badgenome said:
I don't see what that would accomplish. Branding aside, the Republican Party is neither fiscally conservative nor socially extreme, and libertarians are already a people without a party except for the odd Ron or Rand Paul. If Republicans were to ditch the social conservatism altogether, they would lose far more votes than they would gain because there are plenty of socons who either luvz teh poor or love sucking that government titty themselves who would just jump on the Democrat bandwagon. There are a lot more richardhutnik types than you might think, people who don't hate Republicans because they're "racists" or "homophobes" or whatever, but because they buy into the horseshit that the Republicans are the enemy of the middle class and the Democrats are its defender. Fiscal conservatism just isn't a winner. Loads of people like to talk about how they're "fiscally conservative and socially liberal" but guess which side always wins out? Stated preference vs. actual preference. |
It is true. For most people social conservatism is just "spending on stuff i don't like". With the percentage of "stuff I don't like" being overexagerrated.
In general there is an incentives gap as well.
I mean, in an argument of "Should we use our credit card to throw a party" we're talking about the incentive up upfront fun, vs possible long term problems.
Furthermore, when your alraedy half in the problem as we are now, it becomes more and more tempting to say "Well we're probably fucked anyway so we may as well make this the most bitching kegger in history anyway."
