<font size="4"><center>Evangelicals and the GOP: A Clean Divorce Coming</font size></center>
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
Public Policy Intelligence Report
By Bart Mongoven
March 22, 2007
As we pointed out last week, the political alliance of evangelical conservatives is beginning to fray. The current field of Republican presidential candidates offers no obvious choice for evangelicals, while the strains within the movement are beginning to pull it in different directions. This means that unless the evangelicals find a way to unite around a candidate in 2008, their movement will fade as a political force. This situation raises several difficult questions for the Republican Party.
As the evangelicals battle among themselves over the movement's relationship with the Republican Party and wrangle over climate change, Guantanamo detainees, the relative importance of poverty and other issues on the periphery of the movement, Republicans are beginning to debate the type of relationship they want to have with evangelicals generally, and with the various evangelical factions specifically. Given the strategic impasse between the party and evangelicals, the GOP will likely conclude that its best interest is served by parting ways with the evangelicals. Whether this is the wisest decision for the long term is another story.
Republican-Evangelical Ties
The Republican Party currently is a coalition of voters with three primary interests: national security, conservative social values and small government. There is significant overlap between these interests -- most social conservatives are hawkish on defense issues and support limited government -- and this overlap is what binds the party. The overlap, like the evangelicals, however, is beginning to separate. 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 as they found a shared interest in limiting the power and influence of the federal government in the wake of the 1960s and the Warren Supreme Court. Some ties already existed as conservative Christians saw the threat to religion in the avowed atheism of the Soviet Marxist-Leninist ideology and were drawn to the comparatively strong national defense policies of the Republican Party in the 1970s. Though the ties between foreign policy-focused Republicans and evangelicals are slightly older, the alliance between libertarians and evangelicals is 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.
Evangelicals emerged as an influential block in national Republican politics in the late 1980s. One key to their power has been their great 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 fundraisers. 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 also are disproportionately represented among the party's volunteers, positions that provide familiarity with the levers of power and with the decision-makers within the party at the local, state and national level. In truth, if evangelicals were separated from the Republican Party, the impact would be felt most strongly not in the direct number of votes lost but in the lack of organization and energy that would come in the wake of their departure.
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 Republicans' lack of progress toward evangelicals' goals in the past six years. From the evangelical perspective, little has changed. Roe v. Wade still stands, recognition of gay marriage is far closer to fruition now than six years ago and popular media are no less supportive of un-Christian 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. And states such as California and New Jersey (not to mention private foundations and donors) have gone ahead to fund stem cell research with their own money. Frustration among many evangelicals over a general lack of progress on key issues is at the root of the evangelical splintering.
As evangelicals fracture, the rest of the Republican Party must decide whether to distance itself or offer the evangelicals enough of an incentive to stay in the camp. 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 conservative Christians in the Republican Party is a severe liability. Mainstream voters in New England and on 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: No Republicans won a Senate seat in 2006 in New England or on the West Coast, and only five Republican senators remain in place among the 20 Senate seats in these 10 states. The bulk of the Republican candidates who have won in these areas -- for example, Mitt Romney (circa 2000), Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Pataki -- ran as economic conservatives but social liberals.
This is where the fissures in the party become chasms. Though 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 is the observation that Democrats are beginning to win back the support of the so-called Reagan Democrats -- middleclass 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. Bill Clinton faired well with Reagan Democrats, even if the Democratic Party did not. Now, with the conduct of the war in Iraq contested and with neither social conservatism nor economic libertarianism appealing to them, Reagan Democrats are more broadly returning to the Democratic Party.
To survive as a powerful political party, the GOP must firm up the support of foreign policy hawks. Though many began to turn away from the GOP in 2006, the Democrats, in stunningly characteristic form, appear to be obliging by turning opposition to 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 pullout date for soldiers from Iraq. As the Democrats' anti-war faction continues to increase its power, the hawks who considered defecting might no longer view the Democratic Party as a viable alternative.
As the hawks come back to the nest, however, the party's small-government libertarian wing has less reason to stay. Democrats are doing a good job of discussing responsible fiscal policy, and the Republican Party has convinced a large swathe of fiscal conservatives that it cannot be trusted with power. Deficits began to soar once former President Clinton left power, and though Bush's taking of the reins coincided with a recession followed by a war, for many fiscal conservatives there is little holding them in the Republican Party. Meanwhile, the continued presence of the evangelicals -- again, perceived by many as intrusive and anti-libertine -- provides more impetus to move.
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 -- they 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 -- Arizona Sen. John McCain or 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 voters have come to see evangelicals as an intrusive group that wants to use the government to actively change how people live. Through their opposition to abortion, they are seen by many -- particularly liberal women -- as opponents of equality for women. 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 as wanting to use 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 their 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 Clinton's re-election in 1996, the Democratic Party has shifted to one that is socially liberal but that also is fiscally conservative and, compared to 1992, far less enamored with the government's regulatory powers. While Democrats have not yet shrugged off the tax-and-spend label, they are showing that it does not apply to the degree it once did. The only major regulatory advances offered in the 110th Congress so far relate to climate change, and the most visible climate change bills have Republican co-sponsors and, in some cases, the support of business coalitions. 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 for small-government conservatives, the experience of the past six years has shown that the choice between Democrats and Republicans is not an easy one. As long as the Democrats control the impulse to regulate business, libertarians are again in play in the political debate. Democrats and Republicans differ only on the degree to which they support libertarian ideals, meaning this traditional Republican constituency could begin to see defections of many of those who are pro-business and libertarians to the Democrats.
The vast majority of evangelicals, on the other hand, are not really in play for the Democrats yet. As a result, for the time being at least, the Republicans could see that their surest bet is to firm up their libertarian flank. They can do this by appealing to these voters directly and also by publicly breaking with evangelicals, the group that libertarians distrust and that alienates moderates in key constituencies. The bet that Republicans would be making is that, while they might 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, since pragmatists within the evangelical leadership are too strong to let the movement embark on a Ralph Nader-esque campaign that could only ensure the election of a less-palatable Democratic Party candidate.
The Republicans, then, would be banking on the persuasive power of the pragmatists within the evangelical movement. If the GOP made a clear and decisive break with evangelicals -- through, for instance, a landslide primary win for McCain or a convention that offered evangelicals no choice speaking points -- evangelical leaders would likely threaten, as they have before, to advise their followers to sit out the vote. The question is whether the pragmatists' voices would win out in the end.
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Analysis Comments - analysis@stratfor.com
Customer Service, Access, Account Issues - service@stratfor.com
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
Public Policy Intelligence Report
By Bart Mongoven
March 22, 2007
As we pointed out last week, the political alliance of evangelical conservatives is beginning to fray. The current field of Republican presidential candidates offers no obvious choice for evangelicals, while the strains within the movement are beginning to pull it in different directions. This means that unless the evangelicals find a way to unite around a candidate in 2008, their movement will fade as a political force. This situation raises several difficult questions for the Republican Party.
As the evangelicals battle among themselves over the movement's relationship with the Republican Party and wrangle over climate change, Guantanamo detainees, the relative importance of poverty and other issues on the periphery of the movement, Republicans are beginning to debate the type of relationship they want to have with evangelicals generally, and with the various evangelical factions specifically. Given the strategic impasse between the party and evangelicals, the GOP will likely conclude that its best interest is served by parting ways with the evangelicals. Whether this is the wisest decision for the long term is another story.
Republican-Evangelical Ties
The Republican Party currently is a coalition of voters with three primary interests: national security, conservative social values and small government. There is significant overlap between these interests -- most social conservatives are hawkish on defense issues and support limited government -- and this overlap is what binds the party. The overlap, like the evangelicals, however, is beginning to separate. 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 as they found a shared interest in limiting the power and influence of the federal government in the wake of the 1960s and the Warren Supreme Court. Some ties already existed as conservative Christians saw the threat to religion in the avowed atheism of the Soviet Marxist-Leninist ideology and were drawn to the comparatively strong national defense policies of the Republican Party in the 1970s. Though the ties between foreign policy-focused Republicans and evangelicals are slightly older, the alliance between libertarians and evangelicals is 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.
Evangelicals emerged as an influential block in national Republican politics in the late 1980s. One key to their power has been their great 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 fundraisers. 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 also are disproportionately represented among the party's volunteers, positions that provide familiarity with the levers of power and with the decision-makers within the party at the local, state and national level. In truth, if evangelicals were separated from the Republican Party, the impact would be felt most strongly not in the direct number of votes lost but in the lack of organization and energy that would come in the wake of their departure.
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 Republicans' lack of progress toward evangelicals' goals in the past six years. From the evangelical perspective, little has changed. Roe v. Wade still stands, recognition of gay marriage is far closer to fruition now than six years ago and popular media are no less supportive of un-Christian 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. And states such as California and New Jersey (not to mention private foundations and donors) have gone ahead to fund stem cell research with their own money. Frustration among many evangelicals over a general lack of progress on key issues is at the root of the evangelical splintering.
As evangelicals fracture, the rest of the Republican Party must decide whether to distance itself or offer the evangelicals enough of an incentive to stay in the camp. 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 conservative Christians in the Republican Party is a severe liability. Mainstream voters in New England and on 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: No Republicans won a Senate seat in 2006 in New England or on the West Coast, and only five Republican senators remain in place among the 20 Senate seats in these 10 states. The bulk of the Republican candidates who have won in these areas -- for example, Mitt Romney (circa 2000), Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Pataki -- ran as economic conservatives but social liberals.
This is where the fissures in the party become chasms. Though 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 is the observation that Democrats are beginning to win back the support of the so-called Reagan Democrats -- middleclass 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. Bill Clinton faired well with Reagan Democrats, even if the Democratic Party did not. Now, with the conduct of the war in Iraq contested and with neither social conservatism nor economic libertarianism appealing to them, Reagan Democrats are more broadly returning to the Democratic Party.
To survive as a powerful political party, the GOP must firm up the support of foreign policy hawks. Though many began to turn away from the GOP in 2006, the Democrats, in stunningly characteristic form, appear to be obliging by turning opposition to 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 pullout date for soldiers from Iraq. As the Democrats' anti-war faction continues to increase its power, the hawks who considered defecting might no longer view the Democratic Party as a viable alternative.
As the hawks come back to the nest, however, the party's small-government libertarian wing has less reason to stay. Democrats are doing a good job of discussing responsible fiscal policy, and the Republican Party has convinced a large swathe of fiscal conservatives that it cannot be trusted with power. Deficits began to soar once former President Clinton left power, and though Bush's taking of the reins coincided with a recession followed by a war, for many fiscal conservatives there is little holding them in the Republican Party. Meanwhile, the continued presence of the evangelicals -- again, perceived by many as intrusive and anti-libertine -- provides more impetus to move.
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 -- they 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 -- Arizona Sen. John McCain or 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 voters have come to see evangelicals as an intrusive group that wants to use the government to actively change how people live. Through their opposition to abortion, they are seen by many -- particularly liberal women -- as opponents of equality for women. 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 as wanting to use 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 their 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 Clinton's re-election in 1996, the Democratic Party has shifted to one that is socially liberal but that also is fiscally conservative and, compared to 1992, far less enamored with the government's regulatory powers. While Democrats have not yet shrugged off the tax-and-spend label, they are showing that it does not apply to the degree it once did. The only major regulatory advances offered in the 110th Congress so far relate to climate change, and the most visible climate change bills have Republican co-sponsors and, in some cases, the support of business coalitions. 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 for small-government conservatives, the experience of the past six years has shown that the choice between Democrats and Republicans is not an easy one. As long as the Democrats control the impulse to regulate business, libertarians are again in play in the political debate. Democrats and Republicans differ only on the degree to which they support libertarian ideals, meaning this traditional Republican constituency could begin to see defections of many of those who are pro-business and libertarians to the Democrats.
The vast majority of evangelicals, on the other hand, are not really in play for the Democrats yet. As a result, for the time being at least, the Republicans could see that their surest bet is to firm up their libertarian flank. They can do this by appealing to these voters directly and also by publicly breaking with evangelicals, the group that libertarians distrust and that alienates moderates in key constituencies. The bet that Republicans would be making is that, while they might 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, since pragmatists within the evangelical leadership are too strong to let the movement embark on a Ralph Nader-esque campaign that could only ensure the election of a less-palatable Democratic Party candidate.
The Republicans, then, would be banking on the persuasive power of the pragmatists within the evangelical movement. If the GOP made a clear and decisive break with evangelicals -- through, for instance, a landslide primary win for McCain or a convention that offered evangelicals no choice speaking points -- evangelical leaders would likely threaten, as they have before, to advise their followers to sit out the vote. The question is whether the pragmatists' voices would win out in the end.
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