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Reading Rod Dreher's new book, one has to believe that Republicans are lucky that our political discourse separates debates about values from debates about economic issues. "Jesus had as much or more to say about greed" as he did about the cultural wedge issues that excite conservatives, writes Dreher. "But you will not find most American religious conservatives worrying much about greed."

Conservatives who do worry about such things are among the kind that Dreher calls "crunchy cons" in this new book. Less an analysis of a movement than an expression of a sensibility, it is told through vignettes of kindred spirits: a Bush speechwriter and animal rights advocate at odds with the GOP on the environment; organic livestock farmers up against agribusiness in Texas; sportsmen and historic preservationists who stand in the way of sprawl developers.

Binding these "Crunchy Cons" (including some who are uncomfortable calling themselves conservative) is a desire to conserve what they see as best about America in the face of assaults from "the libertine left and libertarian right."

As both parties tilt toward upscale swing voters in suburbia (libertarian on cultural issues and laissez faire on economic ones), populists (who hold the opposite views) find themselves further distanced from the mainstream. They are as suspicious of big business as they are of big government, as concerned about unrestrained markets as unrestrained lifestyles. In return, mainstream conservatives are uneasy with them. When Dreher told his editor at the National Review that he was leaving work early one day to pick up organic produce at his co-op in Brooklyn, the editor replied, "Ewww, that's so lefty."

The author grew up in Louisiana, a swing state with a strong populist tradition. Now he writes editorials for The Dallas Morning News. He and his wife, a stay-at-home mom and former staffer for Commentary magazine, live in an urban 1914 Craftsman-style bungalow, insulated from both the "corrupting power of wealth" in affluent suburbia and "the Wal-Martization of America" at the other end of the income scale. There, they listen to A Prairie Home Companionon public radio and homeschool their children, not because of Darwin in the schools, he says, but because of the absence of traditional character education to counter corrosive contemporary popular culture.

This is a subversive book for a conservative to write, for it reveals the fault lines in today's GOP. Dreher is scathing about the values of heavily Republican north Dallas suburbs, home to McMansions, monster SUVs and other conspicuous symbols of competitive consumption. (The book cover illustration depicts a rusting VW bus with a GOP logo painted on its front.) His Crunchy Cons are not right-wing hippies, however; they are traditionalists, not hedonists. For them, the political divide between left and right means less than the cultural division between individualism -- the values of "greed, envy and self-gratification" -- and traditional obligations to others and shared rules to live by.

This communitarian conservatism will sound familiar to readers of Christopher Lasch, author of The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics. Dreher cites a number of these critics repeatedly. But four of his eight chapters are fresh and original: One is on education and the state of the American family; another is on stewardship of God's creation. The final two are on faith and the future. His voice is sensible, responsible, and fair -- rare for a partisan these days. "Hillary Clinton got a bum rap from the right," he admits, "it really does take a village to raise a child."

Dreher's heartbreaking story about a poor working family whose children are in jeopardy of losing health insurance because of Republican-led cutbacks in the Texas Legislature is reminiscent of the stories Bill Clinton used to tell on the stump in 1992. (Most were about economic issues and used the themes of opportunity, responsibility, and community to convey a firm sense of right and wrong.) Republicans "yanked the rug out from under this traditional Republican family," Dreher wrote in The News. The reaction? "I expected people to disagree with me, but I was not prepared for the contempt, the unshirted spite, that conservatives rained down on my head."

"I don't think there are too many in the conservative movement today who care about conserving much of anything except money," the writer Wendell Berry tells Dreher later in the book.

This year's election will tell if culturally moderate Democrats, such as pro-life Catholic Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania and Jim Webb, the Scots-Irish Vietnam War hero and Iraq war opponent from southwestern Virginia, can revive the party's appeal among culturally conservative swing voters.

Can any Democrat appeal to Crunchy Cons at the national level? Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter both came from rural states populated by God-fearing, church-going Christians who own guns. Clinton had speechwriters like Paul Begala and David Kusnet, who understood the mindset of the "forgotten middle class." When Carter quoted the prophet Micah in his Inaugural address ("do justly ... walk humbly") it was genuine, not an affectation lacquered on for effect.

Centrist Democrats will relate to Crunchy Cons instinctively. Secular liberals who won't should read it carefully for commonalities, instead of demonizing others who see differently. Or they can reread Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, whose deep faith sharpened their political point of view. Neither was a moral relativist. Both could distinguish right from wrong.

In the absence of such Democrats on the ballot, Dreher's "Crunchy Cons" will vote Republican. As one of them explains, "The Republican Party is at least somewhat hospitable to religious traditionalists, while the Democratic Party is hostile, or at a minimum has made itself unable to oppose those who are hostile. It's the difference between an unreliable ally and an enemy."

The key to winning elections is to have more allies than enemies.

Carter Wilkie, a former speechwriter for President Clinton, is co-author of Changing Places: Rebuilding Community in the Age of Sprawl.