Political observers in the media and elsewhere tend to sum up
elections in short, catchy blurbs. That’s the only way they feel
they can impart “what the voters said” on Election Day, even though
“what the voters said” in one state or district is often
contradictory to and inconsistent with “what the voters said” in
another. Thus, 1992 became the “Year of the Woman,” 1994 became the
“Year of the Angry White Male,” 2000 was the “Year of the Red-Blue
Divide,” and 2004 was the “Year of the Moral Values Voters” (though
pundits still debate the role of “moral values” in ‘04).
What will they say about the 2005 off-year elections? Well,
certainly they will say that the Democrats mounted a bit of a
comeback against the GOP, which had been enjoying a string of
victories over the Democrats for the better part of the late-20th
and early-21st centuries. Democrats retained control of the
governorships in Virginia (a red state) and New Jersey (a blue
state.) Meanwhile, California’s Republican Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger entered the “Jingle All The Way” phase of his
political career. All four ballot initiatives supported by the
Governator went down in defeat.
Though Election Day ‘05 was not the bloodbath Howard Dean and
his cheering squads in the mainstream media have made it out to be,
the Democrats did manage to stop their own bleeding. They have
reason to celebrate.
So, what happened? Glenn Reynolds, the libertarian-leaning
Instapundit said, “I also think that I may have been
right in suggesting that the GOP had lost its
mojo with the Terri Schiavo affair. Things seem to have started to
go south then, not only because of the issue itself, but because of
the divisive venom that so many Schiavo partisans aimed at people
who disagreed with them. I think it was very damaging to the GOP
coalition, and they’ve continued to pay a price.”
With all due respect to my friend Glenn, I don’t see how he or
anyone else can conclude from Tuesday’s election results that the
GOP has “lost its mojo with the Terri Schiavo affair,” especially
since there is zero evidence that it was even raised as an issue in
any of Tuesday’s elections. Glenn also ignores the fact that nearly
half of the House Democrats who were present voted in favor of
“Terri’s Law.”
Rather, I’d argue that most voters in Virginia, California, and
New Jersey, as well as in the larger cities across America, have
long since forgotten about the Terri Schiavo affair and that it had
virtually no impact at all on the election results. And to be quite
frank, the social conservative wing of the conservative coalition
is in decidedly better shape than the libertarian-ish, fiscally
conservative/socially agnostic side.
Taking a slightly modified tack, Bobby Ross, Jr. suggested in a
Religion News Service article that election 2005 was a bad one for
religious conservatives. “Religious conservatives lost electoral
fights to pass an abortion law in California, overturn gay-rights
legislation in Maine….” Ross quoted Boston College political
scientist Alan Wolfe saying, “…maybe we’ll look back and say the
Bush first term was really the high point of the Christian right’s
influence in American politics.”
Blaming the “Religious Right” for poor conservative Election Day
performances, or accusing the Republican Party of being “too
beholden to the Religious Right,” is often the pro forma analysis
offered up by almost all casual political observers. And declaring
the “Religious Right” dead is the biannual sport of pundits
everywhere. I suppose that strain of Wednesday morning
quarterbacking will never die. But a closer examination of
Tuesday’s results, coupled with last week’s referendum vote in
Colorado, indicates that the GOP and conservatives in general
succeed when they talk more about those dreaded social issues than
when they promote a small government philosophy or advocate
spending cuts.
To begin with, it is inaccurate to say that the Religious Right
lost ground on Tuesday because parental notification died in
California and the repeal of a gay rights law earned only 44% of
the vote in Maine. It would be more accurate to say that the growth
in Evangelical electoral strength has never permeated the political
cultures of those two states. Evangelical Christians make up only
14% of the electorate in Maine and only 11% in California compared
to the national average of 23%. To conclude that the Religious
Right is “losing ground” from these two election results is a
fallacy.
Secondly, all eight statewide ballot measures in California went
down. This was the result of a massive advertising and
Get-Out-The-Vote campaign conducted by the state employees and
teachers unions. Curiously, Proposition 73, the measure requiring
parental notification for a minor to have an abortion, was the top
vote getter on the ballot, though it, too, went down in defeat:
47.4% of voters supported the ban. 600,000 more voters supported
the ban than supported Proposition 76, a measure that “limits state
spending to prior year’s level plus three previous years’ average
revenue growth.” Only 38% of voters thought that was a good
idea.
Now let us turn to Texas. The Lone Star State became the
eighteenth to write a ban on gay marriage into its constitution.
And Texans did so in a big way. Three-quarters of the voting
population supported the ban. Only one county voted against it.
Compare this level of success on a compelling social issue with,
say, Colorado’s November 1st vote to remove the teeth of that
state’s once-groundbreaking Taxpayers Bill of Rights. By a vote of
52%-48%, voters authorized the state to spend more money and, in
effect, raise their taxes.
Meanwhile, the only high-profile candidate this off-year to
communicate an openly religious message was Democrat gubernatorial
candidate (now Governor-elect) Tim Kaine. To be sure, Kaine played
fast-and-loose with the definition of “pro-life,” among other
things, but he advertised, ahem, liberally on Christian radio and
spoke candidly about his faith in his commercials.
After the GOP’s historic success in 2004 — success attributable
at least in part (though I would argue mostly) to almost 30 million
religious conservatives — the Bush administration swiftly pivoted
to a massive spending reduction proposal in the form of Social
Security privatization. That pivot angered many Evangelical
Christian political activists who subsequently refused to engaged
in the president’s national campaign-style effort in support of his
Social Security reform, which is now all but officially dead.
Contrary to Glenn Reynolds’ and Dr. Wolfe’s analyses, Christian
conservatives are alive and well and holding up their end of the
big tent. It is the socially moderate, libertarian wing that is not
doing its share in keeping it up.
