Social Security focus will test GOP's unity (& will Dems unify like GOP?)

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/02/08/social_security_focus_will_test_gops_unity/

Social Security focus will test GOP's unity
By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff | February 8, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Social conservatives are asking themselves a question about Social Security and President Bush: ''Is he prepared to spend significant political capital on privatization but reluctant to devote the same energy to preserving traditional marriage?"

The question is from a Jan. 18 letter from leading social conservatives to the president's strategist Karl Rove, which was leaked to The New York Times. It continues: ''If so, it would create outrage with countless voters who stood with him just a few weeks ago, including an unprecedented number of African-Americans, Latinos, and Catholics who broke with tradition and supported the president solely because of this issue."

The so-called Arlington Group includes James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, the evangelist Jerry Falwell, and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who told interviewers this week that many social conservatives are middle-class and working-class people who want to prevent gay marriage but are unsure about Social Security privatization.

The letter to Rove said that without more aggressive action by Bush to pass a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, ''it becomes impossible for us to unite our movement on an issue such as Social Security privatization where there are already deep misgivings."

The rebellion by social conservatives is noteworthy for exposing the brazenness with which they negotiate with Rove, and for laying bare the bargain that has bound the Republican coalition for the past quarter-century: Social conservatives support an economic agenda they do not particularly agree with, in exchange for wider backing for their own agenda. Economic conservatives, in return, tolerate social-issue stances that they do not really share in hope of cobbling together a majority for tax cuts and other GOP economic policies. <snip>

Republicans tout private savings accounts as a way to peel off parts of the Democratic coalition, primarily young people. Democrats should be able to do some peeling of their own, perhaps not among social conservative activists, but among mainstream followers for whom supporting families means more than just banning gay marriage. By advertising their coalition's resistance to Bush's Social Security plan, Bauer, Dobson, Falwell, and their friends have given Democrats a road map to follow.