Posted on 08/20/2006 10:05:39 PM PDT by Aussie Dasher
One of the hardy perennials of politics is the Republican Party effort to recruit black voters each election because the GOP believes there is a new generation of African-American voters who might be ready to shed their Democratic allegiance.
Despite GOP leaders' best efforts to attract African-American voters, Democrats still get almost 90 percent of the black vote.
That is worth considering as we are deluged with political efforts by liberals and their academic supporters offering books about how large numbers of Evangelical Christians, who have become the most reliable GOP voters, might be ripe for the picking by Democrats.
Mark me down as skeptical. My reasons are very similar to why the Republicans can't make much progress among black voters:
Even though it goes against our national vision of a country of individuals unbound by class or culture, the truth is that demographics still control political destiny to a large degree.
Blacks are overwhelmingly Democratic because of history and perceived self- interest. In the 2004 presidential voting, African Americans were 11 percent of the electorate and gave Democrat John Kerry 88 percent of their votes.
Democrats are the party of government and it was the government - spurred by the civil rights movement, not the private sector -- that was responsible for the advances that have improved the lives and well-being of African-Americans.
The growing black middle class, many of whose members are fervent church-goers, may have a lifestyle might more open to the Republican philosophy of less government and family values.
But that hasn't changed their voting behavior and few in the politics business think that will change anytime soon, if ever.
The same is likely the case for white evangelicals. Black evangelicals are almost as Democratic as African-Americans overall, because even though they share many Republican view on family values, it has not changed their voting behavior.
White evangelicals were 23 percent of the electorate in 2004 and they gave President Bush 78 percent of their votes. High turnout among conservative Christians was a major factor in Bush carrying key swing states like Ohio and Florida.
Since then, Democrats/liberals have been trying to figure out how to attract more white evangelical voters. Now that we are now in the middle of the political season - not just because of the approaching off-year elections, but the run-up to the 2008 voting - we seem to be inundated with books about evangelicals and politics.
Most of these books come from the Northeast, where evangelicals are considered a species to be studied, rather than the folks who stand in line with you at the supermarket.
Perhaps the best of the bunch comes from Mark Pinsky, the Orlando Sentinel's religion writer, whose book, A Jew among the Evangelicals, A Guide for the Perplexed" is meant as an explainer to northern liberals.
Pinsky, himself a northeasterner by birth, is a friend and former colleague who has spent a decade covering evangelicals in the South. He makes the point that generational change is coming in the evangelical community as new, less dogmatic leaders replace the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons.
He notes that John Green, a well-respected University of Akron political scientist and pollster, had found that on a number of environmental issues evangelicals agree more with the consensus Democratic position than the Republican one. A poll by the Pew Center for the People and the Press found that evangelicals strongly support stem-cell research funding, the opposite position held by President Bush.
Yet, the idea that these differences with Republican orthodoxy make evangelical Christians likely to change their voting allegiance is as flawed as the notion that just because millions of black voters oppose abortion they will vote Republican.
Voters, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion, make their political choices based on their overall comfort level with the views and values of a candidate.
Blacks, as a group, favor larger government programs, social safety nets and economic polices that value larger government spending over tax cuts. That is why they vote Democratic.
Evangelical Christians favor traditional social values, tend to be skeptical of government and fond of the military. That is why they vote Republican.
The idea that voting behavior will change because younger evangelical leaders are softer-spoken and less tied to the Republican infrastructure than their predecessors, or because evangelicals are worried about the environment, sure looks like wishful thinking.
" A poll by the Pew Center for the People and the Press found that evangelicals strongly support stem-cell research funding, the opposite position held by President Bush."
Another vague poll question. If evangelicals were asked if they supported EMBRYONIC stem-cell research funding, a majority would say no.
bttt
As they drive up to their air-conditioned suburban mega-churches in their new SUVs and Lexus. What is the Democrat vs. Republican position on the environment anyway, besides sound-bites and half-baked talking points??
A poll by the Pew Center for the People and the Press found that evangelicals strongly support stem-cell research funding, the opposite position held by President Bush.
Adult stem-cell research, perhaps, but not embryonic.
Sounds like either faulty polling or ignorant respondents on both issues.
A large number of white evangelicals come from traditionally Democrat backgrounds, and presumably could go back to their roots- if one of two things happened:
1.) The Democrats dropped their support of gay marriage and abortion; or at least moderated their tone.
2.) Abortion and homosexuality became less offensive to evangelical Christians.
While it's true that some "evangelicals" are becoming more open toward things like homosexuality (for example, Brian McClaren), their numbers seem to be dwarfed by legions of young men (and women) who are more conservative than their parents.
I don't think there's any danger of large numbers of evangelicals returning to the Democratic Party unless the Democrats get "born again" and change their stances on abortion and homosexuality.
However, the new, younger evangelicals are not particularly friendly to Republicans, either. They're not as jingoistically patriotic, and are more concerned with "social justice" and the environment. They vote Republican now because abortion is the trump card. BUT were a serious third party to arise which opposed abortion and gay rights yet were less "big money" than the GOP, the Republican party could splinter.
But of course, third parties aren't really viable. Our political system doesn't favor them.
What I see as most likely is that the Democrats will continue along as they are now and alienating black evangelicals. At which point they'll cease to be politically viable and will be replaced with a socially conservative third party.
RINOs kicking the religious conservatives in the teeth surely isn't going to help the Republicans much either...
I agree that there is no chance the Dems win that block. What could happen though is that they take a slightly higher percentage of it and several other blocks and those few slivers are enough for them to win the close races and take back congress. Or a higher percentage of evangelicals are frustrated than were in 2004 and these frustrated folks stay home. I personally don't see them taking back either house but were it to happen it would be because they took a few percentage points away from parts of our base or some of our base stayed home in larger numbers than predicted.
The white evangelicals pretty much own the Republican party. They make up about 28% of the population. In a two-party system, that guarantees control of a political party.
The money Republicans (aka "RINOS") don't like the fact that the values Republicans outnumber them, and so they pitch a fit every time they can. But the GOP will adjust to meet the demands of the evangelicals: if they let the money Republicans go too far, the Christians stay home on election day, and the GOP loses.
There is a not so subtle effort going on to marginalize evangelicals. THAT'S how the democrap party intends to neutralize evangelical voters ... and they will likely be somewaht successful in getting evangelicals to stay away from voting this fall.
When Republicans stop talking about abortion and gay marriage, and focus exclusively on the war in Iraq and immigration, then many evangelicals will stay home. It's that simple.
Someone needs to get out that and point out, again and again, that we now have two more very conservative (and young) justices on the Supreme Court.
And it is more than just the subpreme bench which must be changed toward a constitutional perspective. The liberal seeding of the federal bench system by clinton and his henchghouls continues to corrode this nation. Republicans will need to control the Senate and White House for at least six more years in order to make any headway in turning the federal appeals system away from leftist ideology. Witness the Taylor ruling to squelch the NSA monitoring of al qaeda contacts in the USA! That fool judge allowed a case to reach her ruling which had no actual plantiff harmed by the program and not one abuse was ever shown to the court. Disgusting and baltant leftist judicial activism that has potential to get Americans killed in mass murders which the judge apparently chooses to ignore for empowerment of her democrat beloved.
Specific things - no matter how important symbolically - such as Bush's unprecedented elevation of blacks to some of the highest and most important positions of state are trumped by the particular group's basic view of the role of government as it relates to themselves.
Bush is the most pro-Israel president in recent history but Jews vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
The real problem is that some will always support a bigger more intrusive government, more taxes, more regulation, and socio-economic programs that benefit their particular group.
These are basic orientations that seldom change greatly in ordinary circumstances.
A vote for the Democratic party is a vote for unrestricted abortion of babies and unrestricted sodomy. Until they change these two "planks", they will not attract Christian voters in large numbers.
The only way evangelicals vote democrat is if they start losing their homes, jobs and cars in any significant numbers.
You're exactly right. Evangelical Christians won't flee the GOP in droves anytime soon, but if they aren't motivated to vote, then many will stay home. It's the difference between 1994 (or 2004) and 1996. The GOP's get-out-the-vote strategies are conscious of this difference, and the need to appeal specifically to Christian conservatives; the same can't always be said of the politicians.
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