It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party -- and conservatism with it -- eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs.
Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they've had something to do with the GOP's erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs.
Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can't have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting.
With the exception of Miss Alaska, of course.
She continues and makes some pretty indisputable points about demographics. In terms of religion, I'm up in the air about that. The GOP doesn't just bank on the faithful, they bank on the sort of white faithful who tend to repel everyone else. Jerry Falwell wasn't just some white Southern preacher, he was segregationists who'd excoriated Martin Luther King. These guys didn't just push the heathens out, they actually pushed out some of the faster growing subsets among the god-fearing. They're taking their slice of the pie, but only a slice of their slice.
I do think that Terri Schiavo was a huge blunder. The thing that the GOP missed in all that is that the only thing Americans may respect more than religion, is the privacy of the family. Whatever you think about Schiavo, it had to have been a lot of people's nightmare to see their last days, not just weighed out in court, but subject to congressional resoloutions. I really think that Schiavo was, in Mobb Deep parlance, the start of their ending. It was a shocking, shocking overreach.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
If you think Shiavo registered with all but a small handful of very very active voters in this election and the last one you're nuts.
You you may say that Shaivo is the bell-weather. The signal with the Repubs are going down with the ship as the Evangelicals and Baptists get more and more rapid as they perceive the whole world is against them... (nearly all groups do that anyway)
But to suggest "white Christians" are repulsive is so incredibly biggoted it makes me sick.
I think you run the risk of clearly demonstrating that black people are just as racist as white people. The only difference is the historical institutional power that the "whites" have.
"I think you run the risk of clearly demonstrating that black people are just as racist as white people. The only difference is the historical institutional power that the "whites" have."
As racist? Son, this entire blog is a high-tech lynching. Dude, I eat brown rice and drink chocolate milk. Even my thoughts are hate crimes. As racist? Are you serious? On my good days, I'm worse. So, so much worse.
Oh come on, sam, can you quote where TNC ever said that white Christians are repulsive?
"The GOP doesn't just bank on the faithful, they bank on the sort of white faithful who tend to repel everyone else. Jerry Falwell wasn't just some white Southern preacher, he was segregationists who'd excoriated Martin Luther King."
This is the paragraph where he uses the world "repel", which I guess is the closest to "repulsive". But notice who he is referring here. White Christians? I don't think so.
So what is your point exactly? Or do you just want to make stuff up so you can call TNC racist?
"I think you run the risk of clearly demonstrating that black people are just as racist as white,"
Sam it appears that you don't don't read this blog very often. Reread the line below: "The GOP doesn't just bank on the faithful, they bank on the sort of white faithful who tend to repel everyone else."
The religious right has always frustrated me. They'll fight like bloody hell for the rights of a fetus. Fight to control how you die, but in between...you're own your own.
Ta-Nehisi's so racist, he hates his teeth cause they're white.
Dwhite,
I hate the snow, and I don't come out in the daytime. And with name like yours, I don't think I'm allowed to talk to you. I'm tryin to racist even harder...
Sheesh, Sam kind of ruined this entire thread before it even got off the ground, huh?
Poor form, Sam, you dishonest asshole.
It's my fault. I shouldn't have responded. I just wanted to laugh. Let's keep it moving though...Nothin to see here...
Ta-Nehisi is so racist, he wears black power gloves all the time, so he can't see his pale palms.
Ta-Nehisi is so racist, he hates Tommie Smith and John Carlos for allowing that white guy to stand on the pedestal with them.
Ahem. At the request of our host, moving RIGHT along...
Want proof that Schiavo was a big catalyst? Ask John Cole (www.balloon-juice.com). Go back through his 2005 archives, while he watches his own Republican Party rip through its moderate disguise like David Banner on roid rage. He was almost the definition of your typical small-government fiscal moderate-conservative Republican, and after Schiavo and Katrina he ended up putting an Obama-donation widget on his blog and whipping up his readership to donate thousands of dollars to the Dems.
Ask me. I don't have my own blog, so I don't have archives to review, but I volunteered for my first political campaign in 1984, to help Ronald Reagan get re-elected and to keep John F'n Kerry out of the Senate in Massachusetts. I gave money and walked precincts for Obama this year. My horror at the Schiavo mess was indescribable. Worse, I did my own research and read some of the court documents; then I read some of the Malkinites' and Redstaters' accounts of the same documents, and realized that they were not only wrong, they were deliberately lying. And to what end? Why would they lie about this poor bastard they'd never met? Bill Frist is supposed to be a real medical doctor, and he's issuing a diagnosis based on an edited videotape? Are you kidding me?
So yeah. Don't underestimate the effect of the Schiavo mess, or the fact that six months later, the same people who flew back to Washington on an emergency basis to keep a (white female) corpse alive couldn't be bothered to help as a (predominantly black) American city drowned.
I'll never forgive them. And I'm not alone.
The thing that the GOP missed in all that is that the only thing Americans may respect more than religion, is the privacy of the family.
Yeah. This idea that they're going to run as the party of small government, with initiatives about gay marriage, adoption, sexual behavior, and families eating together once a week--they've somehow moved out beyond irony.
Want proof that Schiavo was a big catalyst? Ask John Cole.
Moderate independent, and Schiavo registered very strongly--the GOP are not the people I want making my end-of-life decisions, and my husband is.
Don't underestimate the impact of the Schiavo debacle on the overall GOP brand. Moderates and Independents became a little more wary of the GOP's motives and alliances. I would suspect people paid a bit more attention to screening out the wingnut quotient among their local/state politicos.
Here in NJ, the State leg abolished the death penalty and approved civil unions for same-sex couples in the last couple of years. The wingnuts screeched that the populace wouldn't stand for it - these changes didn't even register with most residents.
"they actually pushed out some of the faster growing subsets among the god-fearing. "
It is wonderful to watch the next generation of the Evangelical movement identify their own hot-button issues - poverty, environment and the like. It's proof there's a Holy Spirit and that they listen to Her, because they damn sure didn't get it from their elders.
And the rabble-rousers, and that is all they rouse - are pushing them away.
Schiavo was huge.
My 90 year old conservative christian grandmother reminded us all to update our living wills saying "did you see what they tried to do to that poor women in florida". and by they she meant the republicans.
My grandfather had died the year before and like most old people ultimately the way he went was by the family turning off the feeding tube. Most every family no matter how conservative and/or religious has gone through that with someone at some point.
Cultural conservatives are always part of the American equation, but how large they loom changes over time.
Starting in the 1960s, a large slice of white people felt massively displaced, threatened and aggrieved. The argument wasn't always explicitly about race. Sometimes it was thinly coded, and sometimes it wasn't even fully conscious, but race was in the mix. The race part made it easier to recruit people to a big conservative movement. Pumped up that way, their group plus the old-line business Republicans could win elections.
Now the slice is shrinking as a generational change. Those people's kids don't see what requires so much fear. A few switch sides, a few more don't bother to vote, and the end result is that they're a smaller share of white America. And, of course, white is smaller share of America.
That means the Reagan coalition can get to 45%, but they can't get to 50% plus 1.
They're still trying to get the old plan to work. They're desperately looking for the next wedge issue. Shiavo. Border patrols. Palins. Plumbers talking about socialism. They all work a little, and none work well enough. The deep reason is that they were riding a particular tide of fear, and that particular tide is going out.
It isn't that their coalition is or was all about race. It's just that acute racial polarization made their coalition big enough to win. Take that away, and they lose.
Being a white Christian who supported the GOP side on the Schiavo thing. Mostly I don't agree with Parker, I think part of what Coates is saying is true.
There are conservative white Christians who never supported segregation and don't obsess on what percentage of people in Dothan are going to Hell. For that matter there are many conservative Christians who aren't even white. Yet the GOP still really touts that they get the support of some lunatic preacher or a Fundamentalist college many Christians dislike.
I think there is a conservative Christianity which is ecumenical and non-racist. I wish either side would show that a bit more.
Rove and Bush were way ahead of her, of course - they added Latinos to their coalition by being nice to them in Texas (in stark contrast to the suicidal CA GOP) - and even with that it was a squeaker in 2000.
The thing that the GOP missed in all that is that the only thing Americans may respect more than religion, is the privacy of the family.
I think it's one of the reasons gay marriage advocates do better when they highlight real gay people and their families. Here in VT the 'support civil unions/fight for gay marriage' crowd has been very focused on showing the lives of gay people; lots of glossy color pictures of happy families, smiling kids, etc. (A real opportunity lost in California, IMO.)