Europeans were moving in that direction with the 3 term govt of Tony Blair. Now, it is the US turn in ending Social conservatism. That's why Jeb and Paul are trying to reinvent Reagan's sunny disposition. Which may or may not work. GOP dominance is over though.
I would dispute that Tony Blair's election brought an 'end' to social conservatism, in the UK at least. I mean, the 'socially conservative' credentials of the Thatcher/Major governments are somewhat suspect (Thatcher's efforts to liberalise Sunday trading laws, Major's reduction of the age of homosexual consent, the fact that about half the cabinets in that period fathered children out of wedlock or at the very least had multiple affairs), and voting for the Labour party didn't neccessarily mean a vote against the social conservatism of the Conservative Party. Indeed, during the party's wilderness years, some of its most popular policies (on crime and immigration) could be described as socially conservative. Rather, often what the average voter couldn't stomach was the purported meanness and stinginess of the party's economic policies. Of course, Blair did radically liberalise government policy on 'social issues', though one could argue that there has been something of a backlash against Blairite policies in those fields (largely over crime and immigration rather than personal morality).
Back to the main point of this thread, I think this article is a load of bunk. Whilst I agree it can be a useful categorisation at times, we should be very careful about throwing up a wall between 'social' and 'economic' issues, which are often inextricably intertwined. For instance, the way in which systems of social welfare are run covers is linked to both the moral and fiscal implications of such policies. Furthermore, we should not assume that just because people (particularly the young) are socially liberal on some issues that they are broadly socially liberal upon everything. I for one am something of a liberal when it comes to contraception, and something of a conservative when it comes to abortion. There are other people that I know who are tolerant of gay marriage but not gay adoption; soft drugs but not hard drugs; pornography but not prostitution. Most people that I know tend to favour reasonably harsh sentences for criminals. To say that from now on the sole political cleavage will be between those who favour a small state and those that favour a bigger one is sheer nonsense to me.
