The Unholy Alliance of Republicans and the Christian Right

An Unholy Alliance: The Republican Party and the Christian Right

For almost three decades, Republicans have been able to dominate national presidential elections by forming a coalition with a particular religious element of the Christian right. With the exception of the Clinton years, this unprecedented coalition has been able to control the national political agenda while allowing a minority element of the Republican Party to rule the country.

White evangelicals, a key part of the grass roots interest groups being organized by the Christian right in the late 1970s, were the key to Carter’s defeat by Reagan in 1980. They voted for Reagan 2-1 over Carter, and 3-1 for him over Mondale. By 1988, over 80% of this group was voting for the first George Bush and they have strongly supported Republican presidential candidates since then.

How did Democrats lose the solid South so quickly and so seemingly irretrievably? Basically, because Democrats lost on those social issues, which white evangelicals saw as moral (i.e. religious) matters: abortion, school prayer, tuition tax credits, and gay rights. We lost because the groups most interested in pushing those issues were the newly organized Christian Right churches mainly in the South, a traditional fundamental religious stronghold.

The numbers that turned the solid South into predictable Republican victories are compelling. White evangelicals in the South, are a voting bloc that cuts across many elements of the former traditional democratic coalition. Over 35% of white evangelicals live in the old confederacy. By 1984 they already comprised nearly one-third of all southern whites! Since the 1980 census, the South contains more the half the electoral votes needed to elect a president. If one third of the voters in the South combine behind a candidate, as they have been doing, they can and have significantly influenced the outcome by tipping the South’s electoral votes in favor of Republican candidates. With one third of the voters in his or her pocket, the candidate need only cobble together a following of 20% of the rest of the population to win that state’s electoral votes. This is the hard nut that Democrats must crack in order to break the Republicans hold on the old confederacy.

Any group can heavily influence a presidential election if it is strong in a particular region, as are white evangelicals in the South. In such a region, only a couple of million more voters can swing the electoral votes of states in that region. The Christian Right’s voter registration drives helped mobilize a group that had never been politically active in politics and more than offset concurrent efforts by Democrats to register more voters, especially African-Americans.

Up until the 1960s and 70s, evangelicals were not political activists. As the prominence of the so-called moral issues increased, and social discontent was ever more evident, the evangelicals became more and more organized as a group that could deliver workers and money. By joining forces with them, the Republicans gained a committed group of voters who were conservative on social issues and over-represented in lower income and lower educated populations that had been traditional Democratic voters. By so doing, the Republicans were able to escape half a century of minority status in American politicians. They have been beholden to the conservative, fundamental religious right ever since.
It takes only a superficial examination of their actions to know that the Republican party knows which religion holds the party’s moral compass. Their stances on abortion, on prayer in public schools, on private school tuition tax credits, on the Equal Rights Amendment, on voter registration, on civil rights, and even on creationism all closely match those of conservative evangelical religious groups. Ever since Ronald Reagan showed the way, Republican presidential candidates court the religious right and grant them access that is not afforded to other religious groups. Organizations such as the National Religious Broadcasters and the National Association of Evangelicals are “in,” while groups such as the National Council of Churches and the United Methodist Church are not.

I believe this alliance is essentially an unholy one. I am not certain what Evangelicals see in it beyond access to power, because they have not achieved a great deal of success on their moral agenda. Perhaps a holding action and knowing that folks in power at least support them is sufficient to keep their support. Neither is it easy to see what the Republican Party has gained beyond power. They have gained that to be sure, but they have lost their moral compass. They have created a safe haven for bigots and cynically exploited the least educated and poorest of our citizens under the guise of religion. The party of Lincoln has fallen far indeed.

We Democrats need to reclaim our traditional Southern constituency and seize the moral high ground from fundamentalists. At the same time, we cannot allow our own party to be taken over by extremists and zealots. It is the middle ground of reason, decency, tolerance and forbearance that is required. We cannot achieve the allegiances we need by denying the legitimate fears and concerns of our fellow citizens. The South can be Democratic again, but only if we Democrats recognize that formulaic chants such as separation of church and state, women’s rights, gay rights, etc do not resolve complex issues. I believe Democrats have the right reflexes on these issues, but that is not to say that all the truth and right is ours. We must be willing to address these matters as moral and, yes, as religious issues based on honest respect for the beliefs of others –all others. It cannot be done quickly, but we did not get here in a matter of months or even years. Let’s get started.

Dr. Ron Fox