Download As we pointed out last week, political evangelical

As we pointed out last week, the alliance of political evangelical conservatives is
beginning to fray. The current Republican field offers no obvious choice for evangelicals,
and the strains within the movement are beginning to pull it in different directions. For
evangelicals this means that unless they find a way to unite around a candidate in 2008,
the evangelical movement will fade as a political force. Form the standpoint of the
Republican Party, this situation raises separate but equally difficult questions.
As the evangelicals battle amongst themselves over the movement’s relationship with the
Republican Party and wrangle over climate change, Guantanimo detainees, the relative
importance of poverty, and other issues on the periphery of the movement, Republicans
are beginning to debate what type of relationship they wants to have with evangelicals
generally and with the various evangelical factions specifically. Given the strategic
impasse the party and evangelicals have reached, we think the GOP will conclude that its
best interest is served by parting ways with the evangelicals. Whether this is the wisest
long term decision is yet another story.
Background on the Republicans and Evangelicals
The Republican Party is currently a coalition comprised of voters with three primary
interests: national security, conservative social values and small government. There is
significant overlap between these: most social conservatives are hawkish on defense
issues and support limited government. This overlap is what binds the party. The overlap,
like the evangelicals, however, is beginning to fray, and unlike the broad evangelical
Christian movement, nothing inherently binds the three core Republican camps together,
which is to say, there is no reason that economic libertarians must be in the same political
party as social conservatives.
Evangelicals became strongly tied to the Republican Party in the 1980s, spurred primarily
by a shared interest in limiting the power and influence of the federal government in the
wake of the 1960s and the Warren Supreme Court. The Cold War added another level of
ties, as Christian Conservatives acutely saw the threat to religion in the avowed atheism
of the Soviet Marxist-Leninist ideology. Of these two, the alliance between libertarians
and evangelicals was the more strategically important: while the Democratic Party had a
number of staunch anti-Communist hawks, it counted few small government libertarians
among its ranks.
Common cause between social conservatives and libertarians joined to the hawkish
Republican Party (stronger on national defense issues than Democrats since Nixon’s
presidency) formed the foundation of the Republican Party for more than two decades.
Evangelicals emerged as an influential block in national Republican politics in the late
1980s. One key to their power has been their famous ability to get out the vote in
elections, but their power is equally the result of their work behind the scenes as party
volunteers and fund raisers. Perhaps most important is the strength of evangelicals in the
primary season. Motivated by highly charged emotional issues, particularly abortion,
evangelicals are more likely to vote in primaries and are far more likely to take part in
caucuses. Evangelicals are also disproportionately represented among the party’s
volunteers, positions that provide familiarity with the levers of power and with the
individuals who make decisions within the party at the local, state and national level. In
truth, if evangelicals were taken away form the Republican Party, the impact would be
felt most strongly not in the direct number of votes lost but in the disorder that will come
in the wake of their leaving.
Disappointment with Success
Having been a crucial ingredient of the Republican Party’s emergence as a majority
party, evangelicals are frustrated by what they see as the lack of progress that
Republicans have made toward evangelicals’ goals in the past six years. From the
evangelical perspective, little has changed: Roe still stands, recognition of gay marriage
is far closer to fruition now than six years ago, popular media is no less supportive of unChristian lifestyles and models than in 2000. Even the larger evangelical victories are
partial victories: the ban on partial birth abortion is facing challenges and a Supreme
Court decision, and the ban on the use of federal funds for stem cell research does not ban
stem cell research at all, only the use of federal money. Frustration over a general lack oif
progress is at the root of the evangelical splintering.
As evangelicals fracture, the view of the rest of the Republican Party and its leadership is
equally complicated. The party’s ties to evangelicals are coming to be seen by many in
the party as a severe handicap in the battle to win support among moderate voters. In
areas where liberal social values have taken root, the role of the “religious right” in the
Republican Party is a severe liability. Mainstream voters in New England and the West
Coast view evangelicals as intolerant and intrusive in private affairs, and this perception
has been firmly transferred to the Republican Party in many places. The result has been a
political nightmare for the GOP: for the first time in the modern political era, there are no
Republican Senators from New England or the West Coast, where liberal social values
predominate.
This is where the fissures in the party become so volatile. While idealists within the
evangelical movement simply shrug off criticism that they are killing the party, both
realist and liberal evangelicals are trying to deal with this characterization: pragmatists by
trying to reach a compromise within the Republican Party, liberals by fighting the
stereotypes of evangelicals as intolerant and intrusive.
Complicating matters for the Republican Party id the observation that Democrats are
beginning to win back the support of the so-called Reagan Democrats – middle class
whites who tended before 1980 to vote with labor candidates, but who were attracted to
Reagan (and the Republican Party afterward) based on national defense issues. With the
conduct of the war in Iraq contested, and with neither social conservatism nor economic
libertarianism appealing to them, Reagan Democrats are returning to the Democratic
Party.
To survive as a powerful political party, the GOP must win the support of foreign policy
hawks. The Democrats, in stunningly characteristic form, appear to be obliging by
turning the war in Iraq into a litmus test for its presidential hopefuls. Even the most
clearly pro-War Democratic candidate, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), has been forced by
political winds to call for a mandatory pull-out date for soldiers from Iraq. As the antiwar faction of the party continues to increase its power, Democrats may be giving the
GOP precisely what it needs to toe the line on the defection of the hawks.
As the hawks come back to the nest, however, the small-government libertarian wing of
the party has less reason to stay. Democrats are doing a good job of talking about
responsible fiscal policy, and the Republican Party has convinced a large swath of fiscal
conservatives that it cannot be trusted with power. Deficits began to soar once President
Clinton left power, and though Bush’s taking the reigns coincided with a recession
followed by a war, for fiscal conservatives, there is little holding them in the Republican
Party, and the continued presence of the evangelicals – again, perceived by many of
intrusive and anti-libertine -- provides more impetus to move.
Unlike with the hawks, the Democratic Party has not yet offered fiscal conservatives a
compelling reason to stay in the Republican ranks.
As evangelicals have seen their power in the party recede and particularly as they foresee
their power potentially disappearing with their inability to agree on a candidate for 2008,
evangelicals have tried to strengthen the ties between themselves and the hawks. The
strategy appears to be an attempt to salvage at least two-thirds of the old Republican
coalition while also focusing the party’s attention on foreign affairs. Security and
conservative social values are still attractive to many Reagan Democrats, despite the
conduct of the war and fears of the intrusive designs of the evangelicals. The effort to
pull together evangelicals and hawks seems unlikely to succeed, however, as the
nomination of either of the strongest foreign policy candidates – Sen. John McCain
(Ariz.) and Rudolf Giuliani -- would only exacerbate the fractures in the evangelical
movement.
Divorce
The safest course of action for the Republican Party is a public, but not messy, divorce.
If evangelicals brought only their positive attributes -- motivation and organization -- to
the party, there would be no doubt as to the Republican Party’s long term direction. The
catch, of course, is that the evangelical approach to politics is, well, evangelical. From the
GOP’s perspective, too many have come to see evangelicals as an intrusive group,
desirous of using government to actively change how people live. Through their
opposition to abortion, they are seen by many, particularly liberal women, as opponents
of equality. Through their opposition to gay marriage, they are seen by many as anti-gay.
People fear evangelicals not because they oppose various actions and behaviors but
because they are seen desirous of using the force of law to change people’s behavior.
This conflict has moved to the center of the once strong libertarian-social conservative
alliance in the Republican Party. Those who adhere to the position that government
should leave people alone – both in the personal lives and their business dealings – see
evangelicals as intrusive and inherently in opposition to libertarianism.
The libertarians’ successes, seen in the general support for fiscal discipline, low taxes and
light business regulation, are most obvious in the degree to which both parties generally
adhere to their approach. Since Bill Clinton’s re-election in 1996, the Democratic Party
has shifted to one that is socially liberal but that is also fiscally conservative and,
compared to 1992, far less enamored with government’s regulatory powers. While
Democrats have not yet shrugged off the tax-and-spend label, they are showing that it
does not apply as it once did. The only major regulatory advances offered in the 109th
Congress so far relate to climate change, and the most visible climate change bills have
Republican co-sponsors. None of the major Democratic Presidential hopefuls is running
on an anti-business platform, and almost all tout their pro-business credentials.
This is not to say that Democrats are the more business friendly party, but the experience
of the 2001 to 2007 has shown that Democrats versus Republicans presents a cross rough
for libertarians facing a choice between fiscal responsibility and increased regulation. As
long as the Democrats control the impulse to regulate business, libertarians are again in
play in the political debate. That Democrats and Republicans differ only on the degree to
which they support libertarian governing means that this traditional Republican
constituency is likely to lose the most members to the Democrats.
The vast majority of evangelicals, on the other hand, are not really in play for the
Democrats yet. As a result, at least for the time being, the Republicans are likely to see
surest bet is to firm up its libertarian flank both by appealing to these voters directly, but
also by publicly breaking with evangelicals, the group that libertarians distrust and that
alienate moderates in key constituencies. The bet that Republicans would be making is
that while they may lose the infrastructure support, get-out-the-vote efforts and volunteer
labor, the evangelicals at the end of the day will not vote for any of the current
Democrats. The biggest fear – a third party – would seem remote, as evangelicals are too
well led to embark on a Ralph Naderesque campaign that would only have the effect of
election the less palatable major party candidate.
If the break were public and clear, Republican candidates on the West Coast and
Northeast would have a chance of electoral success.