The Religious Right’s Year That Was

[COMMENTARY] A year that began in scandal for the religious right ended in confusion and disarray as both the leadership and the rank and file were bitterly divided over whom to support in the 2008 presidential election.

As 2007 began, the religious right was still reeling from the Ted Haggard scandal. Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals and one of the leading national figures among conservative Christians, had resigned in shame at the end of 2006 in the wake of allegations that he had had methamphetamine-driven sexual relations with a male prostitute.

That scandal continued to make headlines in 2007. In August, Haggard sent out a letter to his followers asking for financial help to be sent through a Colorado group called Families with a Mission. That group, it turned out, had already been dissolved. Worse yet, the man who registered and founded the group, Paul Huberty, was a convicted sex offender. And so it goes.

The now-familiar theme of publicly anti-gay leaders leading secret gay lives dominated the headlines again with the news that Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who had consistently voted against every imaginable effort to attain equal rights for gays and lesbians in his time in the Senate, had plead guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct after being arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer in an airport bathroom in Minneapolis. Craig and Haggard joined a long list of politicians and leaders aligned with the religious right who had been outed, including Rep. Ed Schrock (R-Virginia) and Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida).

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One of the biggest stories of the year for the religious right was obviously the loss of Jerry Falwell, who died on May 15. Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority and Liberty University, was one of the founding fathers of the religious right and, though his influence had declined somewhat, still one of the most powerful leaders for conservative evangelicals in the United States. But prior to his death, Falwell was deeply involved in what was clearly the dominant story of the year for the religious right: the splintering of the once-unified movement over whom to support for president in the upcoming election.

Since the religious right first came to prominence in the late 1970s, it had managed in each election cycle to find a candidate its adherents could agree upon to support. Reagan was their guy in 1980, of course. When he left office, Bush the Elder was not their first choice (Pat Robertson ran but finished far behind Bush) but he was good enough for them to unite behind him in 1988 and 1992. They got behind Bob Dole in 1996 and Bush the Younger was clearly their man in 2000 and 2004.

The current election is shaping up to be a different story. Going into the early campaigning, there were three front runners — John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani — and none of them held great appeal for conservative Christians. McCain tried to appeal to them as best he could, even delivering the commencement address at Liberty University in May, but the religious right was not so quick to forget that in the 2000 election, he labeled Falwell and Pat Robertson, two of its most prominent leaders, “agents of intolerance.”

Romney has two major strikes against him in gaining religious right support: his Mormon beliefs and a long history of liberal positions on which he has undergone miraculous conversions since announcing his run for the presidency. In a Senate run against Ted Kennedy many years earlier, Romney had actually argued that he was more reliably pro-gay rights than Kennedy and he had persistently pushed his pro-choice views. In his 2002 campaign for governor of Massachusetts, he declared during a debate that he had been consistent in his support of a woman’s right to choose since the early 1970s, as had his entire family, and he told voters, “you will not see me wavering on that.”

In 2008, he claims to have undergone a conversion that rivals that of St. Paul, if not on the road to Damascus then at least on the road to the Republican convention. He’s also repudiated his previous claims of being pro-gay rights and several other issues as well. Even without being a Mormon, his past positions have clearly undermined his credibility with the religious right. He has managed to line up some endorsements from religious right leaders, including Bob Jones III and Jay Sekulow, but he’s still fighting an uphill battle to appeal to a group that generally believes that he belongs to a cult and changes his positions the way most of us change clothes.

Still, Romney probably has an easier time of it than Rudy Giuliani in this regard. Giuliani also has a long history of being pro-gay rights and pro-choice on abortion, two issues that are absolutely anathema to conservative Christians. Giuliani hasn’t waffled on these positions nearly as much as Romney, though he has backed off from some of his gay rights positions from the past. Giuliani has instead stuck to his national security theme and sought to assure conservative Christians that he would nominate “strict constructionists” to the Federal bench. That has won him some endorsements, including one from Pat Robertson. “Strict constructionism” is generally understood as a catchall term for conservative legal philosophies.

There was a movement afoot among the various religious right factions over the last few months to get everyone to unite behind former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and it has met with some success. High-profile endorsements by a number of prominent Christian leaders like Janet Folger and even Chuck Norris helped Huckabee take a serious jump in terms of media attention, resulting in a shot up the polls as his name recognition increased. That has vaulted Huckabee into the position of being a serious contender in Iowa and New Hampshire, battling it out with Giuliani and Romney.

But while this movement has pushed Huckabee up in the polls, it certainly has not united the religious right behind him. Huckabee is reliably anti-abortion and anti-gay, but he’s also had a history of raising taxes and being relatively moderate on immigration and other issues. That has left the religious right bitterly divided over Huckabee, with some factions claiming that he’s the only candidate that truly represents them and other factions arguing that he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Other Republican candidates whose views are more closely aligned with the religious right, like Sen. Sam Brownback, Rep. Tom Tancredo and Rep. Duncan Hunter, have failed to make a move at all in the early campaign polls and have either dropped out or likely will soon. The man who most obviously appeals to them, Alan Keyes, jumped into the campaign late and has failed to register even a blip on the political radar. That leaves conservative Christians with few good options and none that they can unite behind.

This disunity has left many issues unresolved. A group of prominent religious right leaders, including James Dobson and Tony Perkins, met this fall and declared that if the GOP nominates a pro-choice candidate, they might well look at a third-party option rather than vote Republican. Others argue that in the end, they will line up behind whomever is nominated, particularly if the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton. So deep is their hatred of Hillary, many argue, that the religious right would not risk hurting the Republican party’s chances of defeating her by going third party.

So what does all this mean for the 2008 election? It’s likely too soon to tell. Clearly there is no one candidate they can unite behind, but the anti-Hillary motivation is a powerful one. But bear in mind that the Republican strategy of the last two elections was to maximize the turnout of this base group of voters, and with the last two elections being decided on razor-thin margins that turnout was what made the difference. Without a candidate that really appeals to them, a certain percentage of that base could well decide to stay home or vote third party, and it doesn’t take a large percentage deciding to do that in order to swing the election.

But the disunity among the religious right may well have broader effects than merely the next election. The divisions seem to be essentially between dogma and pragmatism, between those who simply cannot bring themselves to vote for someone who might be pro-choice or pro-gay rights and those who understand that politics often requires compromises of this sort. Those who take the more dogmatic position may well find themselves increasingly turned off by such compromises; one need only look at the vitriol aimed at Pat Robertson from some circles when he announced his endorsement of Giuliani as evidence of this.

That could push at least a portion of that base toward a third party, most likely the openly theocratic Constitution Party. If that happens in any significant numbers, we may be looking at the partial breakup of the most significant and powerful constituency of the Republican party. I doubt there will be enough of an exodus to make that happen, particularly if Hillary is the Democratic nominee, but it’s a possibility.

It should also be noted that those more moderate candidates like Giuliani are also well aware that they need as much of that base vote as they can get to win in 2008, and that gives the religious right a good deal of leverage to extract promises. I am convinced that Giuliani has already made one key promise to religious right leaders: that when the time comes to nominate Supreme Court justices, he will pick from their approved short list. The more pragmatic religious right leaders know that this is their No. 1 priority, and with the Supreme Court being one vote shy of overturning a number of rulings that they despise, that may be enough to get them to put the full weight of their influence behind even a pro-choice candidate like him.

Be sure to catch the rest of Michigan Messenger’s roundup of 2007.