THE FUNDAMENTAL GOP PROBLEM

In "GOP 'Fusionism' Comes Un-Fused," Robert Tracinski puts his finger on the fatal problem with the GOP as a majority party:

The modern conservative movement was created by forging an alliance between religious traditionalists, pro-free-marketers, and foreign policy hawks.

The current primary campaign is a threat to fusionism. But it is not the candidates' fault, nor is it the voters'. The problem is the inherent instability of fusionism itself.

So consider the line-up: if you're a pro-free-marketer, you've got Rudy—but you can't trust Romney, you know McCain is dangerous, and Huckabee denounces you as a member of the "Club for Greed." If you're a hawk, you've got Rudy and McCain and maybe Romney—but Huckabee sounds too much like Jimmy Carter. And if you're a religious conservative, you're thrilled with Huckabee, but you're suspicious of McCain, you don't trust Romney, and Rudy is at best barely tolerable.

Tracinski thinks that Ayn Rand can give the believers in the Free Market Fairy the necessary moral grounding that the Fundies currently supply, but that is just another delusion given what we know about behavioral finance, market design and externalities. We can draw the obvious inference from this Economist editorial:

Business conservatives can never win a majority without the support of “values voters” (there just are not enough people around who look like Mr Romney). “Values voters” can never produce a viable governing coalition without the help of the business elite.