GOP 'marriage': Convenience or Convergence?

And while on Frum's pages, his prior post is titled 'Can this marriage be saved?' The 'marriage' to which he refers is the post-Reagan GOP coalition of religious Christianist idealogues and small-government economic conservatives, which has at the very least won the last two elections for the Republicans.

It's a good question, and it's a complicated marriage. The question I would ask in reply is, "Has this been a marriage of convenience or convergence?" That is to say, did this coalition form because there's significant overlap between Team Values and Team Taxcut? Or did the coalition form because each of these two sides, with little in common, used the other to achieve its goals?

I don't know the answer to that question. What I do know is that if Frum's "Reader A" and, say, Andrew Sullivan are any indication, Team Taxcut has started to treat this as an open marriage.

And that doesn't bode well for McCain. You can see evidence of this in the fact that the GOP "base" that was "electrified" by the choice of Sarah Palin for VP consisted largely of Team Values. Team Taxcut? Not so much.