As conservatives gather this weekend for the first Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference since the 2008 debacle, they need to consider one fact as they contemplate rebuilding the movement and party. Understanding this fact will help them meet their political challenge.
The Fact: 42% of John McCain’s vote came from white evangelical or born-again Christians.
That’s right: according to the exit poll, 26% of the electorate is white evangelicals, and 74% of them voted for McCain. McCain pulled slightly less than 46% of the vote, so about four-in-ten of McCain’s voters were white evangelicals
To put it in perspective, white evangelicals are nearly twice as important to Republicans as African-Americans are for Democrats. Despite the surge in African-American turnout and the record high percentage Obama received from those voters, blacks comprised only 23% of the winning coalition.
This documents what people have long suspected: the white evangelical community is now the Republican Party’s base. And it creates the challenge all conservatives and Republicans need to answer, how to build a stable majority coalition by building on that base.
It’s tempting to think one can throw that base away and start anew. But that’s not how politics works. Every stable, new political coalition builds upon an existing party base rather than start from ground zero. Indeed, FDR’s New Deal coalition did not reject the Solid South; he added Catholic and African-American voters from the GOP and built a majority that lasted nearly 40 years.
Ronald Reagan followed FDR’s playbook. He did not reject the shrunken GOP base of the mid-1970s. Instead, in his landmark speech before the 1977 CPAC convention, he argued for a “New Republican Party” in which the GOP base among economic conservatives would be supplemented with new votes among social conservatives.
Three years later, his vision was vindicated as Republican bastions in high-income and northern Protestant neighborhoods were joined by the “Reagan Democrats” – middle-class, Catholic suburbanites, conservative white Southerners, and a larger share of the Jewish and Latino vote. This majority coalition lasted over a decade, and formed the base for the historic 1994 Congressional takeover.
Obama’s attempt to create a new Democratic majority operates on a similar “build up, not tear down” strategy. Obama is finding ways to add moderate upper-income, educated whites of moderate-to-no religious persuasion to the Democratic base of racial minorities, labor union members, and progressive and secular whites. Conservatives and Republicans must think similarly if they hope to regain the majority.
Adding to the base does not mean that white evangelicals must continue to vote 74% Republican. Reagan’s conservative strategy reduced the GOP strength among traditional Republicans, as some voted first for John Anderson and ultimately became Democrats. But the loss of share among traditional GOPers was more than made up by the newcomers.
There are many ways to rebuild that majority by adapting Reagan’s 1977 playbook to the modern playing field. Conservatives can compete with Obama and the Democrats for votes among the mass educated affluent. Such an attempt could focus on social issues that unite people of various religious persuasions and economic issues that emphasize limiting government’s growth while reforming the public sector to make it more responsive to individual needs.
They can also try to add working class Catholics and members of other faiths to the white evangelical base. A move in this direction could emphasize social issues that unite these disparate faiths and, crucially, use rhetoric that is cross-denominational. It would also require greater openness to the economic worries of the lower-middle and working classes, which include high payroll and property taxes and stagnant formal wages (rising health care costs are soaking up these workers’ productivity gains).
Conservatives can also court the growing non-white portion of the electorate. This group is split between lower-skilled Latino workers and higher-skilled Asian immigrants, making the task complicated. But whatever the economic and social issues such outreach would employ, it will be difficult to make a serious play for these voters with an immigration platform that is perceived as restrictionist and exclusionary.
Each of these targets of opportunity presents challenges. But the challenge was no less for FDR as he built a coalition including blacks yearning for freedom and white segregationists, prohibitionist Baptists and wet Catholics looking for a good beer.
Recovery starts when denial stops. Republicans and conservatives who want to regain majority status must recognize that today’s party base is different from the one Reagan built upon, and this fact shapes the contours of the coalitions they can build. The sooner they accept that fact, the sooner they can meet that challenge.
18 responses so far
1 Oneon1isto // Feb 25, 2009 at 12:19 pm
It’s a good argument, and I tend to agree. I might add that base development can move the other way, which I think we saw with Obama this year. He built an “outside” coalition of African Americans and youth, and only when deeper into the primary did he start expanding his message to other traditional branches of the Democrat machine. I think what’s key no matter what your approach is that you choose themes and goals that appeal to a broader majority–which means supplanting or overshadowing, in part, social conservative dogma. That, I’d be willing to bet, is when things start to get sticky.
2 Ploughman // Feb 25, 2009 at 1:28 pm
The GOP should try to appeal to private sector labor. Many rank and file union members have come to the realization that if their empoyers don’t make a profit, they won’t have jobs. A private sector “Free Enterprise Coalition”?
3 Bulldoglover100 // Feb 25, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Go right ahead and try winning any election with that number…oh thats right, we did in 2008 and McCain and his religious babe lost it for us.
They are not and will never be the base of the GOP because if they are? We lose ALL independents and without them? We can’t win a National election. Seperate church and state or lose.
4 petty boozshwa // Feb 25, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I’ve mentioned once before, the term white evangelical is a misnomer – it’s just the new garment of the Dixiecrats and their Copperhead allies. These people were pro-choice prior to Roe v Wade [which is why Gov. Reagan signed the most expansive abortion law in the country a year before the Court decision] in order to get the government off our backs. They opposed federal drug laws as infringements on state’s rights, and they strongly supported high tax rates on Wall Street poohbahs and other Yankee masters of the universe. I don’t see any way the Republicans can return to a viable national party when we are dominated by the Lynn Westmorelands or Sarah Palins of this country. Maybe we need a Mugwamp movement to regain some credibility with the non-Dixie regions of this country.
5 mpolito // Feb 25, 2009 at 4:49 pm
White evangelicals are a real group, and if the GOP goes pro-choice, these voters will leave. The GOP will be a total joke. Socially liberal economically conservative voters are very hard to find. If the GOP becomes such a party, it will not win. The Dems will triangulate on abortion where it is useful, and they will take white evangelical votes. Let me say again, too, that McCain was farther to the left on social issues (see the Federal Marriage Amendment and stem-cell research) than Bush was. If you think that social issues and McCain’s “religious babe” were to blame for the loss, there is a problem. This is a fine article, and Olsen is right: we need to build on the base without alienating them. I see Hispanics as a good target group, because they are already social conservatives.
6 Rhampton // Feb 25, 2009 at 5:31 pm
mpolito — “Socially liberal economically conservative voters are very hard to find.” — that might be true in the South, but they are very common in the Blue States. Yet even in the South things are changing. The urban, suburban and college areas of Virginia and South Carolina voted for Obama. And Evangelicals 30 & Under are much more tolerant of gays and yet are still devoutly religious (see http://www.Barna.org). So the real problem is the refusal by Social Conservatives to open up the tent. If they want to keep it a private club for the promotion of the Southern Baptist Convention, then the GOP will become increasingly marginalized.
7 Rhampton // Feb 25, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I meant to say that Virginia and North Carolina voted for Obama.
8 Fitz // Feb 25, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Indeed – You build the base you have. Along with Obama and democrat overreaching on everything from overspending to Decisions from the Supreme Court, people will get enough of a whiff of the real Democrat agenda and republicans should be in a good postiion for 2010
” It would also require greater openness to the economic worries of the lower-middle and working classes, which include high payroll and property taxes and stagnant formal wages (rising health care costs are soaking up these workers productivity gains).”
This is key – It reminds me of the Sams-Club republican ideas bandied about here and elsewhere.
“Its the economy stupid” – has to be the mantra for another Republican majority. Obamas economics wont do it. They wont produce the desired economic results.
9 sinz54 // Feb 25, 2009 at 6:52 pm
mpolito claims: “Socially liberal economically conservative voters are very hard to find.” Not true. Try visiting upper New York State, or New Hampshire, or the outer suburbs of Boston, or many of the California suburbs, or the Research Triangle of North Carolina. The continuing national popularity of Schwarzenegger and Giuliani suggests that there are a lot of such voters out there. In fact, gun rights–a major social conservative issue–is still quite popular, even in in seemingly socially liberal regions outside the cities. The social issues that are such a turnoff for large parts of the country all have one thing in common: They all have to do with SEX, in one way or another: Abortion, birth control, abstinence, homosexuality, etc. If the GOP would stop talking about any issues related to human sexuality, they would appeal to a lot more people–especially to younger people. It’s when they appear to be moral scolds on sex-related issues that they lose much of the electorate.
10 sinz54 // Feb 25, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Fitz: While much is said about how the evangelical social conservatives cannot continue to dictate the GOP’s platform, it’s equally true that the “Wall Street conservatives,” let by such as Larry Kudlow and the Wall Street Journal, cannot continue to dictate the GOP’s platform either. One reason why the GOP has been so incoherent on economic issues in the last couple of years, is that they’re still trying to do good things for Kudlow’s “investor class.” Moving the center of gravity of the GOP away from Wall Street to Main Street may be an even bigger pill to swallow than moving the GOP away from the evangelicals–it’s been Wall Street, the oil industry, and the agribusiness industry that have generously funded GOP political campaigns. For the GOP to compensate for this loss, they will need to build up a huge Internet-based grass-roots funding and campaign organization comparable to Obama’s. Obama showed how to use the Internet to raise tens of millions of dollars in cash, dwarfing the GOP’s traditional funding advantage. Having such a giant campaign infrastructure working for the GOP, would reduce GOP dependence on both the evangelicals and on the giant Wall Street corporations.
11 Robert Graves // Feb 25, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Sinz54, what is an “evangelical social conservative”? Define the term. Name three “evangelical social conservatives”. Define the “GOP’s platform”, item by item. Which of all the items were dictated by the ESC’s?
12 dragonlady // Feb 25, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Good article–we definitely should be identifying key groups the GOP can add to its base. Sinz and Fitz, you both have good points. The GOP really needs to gain its credibility back on the economy. I would also add that the upper middle class and younger people care more about international issues these days so we should rethink our foreign policy tone; talking to leaders of “evil” regimes is not appeasement, but it all depends on the context (Reagan talked to Gorbachev, FDR to Stalin, etc). We should go back to Teddy Roosevelt’s speak softly but carry a big stick mantra. I don’t think the GOP should change the substance of its social issues (culture of life, pro-family), but tone down the preaching by developing non-theological approaches to appeal to Americans who may not be evangelicals, but lean traditionalist. Also, they should not be used as a limitus test.
13 sinz54 // Feb 26, 2009 at 8:16 am
Robert Graves: It would take far too long for me to respond to each of your points. Do your own homework. Check out Mike Huckabee’s own campaign ads last year, which touted him as a “CHRISTIAN LEADER” (their words, not mine). Learn why James Dobson said last year, that it would be better for his Focus on the Family organization if the Democrats won the White House. Read the part of the GOP platform that says that the GOP stands for extending protections of the Fourteenth Amendment to the unborn (which would make every woman who has an abortion, guilty of violating the U.S. Constitution, and perhaps subject to trial in a Federal court). That stuff has got to go. Period. The evangelical social conservatives have long since gone beyond just opposing an intrusive liberal government. With things like the Human Life Amendment, they would extend their power over every American home.
14 Chekote // Feb 27, 2009 at 7:48 am
sinz. 100% correct. It is one thing for the GOP to stand up for preserving traditional American values, however people like Dobson have an activist agenda designed to use the power of the federal government to impose their values on the country. They are basically a theocratic group.
15 dendup // Feb 27, 2009 at 9:25 am
Good discussion. I hope no one minds if I restate some of these points in somewhat different lanuage. The strength of conservatism has been its articulation of individual liberty as deriving pricipally from economic liberty. The challenge for this view has always been to apply it successfully to non-agrarian settings. Social conservatism as gov’t policy has been one tactic, but it has come to define the right’s view of individual liberty while it in fact increases the power of gov’t. Cutting taxes has been another tactic, but over the course sound bite repetition, it devolved into a non-affirming negation. It requires a robust and ongoing articulation of econmic liberty. In my (liberal) view that should take into account not only the coercive power of gov’t, but of corporations as well.
16 sinz54 // Feb 27, 2009 at 11:21 am
dendup: I tried to make that point elsewhere, but let me make it again. Corporations have no coercive power on their own; any coercion comes from their ability to influence governments. No Wal-Mart greeter can drag you in off the street; if you don’t want to shop there, Wal-Mart can’t force you to. Now, we conservatives have always believed that the free market should pick winners and losers. But what some conservatives, like Phil Gramm, did was to work with industry lobbyists to craft special legislation aimed at giving special favors to those industries. That’s not allowing the market to pick winners and losers; the winners are being picked by Congressmen, probably in exchange for campaign funds. Gramm co-sponsored the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, whose main purpose was to give Enron a shot in the arm. Without that special legislation, SEC oversight would have shown how risky it was to base a giant energy-services company on speculation in commodity futures. In my view, any pro-market efforts by conservative legislators must be across-the-board efforts (like Reagan’s original tax cuts in 1981); then the free market can decide who wins and who loses. Never again should Republican legislators huddle with industry lobbyists to craft special legislation aimed at paying off those industries for campaign funds.
17 sinz54 // Feb 27, 2009 at 11:29 am
dendup: One other way that corporations can acquire coercive power has come from the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Kelo vs. City of New London (2005) that takings of private property for any “rational relation to a legitimate government purpose” was legal. Hitherto, the Government could take your property (say your house) only for so-called “public use,” like building a superhighway. But in this case, the Supreme Court ruled that if even a private economic project benefits the community or the state economically, it qualifies as a “public use.” That means that if Wal-Mart wants to build a store where your house currently stands, all they have to do is show the town council that their store will benefit the community–bring in jobs, anchor a shopping mall, etc. And presto! Here come the bulldozers to bulldoze your house and put up a Wal-Mart in its place. We conservatives regarded this decision by the Supreme Court as a violation of the right to own private property. Since that ruling, some states have passed laws forbidding the taking of private property for allegedly economically beneficial private uses.
18 dendup // Feb 27, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Sinz, you make my point for me. That gov’t creates a mechanism for corporate coercive power, doesn’t negate that power. As you infer, I do believe there are other mechanisms as well. The market des not always thwart the development of monopolies. Some may argue that truly free markets inevitably end in monopolies. In any case, truly free markets are possible only in our imaginations. Tax codes and legislation favoring one industry, or one economic sector are inevitable under both parties. (I do favor a political landscape with more than 2 parties, but for that to occur here we would need to, among other things, eliminate or radically change the Electoral College- but I digress) However, I hope my main point, that Reps need to clearly and affirmatively articulate the relationship of economic liberty to the specific problems we face comes through. As to Kelo, many liberals were troubled by this as well.
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