Dancing with issues - social and economic issues - Editorial

`DANCE with the gal what brung ya,' says Massachusetts Governor William Weld. For Weld and other GOP moderates, that means cashing in on November 8 with tax relief, spending cuts, and not much else. The "social issues" can become a wallflower while these pragmatists spin and dip fiscal responsibility all over the floor. But whatever it may score on technical merit, this routine is bound to lose crucial points on artistic interpretation.

It takes a willfully blind reading of the 1994 elections to argue they were a triumph of green-eyeshade Republicanism. By a ratio of more than 2 to 1 voters identified moral decline (61 per cent) over financial pressures (29 per cent) as the source of the country's troubles. At the same time, the "social issues" are evolving; they're not just gays and abortion any more. One of the foremost social moderates, Governor Pete Wilson of California, should recognize the change. The overwhelming vote for Proposition 187 wasn't only a reaction against the cost of illegal immigrants. A public sense of an eroding culture (the loss of "our country," as the unsophisticated put it) and of a breakdown in traditional order ("Why are these immigrants even here if they're illegal?") drove the 187 vote too. These are gut issues--and Governor Wilson consciously tapped into them by running dark TV ads featuring waves of illegals streaming north. In 1994, even Pete Wilson was a social-issues zealot.

At the same time, much of the Christian Right wants to dance with William Weld's gal too. There's an emerging realization on the social-issues Right--prompted especially by the Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed--that shrinking government is the surest way to promote family values. From taxation to schooling to welfare, the less power government has, the more power accrues to families, churches, and charities, for which upholding values isn't unconstitutional. Senator Phil Gramm has made the connection a staple of his rhetoric: "What I'm trying to do is take the money that government is spending for people on housing, education, and nutrition, and let families spend that money themselves. I know government and I know the family and I know the difference."

The electoral significance of the Christian Right is worth rehearsing here, if only because the GOP's Arlen Specters seem incapable of acknowledging it. About a third of the electorate this year were white, evangelical, born-again Christians. This group voted Republican at about a 70 per cent rate. Not surprisingly, a healthy 23 per cent of born-again Christians regarded moral decline as the most important issue, but fully 24 per cent cited spending and taxes.

The only way to sustain the current Republican momentum is to embrace social issues like school prayer, restrictions on abortion (especially when public dollars are involved), and resistance to gay-rights initiatives, while driving home the fiscal issues and, most importantly, recognizing the nascent partnership between the two. 1994 is, as all the pundits say, a tremendous GOP opportunity; but it's going to take two to tango.

COPYRIGHT 1994 National Review, Inc.
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