There is a brooding sense within top social conservative circles that they have become the revolving scapegoat of the Republican Party. Many of the longtime leaders of the Christian right, from Richard Land to Tony Perkins to Gary Bauer, expressed resentment in extended interviews with a singular theme: that the most loyal GOP bloc has been so quickly thrown under many critics' bus.More at the link.
"There are powerful interest groups in the party and in the country that are trying to scapegoat social conservatives," Land said, who has long served as a bridge between Southern Baptists' political concerns and GOP leadership. "It's people who have no problem ignoring facts."
Social conservatives have proven perhaps the most loyal Republicans. The September 15th economic crisis brought Democrats to new ground across red America. States from Indiana to Florida to North Carolina shifted to Barack Obama after the market crash. In this last chapter of the campaign Obama made inroads with GOP strongholds like white men.
But social conservatives did not budge. Only 29 percent of whites who attend church weekly backed Obama. That is the precise portion who voted for Al Gore and John Kerry. Half of all Americans who voted for John McCain were weekly church attendees. White evangelicals or born-again Christians comprised 42 percent of the GOP vote, according to exit polls.
Despite their loyalty to the GOP, traditionally, after national losses, social conservatives feel like the whipping boy of GOP critics.
"The party alienated too many Americans by allowing social conservatives to dominate," read one New York Times article shortly after Bill Clinton won in 1992. To win, "we're going to have to take on the religious nuts," argued a GOP strategist after Clinton's reelection four years later.
"That's the pattern that has emerged over the last couple of decades," said Perkins, who heads the Family Research Council. "People want to find an easy excuse for the GOP's failures and they try to point to the social conservative issues and by extension social conservatives."
Today, many social conservatives believe that this pointing is more pervasive.
The GOP will lose social conservatives if the Meghan McCains of the party become ascendant. That said, Republicans didn't lose in 2008 because of social conservatives, so we'll see who's going to get thrown under the bus in the end. See also, "Grassroots Conservatives Must Rise Up."
3 comments:
But who is attempting to throw social conservatives under the bus? It's the very people who are saying that the GOP must become more moderate, must return to the Democrats Lite version of the GOP that rewarded us with 40 years of minority status in the House of Representatives. The people who want to throw the social conservatives under the bus are precisely those who would make the GOP indistinguishable from moderate Democrats, and not worth our votes. They are the people who want to win for the Republican brand, the hooray-for-our-team Republicans who don't have any different plans for actually governing should they get power.
They are the Arlen Specter types remaining in the GOP.
"I smell a witch!"
where's Grace Explosion when you need her eh?
SoCons don't need to be thrown the bus. They need to stay on the bus, but I think they need to let economics and defense take the driver's seat. SoCons are a part of the movement, but they shouldn't be its leaders.
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