Viewpoint: Winning with a new fiscally conservative, socially liberal coalition

Many college students watching the party conventions were probably dissatisfied -- neither party directly matched their beliefs. Partly this is an unfortunate effect of any two-party political system.

However, significant changes in our national political outlook create a growing segment of the population with beliefs that cut across the current conception of the conservative vs. liberal debate.

A growing number of people, particularly youth, identifies as socially liberal while being fiscally conservative. Earlier this year, a Reason poll showed that 61% of people aged 18-29 would be open to electing a president who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative.

This should have major implications -- not just in this election, but also for the foreseeable future. A survey conducted late last month by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” voting bloc was essentially the only persuadable group in 2012. While so-called independents make up about one-third of the electorate, most lean toward one party or the other. The survey called these voters “disguised Republicans” and “disguised Democrats.”

However one-third of the independents (13% of the electorate as a whole) did not clearly lean one way or the other. They acted like Democrats when it came to social issues -- like abortion or gay marriage -- and like Republicans when it came to fiscal issues -- like the economy and the deficit.

Now 28% of these “deliberators” claimed to support President Obama while 33% claimed to support Governor Romney. This leaves almost half of them up for grabs, or about 6% of the electorate -- a number comparable to most national opinion polls.

If we believe that most of those still deliberating are split fiscally and socially between the parties, it follows that Romney might win by moving leftward on gay marriage -- which 63% of deliberators support. Obama could ensure victory by moving slightly to the right fiscally, as 64% of deliberators favor smaller government.

Neither appears eager to do so. But far-seeing partisans of the left and right should see in these numbers paths to victory in the short term with long-term electoral coalitions in the long term.

To many, creating a coalition catering to fiscal conservative/social liberals may appear illogical.

That’s because, to a degree, it is. But we should remember the words of the English political scientist who wrote that the mind of a creative artist “is more akin to the imagination of a creative artist than to any faculty intellectuals possess.”

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum reflected on this thought in his memoir The Right Man. When I interviewed him last year, I asked him about the notion and he explained that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had embodied this type of poetic vision when he realized that he could, despite the reality of segregation, unite blacks and whites in the 1930s New Deal coalition -- the remnants of which still make up the Democratic Party today.

“Now, you would think that wouldn’t make sense but it existed,” he told me. “Roosevelt had this ability to intuit that that was possible.”

And I would add that modern conservatism is the product of a similar genius, that of William F. Buckley and “fusion conservatism,” a union of libertarians and social conservatives. Fusion conservatism was at its full maturation during the 1980 Reagan Revolution and the 1994 Contract for America. However it doesn’t really make sense in today’s GOP, a party in which libertarian Ron Paul and social conservative Rick Santorum could hardly be more at odds.

The stirring visions that essentially founded both parties have cooled from their once white-hot magma, calcifying into the hard rock that characterizes today’s political paralysis.

The current political alignment produces stalemate after stalemate in Congress and the myth of an America split between two minds. But however toxic today’s polarization may be, it’s hard to imagine it’s any scarier than uniting a racially-divided party during segregation.

Both parties have chance to forge a coalition that re-shuffles the deck in a way that fiscal conservatives and social liberals can be a part of a big-tent coalition.

Whichever gets to it first is the party that will “win the future.”

Ryan Prior is a Fall 2012 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent. Learn more about him here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.