particularly during the Houston Convention, is what lost the election. This is echoed by those few Republicans who have always opposed social conservatism.

Very interesting. But we seem to remember a sign at Clinton headquarters that read, "The economy, stupid."As consultants Tony Fabrizio and John McLaughlin point out, "Every post-election survey has shown that this election was fought on the economy, and it was President Bush's weakness on economic growth, jobs, taxes, and government spending that allowed both Ross Perot and Bill Clinton to take votes from him."

Some members of the Reagan majority are admittedly uncomfortable with social conservatism --but every member of a coalition is dissatisfied with some part of its program. Republicans do not have the option instead of outbidding the Democrats for their core constituencies. Gay-rightists and militant feminists, for example, have no reason to leave the Democratic Party, which has pledged to impose their agendas on the Supreme Court and the armed forces.

But what of women in general--the famous gender gap. Since the gender gap was first noticed, in 1980, moderate Republicans have blamed it on the social issues, especially abortion. But in 1980, 1984, and 1988 the gap overwhelmingly helped Reagan and Bush, who had massive majorities among men and slight leads among women. This year, when the Republicans lost, the gap actually shrank, as men moved in large numbers from Mr. Bush to Ross Perot. Mr. Bush's support among men and women differed by less than 1 per cent, while Mr. Perot-- who was ardently pro-choice-drew 21 per cent of men and only 17 per cent of women. Moreover, Mr. Bush suffered no gap at all among white women, and unmarried women supported him more than did unmarried men (34 versus 32 per cent).

Diluting the social issues, indeed, might drive away important parts of the coalition. White born-again Christians were 17 per cent of the electorate and went 61 per cent for Mr. Bush (down 20 points in four years economics counts for something with them too). Southern whites, 24 per cent of all voters, gave him 48 per cent of their votes--and most defectors went to Mr. Perot, not to Mr. Clinton. Single-issue pro-life voters account for between 8 and 13 per cent of the electorate; how do the GOP moderates propose to hold on to them? We should also remember that the Republican Convention produced not a dip in the polls, but an initial bounce of 9 to 15 points. Indeed, Republican tracking polls found that the Convention's first night, when Reagan and Buchanan spoke, produced the single most positive response among voters. Half of all voters surveyed around the same time thought family values should be a campaign issue. But the Bush campaign, simultaneously cynical and timorous, offered no defense when the media attacked the theme as "divisive" and "exclusionary," and dropped it one week later. As a result, only 15 per cent of voters thought it important by election day--but 65 per cent of them went for Mr. Bush. And since his advisors found no theme to replace it, they never compensated for those voters who went AWOL.

A broad but tolerant social conservatism clearly commands majority support in America today. Nearly three-quarters of Americans describe themselves as "extremely," "very," or "somewhat" religious. Few Americans want to impose their moral and religious views on others. Still less, however, do most Americans want government to impose a radical moral and sexual agenda on them or their children via the public schools, or to subsidize and promote forms of expression that insult their most deeply held beliefs. We see no consistency in a philosophy of government that bans a crucifix on public property but finances a crucifix immersed in urine-- unless it is a philosophy of covert hostility to religion and traditional morality.

Conservatives and the Republican Party need not retreat from social conservatism. But they must clarify how that conservatism fits into the overall Republican philosophy of limited government. The overwhelming majority of conservatives oppose government action against homosexuals; but we also oppose turning people who are united only by sexual practices into a "protected class" with civil privileges. Similarly, while pro-lifers would like to persuade their fellow citizens to protect the unborn, the real political agenda today must be to restrict the "right" to abortion on demand created in Roe v. Wade-of which most Americans also disapprove. And the best thing the government can do for most families, aside from avoiding the Hillaryesque temptation to usurp the role of parents, is to reduce the tax burden, which now falls most heavily on married couples with children.

Such policies, as well as being right, are also popular. Vide a feature no less pronounced than the gender gap: "the marriage gap," in which unmarried voters lean to the Democrats while marrieds favor the GOP. This gap was 7 points in Mr. Bush's favor. In short, social conservatism gives strength to the GOP coalition--as long as it is one part of that coalition, which is all social conservatives ask. Mr. Busli's defeat is directly traceable to his abandonment of other parts of the Reagan agenda; it is foolish to point the finger to the single element that he retained.