The Republican Problem
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I’ve just read a couple of articles describing the identity/ideological problem the Republicans now face. This is a very telling admission from Tim Pawlenty at the Republican Governors’ Association:
Palin grabbed an enormous share of the attention, but there was a lot of serious thinking going on among other governors and would-be governors. Tim Pawlenty, the governor of Minnesota and a finalist in the Republican vice-presidential sweepstakes, spent a lot of time trying to reconcile the emerging reform vs. tradition split in the party. “Our country is changing,” Pawlenty said. “And we have not done a very good job translating our values and principles, which are as true and as valid as ever, into the context and circumstances of our time.”
But before the governors could set about translating those values and principles, they had to get their heads around the extent of their party’s loss. “You cannot be a majority governing party,” Pawlenty continued, “if you lose all of the Northeast, all of the Great Lakes states, all of the West Coast, increasing numbers of Western states, increasing numbers of mid-Atlantic states, have a big deficit with women, have a big deficit with modest income voters, have a big deficit with Hispanic voters, have a big deficit with African-Americans, and expect that’s going to be a success formula for the future.”
This is the polar opposite of the way they thought in 2004. At this point, they have two solid overlapping voting blocks: white males, and Evangelical Christians, and America this once near-invincible base is no longer enough. The WSJ, no liberal bastion, believes that allying himself so closely with Evangelicals cost McCain the election (the whole article follows below).
If the party can organize into a coherent whole, there are two ways it can go: it can move further to the right and radicalize, as Britian’s Conservatives did in 1997, or it can move toward the center and allow its own left-wingers (of which McCain was one) to rise in prominence.
The former choice would be, I believe, a disaster, not just in terms of policy (because radical right-wingers are crazy and ignorant), but also because there would be no viable opponents to curb Democratic left-wing excess (radical left-wingers are not ignorant but are arguably just as crazy). My hope is that the Republicans will get their shit together enough to move toward the center and avoid the fairly realistic possibility of having a one-party system for the next 2 - 8 years. This would also vastly improve the political discourse by marginalizing hard ethnocentric ideologues and actually encouraging reflective, rational debate (at least more than we have seen in the last decade).
In integral terms, my hope is that Republicans respond to their current “identity crisis” by integrating their new understanding of American political and social reality into their political make-up and become truly “rational” and “worldcentric,” transcending their mythic and ethnocentric drives (they would move to orange, or, if they can find a few enlightened leaders, to yellow and actually be more “progressive” than the Dems while still holding to a certain core of conservative values: hard-work, responsibility, and rationally-founded family values).
Did Religious Conservatives Help or Hurt John McCain?
Steven Waldman is president and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com, and author of Founding Faith. Previously the national editor of U.S. News & World Report, he is a recognized expert on religion, social issues and politics. Click here for Mr. Waldman’s full bio.
Evangelical Christians were an essential part of President George W. Bush’s winning coalition in 2004, with some 36% of his voters born again or evangelical. Some called it a perfect storm of evangelical activists and a faith-friendly, socially conservative candidate.
Well guess what: John McCain, long mistrusted by religious conservatives, actually got two million more votes from evangelicals than Mr. Bush did. Roughly 38.5% of Mr. McCain’s vote came from evangelicals.
On Election Day, religious conservatives delivered for the Republican Party. If they hadn’t turned out in record numbers, President-elect Barack Obama’s rout would have been a landslide. They will undoubtedly use this data as evidence that the party either owes them or would be wise to follow a religious conservative platform.
But in other ways, the influence of the religious right on the Republican Party hurt their prospects.
First, there’s the selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as vice president. She was chosen in part to rev up the evangelical “base” and rev she did. But several polls before the election indicated that she had turned many Americans from the Republican ticket.
It was also a big factor for high-profile Republican endorsements such as those of Colin Powell and Charles Fried.
Ruling Out Vice-Presidential Candidates
What’s more, it apparently was fear of religious conservatives that led GOP candidate John McCain to rule out several vice-presidential candidates who may have had more appeal to centrists and independents, or in battleground states. Newsweek and the New Yorker reported that Mr. McCain was told by staff that if he chose a pro-choice running mate, religious conservatives would revolt, possibly even leading a convention floor fight against him or her. This effectively eliminated Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania (a pivotal state) and independents Sen. Joe Lieberman and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who might have helped convince voters the Republicans could fix the economy).
Many key religious conservatives also weighed in against Mitt Romney as a running mate and, earlier in the season, against Charlie Crist, the governor of the crucial state of Florida. Religious conservatives have long been suspicious of Mr. Romney, for his Mormonism and recent conversion to the antiabortion side, and Crist who, until recently, was single.
Given the economy’s problems, Mr. McCain’s only chance of winning might have been taking a gamble of a different sort – choosing a maverick who would have appealed to the middle or the economically anxious, rather than the Republican base. He ruled out that path in large part because of religious conservatives.
Finally, religious conservatives had a significant impact on the way Mr. McCain positioned himself during the primaries. Religious conservatives make up a huge percentage of the Republican primary electorate, especially in early states: Iowa, 60%; New Hampshire, 23%; South Carolina, 60%; Michigan, 39%; Nevada, 24%, and Florida, 39%.
Weighing Immigration Reform
Consider the case of immigration reform. Part of Mr. Obama’s victory stemmed from a dramatic shift of Latino voters toward the Democratic Party, which helped him to carry New Mexico, Colorado, Florida and Nevada. Many voted for Democrats because of the economy, but they also had come to believe the Republican Party was anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic. Ironically, one of the few Republicans who had tried to lead the party in a more moderate direction on immigration was Mr. McCain.
But his immigration plan was deeply unpopular with the Republican base – especially among white evangelicals, 63% of whom believed that “newcomers threaten traditional American customs and values.” As a result, Mr. McCain barely discussed it during the primaries or even in his convention acceptance speech – though his immigration plan was probably the best example he had of being a maverick.
As Republicans assess the damage, some will argue that they lost because they alienated centrists and independents. Others will argue that they lost because they nominated someone who wasn’t conservative enough.
To me, those in the former camp have the slightly better argument. Mr. Obama’s win resulted less from some surge of new voters than from voters in the center who switched sides. On balance, Mr. McCain made a number of choices in large part to please religious conservatives that probably cost him more than it gained him.
Write to Steven Waldman at Sdwaldman@beliefnetstaff.com.
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