Are Social Conservatives Losing Clout -- or Just the Gay Debate?

Social conservative groups (which I would distinguish from rank-and-file social conservatives) don't have the juice they used to. Nobody on the right wants to admit this publicly, but they've lost clout in recent years.

The most recent example occurred when social conservatives couldn't keep GOProud -- a gay conservative group -- from continuing its affiliation with the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

(Whether you think this is a good or bad thing is not the point here.)

As National Journal's Reid Wilson wrote:

Social conservatives, including the National Organization for Marriage, among others, staged a walk-out at a meeting of board members of the Conservative Political Action Conference. . . .

Those groups put enough pressure on the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC, that officials put GOProud's fate, along with that of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, up for a vote. Results made available to board members on Wednesday showed the board voted to allow both groups to continue their affiliation with CPAC.

CPAC is the largest and most important open-to-the-public conservative meeting held each year, and I think it's fair to say that gay-marriage and other such issues are among the most important to social conservative organizations.

One can't imagine a pro-tax group or an anti-Second Amendment group being allowed to participate on such a prominent level at CPAC -- a point that speaks to the diminished power wielded by social conservative organizations. If the conservative movement is a three-legged stool, it is clear which one is weakest -- and the other two legs don't seem to care.

(In fact GOProud and The Club for Growth recently issued a joint statement opposing an estate tax.)

Slate's Dave Weigel disagrees that the CPAC story signifies much of anything, writing, "This is one of those fights that produces wins for both sides -- GOProud and the social conservatives -- without any lasting consequences for either of them."

I'm not so sure.

The immediate push-back from conservatives is not simply to concede the diminished stature of social conservatism, but to explain it away, arguing that issues are cyclical -- that times have simply changed the focus to a different set of issues (in this case, the economy and security).

As former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino told me: "Threats to that way of life have united people all across America. They feel they've got something to fight for and they're channeling that energy into the bigger challenge aside from just the issues that they may have focused on in the past -- but that doesn't mean that those issues are any less important to them."

David Keene, who runs the American Conservative Union -- which hosts CPAC -- echoed that sentiment, saying in an e-mail: "The public focuses on different clusters of conservative issues at different times, but that diminishes neither the importance or salience of other conservative issues."

This, of course, is all true. Twenty-five years ago, the "culture wars" were raging as a result of liberal overreach on social matters, and groups like the Christian Coalition tapped into the anger, organizing an army of socially conservative grassroots activists to storm the gates of power.

Today, that group is moribund, and the activists with the energy are tea party folks -- many of whom are socially conservative, but few of whom are focused on social issues.

Dismissing the decline of social conservatism by saying the times have changed also lets social conservative leaders off the hook. The truth is that, for a variety of reasons, most social conservative organizations are simply not as efficient or effective as their counterparts.

Think of it this way: If you are a Republican politician who votes for a tax increase, you're probably toast. People are afraid of fiscally conservative groups like the Club for Growth. Those groups put real money into primaries.

Is anybody afraid of social conservatives these days? I don't think so.

At the macro level, this matters. Sure, a certain number of politicians let their conscience guide them, but activist organizations must lobby politicians by rewarding them with carrots and punishing them with sticks. These days, social conservative groups have few carrots and even fewer sticks.

Of course, it could be that the issue isn't that social conservatives are losing across the board, but rather that they simply lost on one of their core concerns -- the gay issue.

As Reagan biographer Craig Shirley told me:

Social issues will never go away, however, and according to polling, the pro-life position has made dramatic gains in the last several years. Also, many people are dealing with the crass culture by editing it; home-schooling, canceling cable television, and the like. However, some on the so-called social right have a fundamental misunderstanding of true American conservatism, which was never about controlling personal adult behavior, especially by the national government.

Ronald Reagan opposed any form of discrimination based on homosexuality and indeed, campaigned against Prop. 6 in California in 1978, as it would have banned homosexuals from teaching in public schools. The true American conservatism as articulated and embraced by the Gipper celebrated the individual, privacy and "maximum freedom consistent with law and order."

(Shirley later emailed, adding that: "It would be a mistake to underestimate the potency of the 'marriage issue' as evidenced by the decisions of the people of 31 states, which is the purest form of Federalism and thus, must be embraced by American conservatives.")

As I've noted before, conservatives ranging from Ann Coulter to Tucker Carlson to Grover Norquist have affiliated themselves to one degree or another with gay groups, and have faced little in the way of punishment for their moves.

As Shirley stated, the pro-life issue appears to be alive and well, and in fact, while young people appear to be more open to gay marriage, they also tend to be more pro-life. This is politically significant when you consider that the modern GOP didn't realize electoral success until after pro-lifers were incorporated into the coalition.