David Frum Pleads with his Party

Frum, reacting to Rick Santorum's primary wins in Mississippi and Alabama:

The Santorum candidacy pushes Republicans toward an election in which the issues are religious, cultural, and sexual, not economic. It's a candidacy that pushes the party away from metropolitan areas, away from areas of growing population, and rebases the party everywhere that is not dynamic, not growing. The concerns of hard-pressed America are deeply worthy of attention and respect. They call for responses and solutions. That's not what a Santorum candidacy offers. ... [A] Santorum candidacy offers an airing of resentments and grievances. Is that really where party conservatives want to go?

A vote for Santorum does seem more like an anguished cry of loss than a plan for the future. But what is the conservative plan for the future? Frum has gotten worried about the economic effects of our recent experiment in low taxes and truly free markets, and has taken to fretting about the plight of workers under pure capitalism. But if conservatism does not mean laissez faire economics, or resentment of cultural change, what does it mean?