SPOOKED by the political might of religious conservatives, secular liberals and faithful Demo crats are taking comfort from some recent headlines.
In June, Alabama Republicans laughed at a gubernatorial bid by Ten-Commandments-defending judge Roy Moore. In July, Ralph Reed, the quintessential New Right candidate and the architect of the Christian Coalition, lost his first bid for public office, a primary race for lieutenant governor of Georgia. White House aides now publicly downplay the influence of "values voters" in the 2004 election, and Republicans in the House of Representatives whizzed through much of their "American Values" initiative this summer with a few perfunctory press releases. The New York Times was astounded (and delighted) to report the existence of pastors who depart from Republican orthodoxy. And Democrats are discovering that some evangelicals are concerned about poverty and climate change and don't take their political marching orders from Pat Robertson or James Dobson.
So are evangelical candidates losing their political appeal, or are religious conservatives shifting their allegiance from the GOP? Neither, really.
While it's true that, since at least Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, white evangelical Protestants have comfortably aligned themselves with the conservative movement, their alliance with the Republican party is more recent. As late as 1996, Bill Clinton won the votes of one-third of white evangelicals. In 2000, following Clinton's moral apostasy, Republicans nominated an evangelical. George W. Bush shared the beliefs and language of evangelicals, and his political strategist Karl Rove worked assiduously during Bush's first term to bring them into the fold. In 2004, Bush took 78 percent of the white evangelical vote.
This sorting and resorting of allegiances is largely an artifact of politics and person ality. It's no surprise that as both Bush and the Republican brand become less popular, evan gelicals, like virtually every other component of the conservative coalition, are asserting their independence. A Pew poll found that white evangelical Protestants are less willing to identify themselves with the Republican party than they were in 2004; Hispanic evangelicals are turning away from the party because of the stalemate over immigration.
Mega-evangelicals like Rick War ren, author of the phenomenally successful Purpose Driven Life, and Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, have openly challenged Republican corporate dogma on environmental issues and supply-side tractates on poverty. Their best hope is to change the party from within and, on those issues, build coalitions with Democrats. Warren, a talismanic example of a Religious Right pastor who has softened his approach, has met with Democrats ranging from Nancy Pelosi to John Kerry.
But there is no evidence that evangelicals are joining the Democratic party in droves or that social conservative activism is waning. In fact, upon examination, the developments some Democrats believe augur a great unraveling on the right actually reveal something quite different.
In Alabama, most conservatives supported Judge Moore's crusade to keep a monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state supreme court. But Moore gave them no reason to back his bizarre and easily mockable gubernatorial primary bid. Christian voters weren't fooled and refused to be pigeonholed into voting for the most ostentatiously Christian candidate. Alabama Republicans wanted a governor, not a preacher.
Or take Ralph Reed's loss. It's true that his opponent, Casey Cagle, was first and foremost the candidate of suburban Atlanta's Republican business establishment. But Cagle is a cultural traditionalist. When I asked him this spring whether he worried that Reed would try to run to his right on social issues, Cagle leaned forward with a quizzical look on his face. "How?" he said.
Sure enough, there was little daylight between the two, and Cagle, unlike Reed, had a paper trail to back up his claims of fidelity to faith and family. Reed's reputation rested on his ability to exploit wedge issues to benefit conservative candidates. So when Cagle's campaign focused on Reed's financial relationship with indicted millionaire lobbyist Jack Abramoff, it cast doubt on Reed's legitimacy as a humble, faith-abiding Christian. Reed was beaten in part because voters concluded he was an opportunist.
And in the gubernatorial primary in Florida early this month, Republican attorney general Charlie Crist, no social conservative, soundly defeated Tom Gallagher, a candidate who wore his newfound Christianity on his sleeve.
Meanwhile, it's not true that the mass of cultural conservative voters take their marching orders from the high-profile leaders of lobbying groups in Washington--the same groups that have benefited financially and professionally from ties to the Bush White House and the Republican party.
For that matter, these organizations are not all that influential inside the Beltway. Nationally, the Christian Coalition is near death; in its place, the Family Research Council and other small groups try to keep the embers burning. They claim hundreds of thousands of members. They have access to top White House officials, and they hold events to keep their membership satisfied; but Republican strategists with access to polling know they move the votes of very few Christians.
The current crop of well-regarded evangelical leaders, like David Barton of WallBuilders, a group seeking to rekindle appreciation of the country's religious heritage, and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, are better pastors and behind-the-scenes operators than they are political strategists. They are good at gauging the mood of voters in the states; they don't try to build national movements.
Just as labor union leaders are finding it harder to convince members of the value of solidarity, other pressure groups have to work harder to corral their followers around defined issues. Much of this corraling and sorting takes place at the state or local level, where there is considerable differentiation among Christian political groups. It's only natural that pastors in the West are leading the call for better environmental stewardship.
Meanwhile, state-based, decentralized, and unaffiliated Christian groups are flourishing. The Virginia Family Foundation claims a membership of 70,000. The Iowa Christian Alliance is a source of ideological sustenance for many. Its leaders have asked for, and will get, meetings with every Republican presidential candidate. Ohio's Christian Alliance is putting together a massive turnout effort for the fall. In Colorado's Fifth Congressional District, which counts James Dobson's Focus on the Family as a major employer, Christians split over who should replace retiring congressman Joel Hefley. In the Fifth, as in primary elections nationwide, Christian conservatives worked easily and efficiently with nonreligious powerhouses like the Club for Growth.
Gay marriage bans will be on the ballot this fall in at least a half dozen states, but the impetus for these amendments comes from a loose network of state groups, not from Washington. Meanwhile, willing evangelical foot soldiers still abound--a young man named Ned Ryun, son of Kansas congressman Jim Ryun, for instance, led an army of home-schooled Christians to Michigan to work in a primary against a liberal Republican, Joe Schwarz. Challenger Tim Walberg, a former minister, used Protestant and Catholic church directories to turn out the vote. He won easily.
"What's happened," says Jordan Gehrke, a Republican consultant who works with state groups, "is that these national organizations which used to be run by these dominant personalities have nurtured chapters on the state level that have been organizing for years. Now the state chapters understand how to play the game for themselves. While some of the national groups have foundered, the state chapters have kept growing."
Other successes: Social conservatives continue to angle for spots on state Republican committees, and have mounted successful primary challenges to less conservative Republicans in states like South Carolina and California.
It's probably true that, as new issues rise in salience for conservative Christian voters, some of those voters will find themselves outside the Republican party--and Democrats will be incrementally more successful at winning their support for particular candidates.
A final misunderstanding: Some secular intellectuals believe that social issues are what drive evangelicals to the polls, or that Republicans have mastered the art of using class resentments to delude working class whites into voting against their economic interests.
But internal polling conducted for the Republican National Committee shows that evangelicals who support President Bush today are motivated principally by his administration's national security policies. Sure, the targeted political messages they'll see in late September and October will mention judicial nominations, but even more, the political ads will draw a sharp contrast with Democrats on national security.
Unless this were so, elite conservative activists in early primary states wouldn't be seen flirting with a Republican presidential bid by the former mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani. Because Giuliani is the potential nominee who most closely shares their values on national security, these activists are quick to excuse or forgive his two divorces. They must believe many evangelical voters can be persuaded to do the same.
Marc Ambinder is associate editor of the Hotline, the daily political bulletin produced by National Journal.