Despite Palin's Resignation, the GOP Needs Culture Warriors

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Reihan Salam, an influential young player in the effort to revive the Republican Party, writes this weekend that Sarah Palin's resignation is another sign of the fading culture wars:

What does seem increasingly clear is that Palin's collapse represents the end of a certain kind of politics. If the culture war really is ending, culture warriors like Palin will fade from the scene. 

I can hear many mainstream Republicans sharing Salam's sigh of relief. I think they're fooling themselves.

It's wishful thinking by the GOP's non-social conservatives, who want the party to double down on fiscal conservatism—especially now that Democratic spendthrifts are running the country—to regain its competence in governing and to step back from divisive culture war issues.

Rather than marking the twilight of the culture wars, however, the GOP's love/hate relationship with Alaska's outgoing governor illustrates a persistent conundrum for the party: The religious conservatives whom Palin represents are a Republican minority that can't be counted on to deliver the presidency or congressional majorities, and yet they constitute the most crucial part of the party's base.

Republicans can't win with them alone, but they can't win without them.

Successful Republicans like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush knew this. They mobilized the religious conservative base while managing to transcend it.

Sarah Palin is incapable of such transcendence. But no other Republican in the country touches her power to mobilize, to draw huge crowds. Without that, the Republicans may boast intellectual firepower, governing prowess, and smart messaging and they'll still be out of power. Who will sign up new voters, knock on doors, and make phone calls—who will counter Barack Obama's grass-roots army—in the lead-up to Election Day?

Lots of Republicans know this. It's why the 2012 Republican presidential field is dominated by unabashed culture warriors like Palin, Mike Huckabee, and Newt Gingrich; softer, George W. Bush-style religious conservatives like Bobby Jindal and Tim Pawlenty; and wannabe culture warriors like Mitt Romney.

Palin's resignation isn't a sign of the culture wars' end. Her meteoric rise is a sign that they're still very much with us.

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