This highlights why we are always fighting with each other. Either you are pure fiscally and socially, or you aren’t a conservative. You listen to pundits clamor on about how we need to be more inclusive. Yet, we can’t even get on the same page from the inside.
My thought is this: it is phony and short sighted for the socon only to break it down as fiscal v social. There is a huge moral component to the fiscals issues - property is sacred in that property is what we exchange our very lives for - meaning our time and our talent. Thus when someone says they are for the moral issues and it means the social issues only, they are way way way off base.
There is sanctity of life - both inside and OUTSIDE of the womb. When people dismiss non social issues as not moral issues, they are ignoring the sanctity of life outside the womb. It’s called liberty.
Meanwhile, the conservative who dismisses the social issues altogether is missing the philosophical and moral underpinnings to fiscal conservatism in the first place.
I would submit that the balanced approach is the Reagan type Rush type Levin type conservative approach. That seems to contemplate the proper balance, and has an understanding of the times we are in at any given moment.
Rick Santorum does not meet that criteria to me, though I agree with him on social issues. What I really resent is the notion that not supporting Santorum is some kind of sneaky dog whistle admittance to being a social liberal in disguise.
That is not Reaganesque at all.