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The Season of Discontent: Why Evangelicals May Desert the Republican Party
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October 16, 2007
The Season of Discontent:
Why Evangelicals May Desert the Republican Party
By Scott Presson
Republicans have a Catholic who supports abortion rights and a Mormon whose religion gives some people pause. Democrats have front-runners who are quoting Scripture and Christian conservatives are threatening to back a third-party candidate.
For Evangelical Christians, it is a season of discontent.
The powerful Evangelical voting block that carried Ronald Reagan and both Bush’s to the White House may be up for grabs.
According The San Diego Union-Tribune, after more than two decades as a voting bloc for the GOP, “white evangelical Christians are showing signs of buyer's remorse and a greater interest in matters beyond abortion and traditional culture-war issues”.
Polls conducted for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life show that, “more than 80 percent of evangelicals who attend church weekly cast their vote for President Bush's re-election” three years ago.
But recent Pew polls show “the Christian right's support for Republicans shrinking to 60 percent” and “the slide is deeper among other religious voters who supported Bush – down to less than 40 percent among practicing Catholics and 20 percent for other Christians”.
John Green, a political scientist at the University of Akron and a senior fellow in Religion and Politics at the Pew Forum says, “That's really quite a dramatic change”.
He believes the numbers show that a significant number of religious people “are ready to make a change and consider voting for a Democratic candidate” in the 2008 presidential race.
According to Green, one important dynamic is that “many conservative Christians are increasingly expressing concerns about such things as the war in Iraq, AIDS in Africa and global warming”.
“There's pressure to broaden the agenda . . . to apply the Gospel to a broader list of questions,” Green said.
But disenchantment with the top Republican presidential candidates and their views on social issues appears to be the prime reason evangelicals may desert the party.
Last month, more than 50 Christian conservative leaders gathered in Salt Lake City to consider backing a third-party candidate.
At that meeting, participants overwhelmingly voted that “if neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate”.
That’s bad news for Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, a supporter of abortion and gay rights. Although Giuliani ranks high in popularity polls, many people surveyed say they aren’t certain of his positions.
Evangelicals are also lukewarm about the other GOP front-runners.
They seem to have backed away from Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who ranks high in surveys as being one of the most religious candidates on the GOP list but whom many Evangelicals are wary of “because they don't consider Mormons to be Christians”.
John Green said pollsters are surprised by Evangelical’s “resistance” to Romney.
Meanwhile Democrats have been more than willing to show that they are open to religious voters.
In June, the top three Democratic candidates – Clinton, Obama and Edwards openly spoke about their religious beliefs and values in a broadcast on CNN.
Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ, a connection that some say “could hurt him in the general election because the liberal Protestant denomination ordains practicing gays and lesbians. Polls show that Clinton is considered the least religious of the three, a perception that Green said could hurt her in the general election”.
While a key issue for conservative votes is abortion, another hot-button issue is immigration reform.
More than “two-thirds of Latino evangelicals voted Republican in 2004. The Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the 15 million-strong National Hispanic Association of Evangelicals says, “That will never repeat itself in 2008 because of the recent debate on immigration reform”.
As for the African-American vote, Green says “there is a fierce battle between Clinton and Obama. “Obama hopes to become the first black Democratic nominee for president”, but “many African-Americans have a real affection for Bill and Hillary Clinton.”
Seeds of the GOP-evangelical erosion were planted long before this presidential campaign started.
Green says, “There is some real discontent with President Bush and Republican leadership.”
Former White House staffer David Kuo says “the Bush administration made fun of Evangelicals and only courted them to get their vote”.
In his best-selling book, “Tempting Faith”, Kuo, a conservative Christian who until 2003 was deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives for the Bush administration, says, “The White House betrayed the millions of faithful Christians who put their trust and hope in the president and his administration”.
Some conservative Christian activists do say GOP politicians never followed through on the promises that got them elected. Tamara Scott, who worked on Bush's re-election campaign in Iowa, says,” Evangelicals were counting on more results on such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage.
Scott, who runs Iowa's chapter of Concerned Women for America, doesn’t care for the GOP frontrunners but “gushes about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister whose campaign slogan is “faith, family and freedom.”
Evangelicals aren’t the only religious group that could affect the outcome of the 2008 presidential election. According to exit polls, “President Bush won the Muslim vote in 2000 but that has dramatically changed because of the response to Sept. 11 and the Patriot Act”.
Green of the Pew Forum says, “The thing to watch in the Muslim vote is whether it's energized,” …” If next year's election is close, that bloc “could be quite important.”
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