THE GOP'S EVANGELICAL DILEMMA
Novak, Robert D.
I n lecturing around the country over the past decade, I have been asked this question—usually by a well-dressed gentleman in his middle years— on innumerable occasions: “What are we going to do...
...in the South, almost entirely Democrats...
...Huckabee, known best for losing 100 pounds and henceforth dictating dietary restrictions to his fel-low Americans, began as an even less serious prospect to become president than Brownback...
...In the Midwest, they were principally Republi-cans;intheSouth,almostentirelyDemocrats.Carter became the first presidential candidate ever to iden-tify himself as a born-again Christian...
...A tough, quick-witted journalist-turned-conservative activist named Paul Weyrich organized the disaf-fected clergy and helped create the Moral Majority...
...Carter in 1976 drastically impeded the slow-moving national political realignment toward a Republican South, by carrying all states of the old Confederacy except Virginia...
...Soon after that Cal Thomas, a former Moral Majority staffer who became a highly successful syndicated columnist, declared that “pol-itics and government cannot reach into the soul...
...The evangelicals voted for Huckabee only because of his identity, and he ran poorly every-where among non-evangelical voters...
...The party was supplying to the evangeli-cals—well, moral support...
...What was the reward for their votes...
...William W. Pennell, pastoroftheForrestHillsBaptistChurchinDecatur, Georgia, told a rally of Southern preachers that I attended with Weyrich on June 30, 1980...
...Fred Thompson, leaving his acting career again to make a late bid for the nomination, seemed to be the answer...
...Remorse set in quickly, particularly among Southern preachers who had backed Carter and now discovered he was just another liberal Democrat...
...I n lecturing around the country over the past decade, I have been asked this question—usually by a well-dressed gentleman in his middle years— on innumerable occasions: “What are we going to do with the religious right...
...John McCain, though his voting record was pro-life, was also unacceptable because of his advocacy of cam-paign finance reform, bitterly opposed by the pro-life lobby, and his support for funding embryonic stem cell research...
...Yet, by early last December, it was clear that Huckabee was menacing Romney’s finely wrought plan by blocking his essential first step: winning the Iowa caucuses...
...Prior to the unexpected advent of Jimmy Carter in 1976, evangelicals did not form a partisan voting Prior to the unexpected advent of Jimmy Carter in 1976, evangelicals did not form a partisan voting bloc...
...The Christian Coalition, which had been skillfully directed by Ralph Reed, disintegrated (as Reed became a political consultant...
...In contrast, Gary Bauer, one of the most balanced of the evangelical leaders, feels that evangelicals as part of the Repub-lican coalition must support the party’s nominee—McCain more comfortably, but even Giuliani...
...Supreme Court...
...Keeping Democratic holdovers in Little Rock when he became governor, Huckabee was high tax and high spending...
...all they want, but the only alternative to retaining evangelical support is to revert to permanent minor-ity status for the GOP...
...Hardly even a seat at the Republican table...
...The first is for evangelicals RobeRT D. novAk to abandon the political process entirely—just not voting (with fragmentary signs of such a boycott appearing in the GOP’s 2006 election defeat...
...T he partnership did look very much like a one-way street...
...The evangelicals headed into the 2008 campaign without a standard-bearer...
...That he was a Baptist preacher was sufficient, quite apart from what kind of preacher he was...
...Robert D. novak is a nationally syndicated colum-nist, a commentator for Fox News, and the author of The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Crown Forum...
...That answer, however, does not touch on the restiveness that has developed among evangelicals about their imprecise partnership with the Grand Old Party...
...The religious right is to the Republican Party what the labor movement is to the Democratic Party—absolutely indispensable...
...George W. Bush presented himself as another born-again Christian president, but he too failed to attend the annual March for Life (and usually was not in Washington when it was conducted...
...When theconservativeClubforGrowthcriticizedhisrecord, he attacked the “Club for Greed...
...As for leaving it to the Supreme Court to roll back Roe v. Wade, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush named three Supreme Court justices who voted to retain that ruling...
...The pro-choice, elitist, country club Republicans can whine The pro-choice, elitist, country club Republicans can whine all they want, but the only alternative to retaining evangelical support is to revert to permanent minority status for the GOP...
...There was no serious attempt to fulfill the party platform’s pledge for a constitutional amendment against abortion...
...That means making Christian conservatives feel comfortable in the party after nearly three decades...
...Ask active Republicans back in Arkansas whether they consider him a conservative, and they chuckle...
...He had a good voting record on abortion, even if he seemed uncomfortable with the issue, as with same-sex marriage...
...This worst Southern showing by Republicans since 1948 was a case of fla-grant identity voting...
...Conservative Southerners opted for Carter as a Georgian and a self-identified evangelical...
...Sam Brownback (a Catholic convert) was the most steadfast friend of religious conservatives but his candidacy was going nowhere...
...Not a concerted effort to outlaw abortion in America...
...That creates a dilemma for the Republican Party and McCain as its putative new leader...
...It surely was not intentional, but did con-vey minimal concern with the issue...
...He was unaware of the new National Intelligence Estimate in Iran days after it had been published in the daily press...
...Just what benefit had they gained from entering Republican ranks...
...H uckabee’s candidacy did not mark the first time the evangelicals had a chance to vote for one of their own—what the political sci-entists call “identity” voting, supporting a candidate strictly because of his identity rather than his ability, philosophy, or record...
...Not consistent nominations of social conservatives to the U.S...
...Disillusion mounted during the nineties...
...The evangelicals were supplying contributors, volunteers, and voters to the party...
...O ne of america’s leading evangelicals, Dr...
...Among the many Repub-lican presidential hopefuls, Sen...
...They feel they have gone along without getting anything in return...
...That outcome disrupted Romney’s tac-tics and doomed his Iowa-first strategy...
...The formerly Democratic preachers were no less appalled by Carter’s positions on foreign than on social policy...
...Just eight years after the evan-gelicals were instrumental in sending Ronald Reagan to the White House, televangelist Pat Robertson ran for president in 1988...
...I was thrilled at the thought of a born-again in the White House,” Dr...
...Of all parts of the Republican coalition,” he told me, “the Christians feel as if they have gotten the least from that alliance from the Republican Party...
...Bush, the eventual nominee) and Michigan and first in Washington State, but ran poorly in primary elec-tions...
...Momentarily, the favorite for the nomination was Mitt Romney, and no candidate more clearly demonstrated the problem posed by the evangelicals as an integral component part of the Republican coalition...
...It is a story that goes back 32 years...
...James Dobson of Focus on the Family, has hurled anathemas against anybody who does not meet his standards—first Giuliani and now McCain...
...In the Midwest, they were principally Republicans...
...I was shocked two years ago when a born-again former senior official in the Reagan adminis-tration told me that under no condition could he vote for Romney for president and, furthermore, neither could his friends...
...Eight years ago, after he had defeated George W. Bush in Michigan, McCain was on the brink of scoring a historic upset...
...It was strict-ly because he is an evangelical: pure identity politics...
...The evan-gelicals have come perilously close to taking the latter course this year with the unlikely candidacy of Mike Huckabee...
...I t was at this point that the former governor of Arkansas appeared on the crowded stage...
...Two alternative courses have been open to the evangelicals, each with lamentable consequences for the Republican Party...
...Not until Huckabee’s campaign this year was an evangelical candidate for president even moder-ately successful...
...Bauer endorsed McCain in 2000 after he ended his own candidacy, and he endorsed McCain in 2008 after McCain had clinched the nomination...
...Indeed, he influenced, however unintentionally, the eventual outcome of the race for the Republican nomination...
...Huckabee had come from nowhere to move ahead in the Iowa polls, negating Romney’s profligate campaign expenditure there...
...Nevertheless, Bauer understands the anxiety of his co-religionists...
...Bush’s rhetoric was unequiv-ocally social conservative, but that seldom was translated into action...
...Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, leading the polls, was still pro-choice and therefore unacceptable to evangelicals...
...HuckabeenevercouldhavewonaRepublicanprimary in Iowa, but he could—and did—finish first among the muchmorelimitedconstituencyoftheIowacaucuses...
...This is not an easy mission for any party standard-bearer, and it surely does not come natu-rally for John McCain...
...The party was supplying to the evangelicals— well, moral support...
...Not unified opposition to gay marriage...
...For without the Christian conservatives, your party would revert to minority status and guarantee a per12 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR APRIl 2008 manent Democratic majority...
...My invariable answer: “If you really are a Repub-lican, you had better cherish and embrace them...
...With no experience in gov-ernment or politics, he was an ordained Southern Baptist minister who founded the Christian Broad-casting Network and hosted the popular 700 Club program on television...
...Huckabee did not rise because of his platform style, ready wit, or skill on the bass guitar...
...bloc...
...He finished second in Repub-lican caucuses in Iowa (ahead of George H.W...
...Beyond state spending and taxing, he is a protectionist and a green on global warming...
...I soon found that this was not an isolated reaction, which was confirmed by polls...
...In 2008, McCain is older and wiser, and he is asked to perform a task with far-ranging consequences...
...Former Sen...
...Reagan himself always was ambivalent on the issue of abortion, and his agents stood aside as the Republican Party’s national platform of 1980 The partnership looked very much like a one-way street...
...strengthened its pro-life position...
...On February 16, 1999, Weyrich declared that “politics had failed” religious conservatives “because of the collapse of the culture...
...But bitter because of his treatment in South Carolina, he unleashed an attack on Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson just before the Virginia primary...
...By no reason14 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR APRIl 2008 RobeRT D. novAk able measurement could he be called a conservative...
...You may not like them, but believe me, you need them...
...That sounded like NARAL Pro-Choice America boilerplate, and it killed Thompson on the social right...
...That launched an uneasy alliance between APRIl 2008 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR 13 THe GoP’s evAnGelIcAl DIleMMA the culturally opposite country club and evangelical church...
...It was good enough to win him primaries in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkan-sas and caucuses in Kansas and West Virginia...
...The evangelicals were sup-plying contributors, volunteers, and voters to the party...
...It is irrelevant that in the bitter internal wars of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s that Huckabee was on the side of the liberal innovators and opposed to the conservative traditionalists...
...Astonishingly, 60 percent of the Republican caucus goers on January 3 identified themselves as evangeli-cals or born-agains, and they voted overwhelmingly for Huckabee...
...Six months later, Reagan broke his promise to attend the anti-abortion March for Life in January 1981 and was present at the annual event only once in eight years...
...There was not another pure evangelical candi-date for president until 2000, when layman Gary Bauer—who had held senior offices in the Reagan administration—did not run well in either caucus or primary states...
...Agents of the evangelical com-munity saw Thompson as the answer until last November on NBC’s Meet the Press, when he asserted: “I do not think it is a wise thing to criminalize young girls and perhaps their parents as aiders and abettors...
...He lost badly in New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois, and other states where evangelicals were in short supply...
...It was not so much trouble with the dis-tance traveled by the former governor of Massa-chusetts in his political career from pro-choice (1994 campaign for the Senate) to conditionally pro-life (2002 campaign for governor) to unconditionally pro-life (2008 campaign for president...
...That made the Democratic Party’s dominant liberals look on with apprehension as Carter’s clever tactics led him to the nomination against an unimpressive field...
...Reagan was supported by two-thirds of the evangelical vote in 1980, contributing to the fact that Carter carried only his native Georgia in the South...
...The thrill began to fade on Inauguration Day 1977, Pennell said, when Carter “mentioned the Lord’s name less than any other candidate,” adding, “I’ve had about all the born-again diplomacy I can stand...
...APRIl 2008 THe AMeRIcAn sPecTAToR 15...
...The second is for evangelicals to come up with their own presidential candidate, even though he might be unacceptable to other Republicans...
...That Huckabee was more poorly informed about world affairs and less of a true conservative than either Robertson or Bauer testifies less to the strength of evangelical ties to the party than to their weakness...
...This inquiry makes sense only when its implications are understood and it is translated into plain language: “We born-and-bred Republicans are not happy with these interlopers who will not be found in Episcopal and Congregationalist churches and could not con-ceivably gain admittance to a country club and, worse yet, are obsessed with prohibiting abortion and bashing gays...
...They feel Huckabee is being disrespected by the political establishment and some leaders...
...The bigger problem was evangelical hostility to Romney as a Mormon...
Vol. 41 • April 2008 • No. 3
