A new centrism?
Rob Dreher, writing in the Dallas Morning News about “Why the GOP is losing the working class“:
Mike Huckabee’s surprising success in the GOP primaries, to say nothing of Barack Obama’s skill in peeling away some conservatives by feinting rightward on culture and religion, suggests an emerging centrist constituency that’s culturally conservative but economically liberal.
If true, this is bad news for the Libertarians, who have long pinned their hopes on just the opposite constituency, people who are culturally liberal but economically conservative. In the Nolan chart, the Ron Paul wackos (I guess they’re Bob Barr wackos now) are in the upper right quadrant, the latte-drinking elitest liberal Democrats are in the upper left, and the fat-cat, law-and-order Republicans are in the lower right. Most Democrats and Republicans are somewhere near the dotted line. Dreher’s new centrists are in the lower left, bitterly clinging to their guns and Bibles.