Rob [Schwarzwalder], thank you for that kind introduction, for hosting this forum to call attention to the role of social issues in the body politic, and for inviting this proud FRC alumnus to offer a few words.

Any assessment of the relationship between economic and social conservatism would not be complete without a reference to Ronald Reagan. In 1977, less than three weeks after Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as our 39^th president, the former governor of California laid out his vision of a renewed GOP that would advance “a program of action based on political principle that can attract those interested in the so-called ‘social’ issues and those interested in ‘economic’ issues.” Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Reagan made it clear that he was not interested in “a temporary uneasy alliance” between two factions of conservatives, but in “the creation of a new, lasting majority,” and one that is “committed to working always in the interest of the American family.”

Reagan’s willingness to welcome social conservatives into a party of primarily business and financial interests had a lot to do his political success. But a generation later, his vision of a lasting political coalition has yet to materialize. The GOP dominance coveted by Lee Atwater, Newt Gingrich, and Karl Rove remains only a dream because the alliance between economic and social conservatives has never been a full partnership, and remains far more “uneasy” than most activists and observers are willing to acknowledge.

The two factions give appearances, especially every four years at convention time, of working together for the good of the party. But the dirty little secret is that the conservative movement and the Republican party remain far more conflicted over “social issues” than “economic issues.” With few exceptions, the political consultants, the think tanks and activist organizations, Fox News, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal are far more devoted to promoting economic conservatism than social conservatism.

Even the tea party movement, which claims to be an indigenous force within the GOP, won’t touch the social issues. Our issues are also off the table in Paul Ryan’s Road Map as well as the new Top Guns book written by Representatives Ryan, McCarthy, and Cantor.

Now, “values issues” are not entirely absent from the “Pledge to America” that the GOP House leadership unveiled yesterday. Still, none of the five policy themes addresses the elephant in the room, that is, the social crisis that predates both the Great Recession and the presidency of Barack Obama. The document acknowledges the “unraveling” of the “social fabric” and offers a token nod to “traditional marriage” and a promise to stop federal funding of abortion. Yet the overriding focus of the Pledge is on economic concerns, national security, and government reform.

Nothing in the Pledge calls for the reversal of a generation of bad court decisions and misguided public policies that have devastated the American family and our social sector to a far greater degree than any of the policies of Barack Obama have devastated our economy. Now, could you imagine what would have happened, had the tables been reversed, and none of the “five points” of the Pledge had specifically addressed economic issues and Americans for Tax Reform had to plead with House leaders at the eleventh hour to include a section on extending the Bush tax cuts?

I raise the question only to demonstrate how far we have come from Reagan’s vision of a genuine working partnership between economic and social conservatives. It is not a mutual relationship by any stretch of the imagination. The economic conservatives run the show, many of whom do not share Reagan’s commitment to the American family.

What Economic Conservatives Get Wrong

This is why everything that Ross [Douthart] has said today should resonate with those of us who call ourselves social conservatives. We cannot simply defer to the Club for Growth, the Chamber of Commerce, or AEI to dictate the GOP policy agenda, including economic and tax initiatives. For starters, the economic conservatives have misdiagnosed the nature of the current crisis. And we need to call them on that. In their static analysis, the root problems facing America are economic and fiscal, not social or moral.

I have great respect for Arthur Brooks of AEI. But his analysis in his latest book, The Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future, misses the mark. The decisive issue of our time is not so much the conflict between the public and private sectors. Rather, it’s the deterioration of the social sector, rooted in the marriage-based family, without which democratic capitalism and constitutional government would not be possible. It is the social sector that stands at most risk today.

Let me explain. My first Power Point chart [see below] reveals the changes in the composition of U.S. households since 1970. You will not find this in Top Guns or the Pledge. But if you want to know what drives our national angst today--this chart is worth a 1,000 words. As the chart displays the data, we have not--since Richard Nixon was president--experienced any growth in the one variable that offers the most promise of sustained prosperity: the number of households composed of married parents with children less than 18 years of age. But we have seen more than a tripling of households with neither marriage nor children. Keep in mind that this chart does not include single-parent households, which have also more than tripled since 1970, another negative economic indicator.

I could go into a lot more detail here, but our party fails to understand the reality that America does not suffer so much of a fiscal deficit than a demographic deficit. The reason why we face huge liabilities with Social Security and Medicare is because my generation, the Boomers, did not follow in the footsteps of our parents and produce a sufficient number of descendents to, as Theodore Roosevelt would said, to “keep the nation moving forward.” A lot of this has to do, by the way, with the legalization of abortion.

Many economists, including Robert Samuelson and David P. Goldman, agree that these patterns, particularly the growth of single-parent households, do not bode well for the future of the housing industry, the future of the economy, or the future of America. TR, one of our nation’s greatest presidents and in many ways the father of modern social conservatism, would call this national suicide.

Nor do these social patterns bode well for the development of “individual character” that, as Lawrence [Reed]  has nicely explained, undergirds liberty and prosperity, nor for the “common set of civic virtues” identified by Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute—virtues that are learned primarily in the family and that undergird both market and state. From Adam Smith to Alexis de Tocqueville to Max Weber, astute observers have long recognized that American exceptionalism rests on a certain cultural, ethical, and even religious foundation. Yet, as Lawrence [Reed] noted, this rich foundation has been deteriorating since the 1970s, in lock step with our retreat from marriage and family formation. Consequently, our economic system operates today in a near ethical vacuum that would cause Adam Smith, who was a moral philosopher, to turn over in his grave.

Second, because the economic conservatives have misdiagnosed the crisis of our time, their prescriptions will not deliver what they promise. For years, conservatives have oversold the ability of free enterprise to deliver the goods in a cultural context that is disengaged from that “common set of civic virtues.” Here I want to draw attention to my second Power Point slide [see below] that suggests that the Reagan boom, the model that Republicans consider ideal, was not everything that they claim, especially when compared to the post World War Two boom. In the immediate postwar era, household income largely kept pace with GDP, and did so with only one wage earner in the vast majority of households. But in the Reagan era, when the GDP increased at the same pace as it did in the earlier era, the median income of married-couple families chugged along a much slower pace; the income of the one-earner family increased only 4 percent. If we extend the time line beyond 2005, family-income growth would turn negative. Ironically, this “achievement” occurred as a greater proportion of the workforce earned college degrees, more married mothers joined the labor force, and average family size dropped from four to two children. The data debunk the claim made by many economic conservatives that the American family will recover once we get the economy moving again. If the family struggled under the Reagan boom, why would it recover now?

What Social Conservatives Get Wrong

Now, I have heaped a lot of blame on economic conservatives. But I have to give them credit: they know how to advance their vision and they have been more far more strategic than social conservatives in driving the policy agenda. After thirty years of pushing our issues, social conservatives have little to show for that effort. “If we were a business, we would be bankrupt,” laments my colleague Allan Carlson. “If we were a sports team, we would be in last place.”

Carlson believes that social conservatives have invested too much stock in electoral politics—thinking that winning elections, and fighting for issues no matter what the outcome, will yield results. That defensive strategy, he claims, has contributed to social conservatives being known more by what we’re against—abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality—than what we stand for: life-long marriage, the natural family, a flourishing social sector, and the elevation of the needs of children above the desires of adults. We have failed to play offense by putting these civic and social virtues front and center. As a result, we have not been able to collaborate all that well with either party on behalf of a wide range of initiatives, including economic and tax policies, that would make marriage and family formation more affordable and foster the return of the child-rich family to the centerpiece of American life. As Ross [Douthat] suggests, our agenda must be more comprehensive than simply blocking the legal redefinition of marriage, as important as that is.

We also need to formulate more winsome and persuasive arguments. At times we frame our rhetoric in religious terminology that makes it sound like we are preaching or that we are telling people how they should live. At the core of these shortcomings is that we often fail to separate our private lives from public policy, a problem of liberals as well. Consequently, we come across as if we are promoting a personal agenda, not the “general welfare” of the Constitution. Rather than framing critical realities like marriage and the family as enduring ideals that cut to the very heart of American identity and exceptionalism, we frame social norms as “our values,” as if they belong to one party or one faction in the party.

So if social conservatives want to get out of the basement, we need to find better ways to advance these issues. We need to clarify that we are attempting to shape law and public policy around normative arrangements that are justified by time, reinforced by the social and biological sciences, and foster happiness, social peace, and prosperity. We need to find a way to help our fellow Americans understand the DNA of the social and economic order in ways that do not threaten them but inspire them.

Perhaps we should follow the pattern of the Tea Party and declare our independence from both political parties, but also distance ourselves from the purely economic conservatives who do not understand the importance of the social sector. We should want the parties--and even economic conservatives--to seek us and our policy ideas, not vice versa. By operating independently . . . by playing offense and making our case winsomely . . . we might just be able to achieve the full partnership that Reagan envisioned but more important, his “new, lasting majority” that has dogged the GOP for a generation. Thank you.