Frank Cannon is something of a grouchy contrarian by profession. He's a political consultant, and president of the American Principles Project (where I'm a board member).

Bring up the subject of Dick Morris' recent column -- that social issues are irrelevant in this election year -- and Cannon does something that sounds like a cross between a snort and hiccough. Call it a "harrumph."

"Every new face emerging this election cycle in the GOP is to the right of the GOP's current establishment on social issues," Cannon points out. Even Chris Christie, the budget-busting Republican governor of New Jersey, is both pro-life and pro-marriage.

Let's face it: The economic collapse is the most important issue of this election cycle. But then, an economic collapse generally is. But Morris' claim that GOP voters don't care about social issues anymore is startlingly unbuttressed by any relationship to the facts on the ground.

Morris argues:

"Along with this change has come a shift in what it takes to turn the litmus paper red enough to win Republican primaries. It used to be that abortion, gun control and gay marriage were the hot-button issues, and anyone straying from orthodoxy was targeted in the primary."

Dick, turn in your pundit card, man. Because the fact is, that in every GOP primary in which the socially moderate, fiscally conservative Republican you tout was on the ballot, he lost. Where's Gov. Charlie Crist today? Lost in the primary and is losing in the general election, too. New Hampshire's Bill Binnie was supposed to be the prototype of the new Morris-approved libertarian social moderate. When GOP voters found out he was pro-gay marriage, he sank to 12 percent of the vote, despite throwing millions of his own money into his campaign. Mike Castle got beaten by a witch. OK, not really, but he did get trounced by a pro-abstinence, pro-life, pro-marriage fiscal conservative.

Every guy who fits Morris' description of the new GOP was swamped by actual GOP primary voters.

"Voters are having an across-the-board reaction in favor of objective standards," Cannon points out. "They want to see a return to a set of values -- both fiscally and socially -- that they see as the strength of the country."

It's no coincidence, in other words, that the same candidates who are talking about returning to fiscal responsibility are more to the right on social issues than the GOP establishment.

Or Morris could ask the Democrats. In Ohio, Congressman Steve Driehaus, part of the Rep. Bart Stupak group who abandoned pro-life principles to vote for Obamacare, is suing Susan B. Anthony List to take down its billboards. Ask him if the social issues matter.

"Think about Glenn Beck for a minute. Think about the hundreds of thousands of people who answered his call on the national mall on Aug. 28," reflects Cannon. "The hard-headed political smart guys like to ridicule that strange Beckian fusion of civil religion and libertarian politics. But to recognize the religious component in Beck's rally and messaging is to recognize the way in which religious values are infusing and animating the Tea Party electorate as a whole."

It's not that Americans are abandoning the culture war; it is that they are recognizing the culture war is moving into the realm of the economic and legal system as well.

"Who is publicly the face of the Dick Morris movement?" asks Cannon. "There are no winning candidates in GOP primaries who are touting their economic conservatism and social moderation. Such an animal does not even exist."

Which raises another question: Why are so many Republican pundits out there looking for unicorns?