End of the Reagan coalition?

The Economist on the grand coalition of the Republican Party:

Business conservatives can never win a majority without the support of “values voters” (there just are not enough people around who look like Mr Romney). “Values voters” can never produce a viable governing coalition without the help of the business elite. The Republicans have seen revolts against their ruling coalition before—remember Pat Buchanan's pitchfork rebellion against George Bush senior—and they have always succeeded in putting it back together again. They need to do the same now. Enough Republicans believe enough of the Reagan mantra—less government, traditional values and strong defence—to make it a workable philosophy.

The doomsters draw the wrong lesson from the Bush years. The lesson of the Bush presidency is not that the Republican coalition is exhausted but that it has been badly managed. Mr Bush has failed to keep the coalition in balance—he tilted too far towards his party's moralistic southern wing and too far away from its libertarian western wing. He has allowed public spending to balloon and pork-barrel politicians to run wild. [...] The Republican Party certainly needs to update its agenda to deal with problems Reagan never grappled with. But this is no time to go breaking the mould and starting again.

This is a lesson that Steve Forbes learned. You can't win with half of the coalition. His first campaign, a pure fiscal conservative campaign, failed miserably, so he reinvented himself as a moral conservative and pushed the moral issues equally hard. Unfortunately, he still looked like Mr. Magoo, so his second campaign didn't go that well either.

This is the reason I favor Fred Thompson (assuming my fantasy candidate, Ron Paul, can't win). He's the complete package, a values guy who gets the fiscal issues right, too. And he's not so preachy in his values that he would turn off secular conservatives.

For a while, Giuliani looked like he might capture enough values voter support based on his 9/11 legend and his promise to appoint strict constructionist judges. I'd still be happy with Rudy, but I'm a western libertarian. Southern moralists don't seem to have taken the bait.

Romney is legitimately both a business conservative and a man of faith. But his Mormon faith freaks out many evangelicals, and his flip-floppy past on moral issues has many values voters rightly concerned.

McCain can claim to be both a fiscal conservative and a moral conservative. His positions are 90% right in both areas. But the other 10% consists of arrogant, ego-driven, "maverick" positions that are enough to rule him out in many voters' minds. Pro-amnesty, anti-free speech, accomodating to Democrat obstructionists on judges. Need I say more?

Huckabee is the anti-Reagan. He is a pure values voter candidate, with a big FU to fiscal conservatives. A vote for Huckabee is a vote to destroy the Reagan coalition, and to relegate the Republican Party to minority status for years to come.