The West Will Rise Again

Is the South's hold over American politics on the wane?

David Weigel from the April 2007 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Yet he doesn't argue that either party should abandon massive spending; he believes that the future will pit big spenders from the blue party against big spenders from the reds. "The era of big government is not over," Schaller writes, "but the era of hating big government seems to be ending."

That's a soothing hymn for liberal Democrats such as Schaller, who believes his party can win with its current economic platform, which is heavy on infrastructure spending, government-sponsored insurance, and business regulations, and which he packages as "a culture of investment." For him, the place to differentiate is on social issues.

He may be onto something, especially if Republicans continue to push themselves as the party of social conservatives and refuse to re-engage their limited-government constituents-the ones that Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, calls the "leave us alone" coalition. If the Democrats and Republicans are seen as equally free-spending, the West may well turn to the former not out of enthusiasm but out of something more like desperation. Voters in the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest are not comfortable with the Democrats' economic policies, but they are generally more liberal on social issues.

But if Republicans decide to fight on economic and regulatory issues rather than social ones, the debate over the next decade would be more libertarian than anything Americans have heard in modern political history. Both parties would default to roughly libertarian positions on the culture war, from gay rights to gun rights, and libertarian economic views would be at the center of the national political conversation. Given the shellacking Republicans took in the midterm elections, the GOP would be wise to look for a new-or old-strategy. Indeed, some highly visible Republicans are fairly demanding precisely that: Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Texan, has called social conservatives such as James Dobson "a gang of thugs" and "real nasty bullies" who are hurting the GOP; he urges a return to fiscal conservatism as a cure for the party's problems.

Such a turn of events would discombobulate Schaller, who warns the Democrats against embracing economic policies that libertarians might like. But if the Democrats are serious about expanding and consolidating power in the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest, they might have to think about economic as well as personal liberties. And if the Republicans are serious about expanding their power base in those same regions, they'll have to once again think about pairing economic freedom with personal liberty.

David Weigel ([e-mail]) is an associate editor of Reason.

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