David Boaz at Cato and Ramesh Ponnuru at NRO are going back and forth on whether social conservatives or fiscal conservatives are more significant to the general conservative coalition and Republican Party. (I guess that is the sub-text.) I have a couple of things to add:
1. Social conservatives in Congress tend to be more reliable voters for fiscal conservative issues than the reverse.
2. I personally believe there is no conflict between social conservatism and fiscal conservatism, as I have argued many times, most recently in the Heritage volume Indivisible.
3. If you want to see the future of the conservative coalition, go look at the photos from the Tea Party in San Diego and the photos from the Walk for Life in San Francisco. Nothing against the Tea Party people, of course, but the average age of the Tea Party people was probably 45 at least.
The average age of the (40,000) Walkers for Life in San Francisco was closer to 30. Look at our albums, here, and here, and the official Walk for Life page.
If you include the Babies in Strollers for Life, the average age probably drops by a couple of years! I’m betting there’s a lot of Life in the social side of the conservative coalition!