Before we begin, let us discuss the most important ground rule: every political movement thinks that it has cornered the market on absolute truth and thus does not come come across as preachy, bossy or even a tad bit intolerant — just common sensical and correct. Whether it be social conservatives or libertarians, all of us have a little part of our soul which believes that if the world ran the way that we wished that it would, life would be a vacation.

And let us be honest here: is there anyone preachier than a true-believing leftist? Whether you have a leftist twit belittling anyone to the right of Stalin for his "greedy" belief that the individual is best at managing his own money or a bishop of tolerance disagreeing with anyone who disapproves of gay "marrige" and who himself will accept nothing less than a gay "marriage" in every street corner church and every city hall, I have heard fire and brimstone sermons that would make Jerry Falwell blush.

Shawn Macomber, one of my favorite up-and-coming writers, has a thought-provoking interview with Ryan Sager, New York Post columnist and author of The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians and the Battle to Control the Republican Party.

You write, "The American people have their virtues, but knowing what they want from the government and setting sensible long-term priorities in the absence of principled political leadership are not among them. If the Republican Party has found itself with a constituency that does not value, or perhaps won't even tolerate, small government, it is because that is the coalition party leaders have built." With that in mind, is opposition to limited government simply political, or do we now face a cultural pandemic of nanny state dependence? And which aspect — political or cultural — poses the greater challenge? Or are the two hopelessly intertwined?

Sager: In the passage you quote, what I'm discussing is a massive shift in the Republican coalition that's been going on since the late 1990s — since, essentially, the time the GOP was emasculated by what it perceived as the disaster of the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996. Before that time, the Republican coalition was mostly divided between libertarians and social conservatives. But, as I discuss in some detail in my book, in the late 1990s, polls started picking up a third element in the coalition. Pew calls them "pro-government conservatives," and they now make up about a third of Republican voters. These voters didn't come on board by accident, the GOP courted them. So, this is what I mean when I say Republicans are living in a prison of their own construction. I don't think Americans are suddenly less amenable to shrinking government than they were during the Reagan years, when they demanded lower taxes, or during the Gingrich years, when they demanded welfare reform. In fact, I think a new generation of more mobile workers is extremely amenable to having more control over their own retirement and their own health care. What has happened is that the GOP has lost its ability to speak to these voters.

Now this is where Mr. Sager simply shines. If there is a better diagnosis of the Ohio Republican Party's problems, I would like to hear it. Have we been fooled by politicians who play the notes we want to hear, with no intention of giving us a full concert? Or has that most addictive of drugs — power — led good men and women to lay their principles aside in the quest for more and more hits at the pipe? I wish I could answer the question for you, buy I am not sure that I would like the answer if I pulled the curtain back.

Your book ends on an almost strangely optimistic note, suggesting a new fusionism between traditionalists and libertarians is possible so long as there is a "renewal of vows" recognizing "that a limited federal government serves the interests of libertarians and social conservatives alike." Yet some on the Religious Right balk. For example, In Defense of the Religious Right author Pat Hynes wrote in a critique of your argument that "despite their political impotency, the libertarian Right appears bent on bringing down the one political movement that has tolerated its know-it-all-ism and has in fact dragged it into the halls of political power along with it, rather like a ball and chain: the Christian Right." Thus, I'm curious if you foresee a "renewal of vows" with a Religious Right which, as it stands now, clearly views itself in ascendancy or will a more equitable bargaining position require some abject humiliation at the polls?

Sager: In the first chapter, which is set at the 2005 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), I talk a bit about this sense of Religious Right triumphalism. One of the key "triumphalists" there that year was Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who crowed pretty loudly about how "values voters" won the 2004 election in his state for George W. Bush. Well, Mr. Blackwell is running for governor this year as a "values" candidate, and he's down by about 20 points. Sen. Rick Santorum, another "values" candidate, has been having his own serious troubles in Pennsylvania this cycle. This stuff goes in cycles, but Americans tend to have a limited tolerance for being preached at and watching people pose as their moral betters and moral arbiters. If the Republican Party wants to tell libertarians and fiscal conservatives to take a hike, I think it'll get pretty lonely pretty quickly for the GOP. The libertarian wing of the party can't win on its own, but neither can the social-conservative wing. That's why we're in this ideological marriage. It could take a major loss at the polls for the Religious Right to rethink its strategy. But even without that they should remember that small government used to be one of their goals, not just something they tolerated. The greatest threat to our social fabric is an intrusive government, not capitalism.

And here is where the author takes a wrong turn and, I think, fails to correctly analyze the situation. Let us nip this "Blackwell is down by 20" crap right here and now. KB is, while behind, nowhere near a 20-point deficit and the pull that some Republicans surrender to when believing such obviously wrong information deserves further study .

I believe that their own personal biases against Christians in particular and serious believers in general make such liberal nonsense too tempting for them to pass up. Libertarians may not like say the amendment to protect traditional marriage, but they are themselves much too eager to allow unelected judges to force homosexuality upon the general populace and much less eager to fight that movement's transgressions. Neither side is pure and both are at times a little too willing to use the force of big government to reach ends of which they agree.

The Religious Right, you also note, has "increasingly adopted the mind-set of an embattled, persecuted sect," yet at the same time it is a movement that is simultaneously, paradoxically, widely credited as one of the major power broker in American politics today, supposedly representing "The Real America." Granting they are a well-organized, integral component of GOP victory, does the Religious Right nevertheless have perhaps an inflated sense of power as a result of playing-the-victim Democrats all-too-willing to blame electoral losses on theocratic gay bashers — i.e. the popularity of the Jesusland map after the election — rather than acknowledge their own faults? Put another way, are fiscal conservatives more relevant than they are generally portrayed?

Sager: You're right, it's quite the paradox. The Religious Right is seen as a power-broker, but they feel almost as betrayed by the Republican Party as the libertarians do. If you think libertarians whine, you should listen to James Dobson some time. So, yes, there's a real identity crisis on the social right. They feel very powerful, or at least feared, yet they can't achieve very much of what they want, at least when it comes to government policy. The response by some has been to try to live apart from mainstream society. The home schooling movement is part of this. That's also why The Passion of the Christ was so important to Evangelicals. They wanted to show they had power in the marketplace. The question, I guess, is how long does the Religious Right let itself be conned by the GOP bringing up the Federal Marriage Amendment and the flag-burning amendment every even-numbered year, and then voting them down? The fiscal conservatives ultimately probably get even less from the Republican Party than the Religious Right, at this point. But neither wing has much reason to be happy.

I wish that social conservatives had the power that the media and left-wing whackos claim that we do. I can grantee you that this would be a much better country if we did. Alas, the coalition of the willing to fight for limited government needs all of its divisions. Libertarians cannot afford to declare a civil war nor can social conservatives hope to find success if they believe that they can alone win the battle.

Or, as a sadly famous American once said: Can't we all just get along?