The economic conservatives want to shrink government and encourage personal responsibility. Religious right wingers seek to strengthen the family, and to affirm its independence. These two aims naturally, inevitably, go together.

This inherent reinforcement becomes apparent when considering current controversies regarding the beginning of life and our last years of existence. Liberals increasingly favor a cradle-to-grave governmental role, hoping that tax money will fund day care, school breakfasts, medical care, psychological counseling and more. Economic conservatives oppose such programs as wasteful and intrusive, while religious conservatives hate them because they undermine the role of the family. If Washington D.C. provides a toddler’s breakfast at government funded nursery school in Seattle, as well as the food stamps that finance other meals, then what’s left of a classical parenting role? By the same token, if grown children bear no responsibility for their aged parents, and depend entirely on the feds to feed and care for mom and pop in their senior years, then it involves not only a grotesque expansion of government but a tragic diminution of the role of family. Setting up voluntary personal retirement accounts within Social Security not only provides the greater independence that economic conservatives crave, but also reinforces the family values boosted by religious believers --- since such accounts (financed by your own payroll deductions) would be transferable to your heirs, rather than simply reverting to the strangers in the government.

In other words, the alignment of religious and economic conservatives isn’t an accident or an opportunistic strategy: it’s the logical result of identical desires. Both sides want to see the family strengthened and the government’s power reduced – two goals which can’t be separated. Bigger government means weaker families, while stronger families mean less justification for big government.

This common vision among conservatives of all stripes doesn’t mean that Republicans agree on all issues. The immigration debate, for instance, saw spirited arguments among various factions within the party. But that question —easily the most divisive current agenda sitem for Republicans – hardly splits conservatives along simplistic religious/economic lines. Most (but by no means all) economic conservatives (representing the interests of businesses, big and small) backed the comprehensive immigration reform advocated by President Bush, and many religious conservatives (including leaders of most of the major Evangelical denominations) also backed a path to earned legalization as an expression of “compassionate conservativism.” While nearly all Republicans back the idea of constructing a fence and strengthening security at the border, the complicated, multi-faceted disputes over what to do with the illegals already here defied simplistic attempts to characterize the GOP as clearly split between businessmen and Bible-thumpers. On this and many other issues, some of the commercial leaders could cite chapters and verses of their Bibles, and some of the religious believers achieved great financial success with profound respect for business values.

Regardless of differences in nuance and rhetoric, the dollar and devotional wings of the Republican Party will continue to enjoy a natural, logical, obvious congruence in political philosophy as well as practical approaches. Above all, the increasingly stridency and uncompromising militancy of the American Left helps push non-liberals of every stripe toward common ground – as does the obvious contempt with which leftist commentators like Krugman view all branches of conservative thought. Family values conservatives include tens of millions of Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and even the religiously unaffiliated, and can’t be rightly classified as “preachers.” Nor do libertarian-minded main street strivers, the independent small business people and entrepreneurs (who now far outnumber the members of organized labor in this country), deserve classification as “plutocrats.”

In this difficult electoral environment, with the mainstream media shamelessly exploiting the shameful behavior of Mark Foley, it’s of course possible (but by no means certain) that the Republicans will lose one or both houses of Congress in November. But the conservative coalition that has achieved such spectacular success in the past will manage to hold together for the long term, based on shared strong family/small government values, and no doubt will enjoy fresh victories in the future.