Business Groups Tire of GOP Focus On Social Issues

Can the same political party equally (and honestly) fight for both traditional values and big business anyway? Maybe it's time for a Republican party split — the social conservatives from the fiscal conservatives — so each can better serve their constituents...

From the Washington Post:

..."I'm inclined to support the Republican Party, but the question becomes, how much other stuff do I have to put up with to maintain that identification?" asked Andrew A. Samwick, a Dartmouth College economics professor who until recently was chief economist of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers... Samwick said the disenchantment of small-government conservatives has been building since the passage of the USA Patriot Act, which some saw as infringing on individual liberties, and the Medicare drug benefit, which created future government liabilities that exceed the entire projected Social Security shortfall... "Some of these outcomes are really starting to alienate people who might be Republican because they are for limited government," Samwick said.

...For social conservatives, the turnabout is fair play. Evangelical Christians had grown leery of a Republican Party that courted their interests in election years, then turned its legislative attention to business and economic concerns as soon as the polls closed, said Gary L. Bauer, a former presidential candidate and president of American Values, a conservative religious advocacy group. After the 2004 election, for example, some evangelical leaders groused that the administration had launched a public relations blitz for its Social Security restructuring, not a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.