Counseling for the Troubled Marriage

For those of you who won't be able to make tonight's debate on the fate of the libertarian conservative "marriage," it's worth checking out the debate that's been going on between Ryan Sager of the NY Post (who I finally met last week after working in various places immediately following him…) and National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru.

It starts with this TechCentralStation column by Ryan. Ramesh replied here at The Corner, with a rebuttal by Ryan and a second take from Ramesh.

I think Ryan's right on at least two counts here: First, that Bush's appeal to a big chunk of swing voters rests almost entirely on his greater perceived credibility on national security issues, and second, that in the long term, as older voters are replaced with todays teens and twentysomethings, anti-gay politicking is going to face some serious diminishing returns and potentially become a net liability. But I think Ryan does then fall into the pundit's fallacy, because if you really look at what's behind his first point, you find that it undermines the conclusion that what Republicans need to do is become more generically libertarian friendly. What the national security–voters are only reluctantly stomaching is, in many cases, Bush's more libertarian-ish domestic policy proposals. I'm too lazy to dig up links, but I'm pretty sure that on issue-by-issue polls, people basically like getting lots of free stuff. So I'm not wholly convinced yet that we're quite as vital a constituency as Ryan thinks, much as I might like it to be the case, but he's promised a third round, so stay tuned.