Free marketers vs. Christians

A reader sends this link to an interesting post on the Half Sigma blog, about demographics and party realignment. Money graf:

The Republican Party is a coalition between Christians and people with libertarian economic views. Political pundits are so used to this that they think it’s natural for these two philosophies to go together. In fact the opposite is true; more libertarian people are less religious. As more Christian voters with socialist economic views join the Republican party, candidates who support libertarian economic policies will no longer win primaries, and suddenly the platforms of the two parties will undergo a radical shift. The Republican Party will become the party of religious socialists, and the Democratic Party will be the party of secular libertarians. The good news is that this will result in the leftist wing being kicked out of the Democratic Party. The bad news is that the Republican Party will probably command more votes than the Democratic Party and we will see the country become more socialist, and at the same time abortion will be outlawed, prayer re-introduced to the public schools, etc.

This is the future and it is inevitable.

Well, there is a point there, obscured though it may be by the scare-word "socialist." It would be helpful to know what the author means by "socialist." I don't know many Christians who'd qualify under a commonsense definition, but if by "socialist" he means people who believe that the government has a duty, broadly speaking, to make sure that the inequalities in society don't become too great, and that there's a social safety net, then yes, Christians are generally "socialist."

I doubt there will be the kind of realignment he predicts, mostly because Christians who vote Republican either have no problem with free-market economics as the GOP's libertarians preach it, or they swallow their concerns because issues like abortion, gay marriage, religious liberty, affirmative action and so forth mean more to them than economics. (Don't ask whether or not the GOP will actually do much of anything about those social issues once they're in power; the social conservatives provide a big chunk of the votes, but the business conservatives tend to get the payoff.) Similarly, the Democrats could be making big gains this fall if they'd go all big-tent on social issues. They won't, because their social issues define them.

The only likely thing that could really realign the parties would be a major economic crisis, I think -- something that made economic policy the driving force in US politics. Absent that, I think we're going to have the status quo for some time, with changes around the margins.

UPDATE: Ross Douthat observes "the fundamental problem with the whole post-McGovern Democratic strategy, which has been to build a coalition of upper-middle-class professionals, the poor and minority groups, and enough working and middle-class voters to push them over the top (see The Emerging Democratic Majority). It could work, and indeed it almost has at times—but it’s being persistently sabotaged by the fact that a large and growing chunk of its smart, wealthy, well-educated base just can’t stand religion, and simply won’t let their political party get right with God, or at least the voters who believe in him. As Sullivan says, “[T]hese Democrats view the party’s interest in talking to religious voters as a sure betrayal of the party’s principles.” And they have enough money, megaphones, and high-speed Internet connections to make sure that America knows it."