|
 emocrats appear
to be toying with an incendiary campaign theme for 2002. They may
be gearing up to depict the religious Right — more generally,
the right end of the Republican party — as an American analogue
to the Taliban. A vote for the Democrats, then, would be a vote
for tolerance and freedom of religion, conscience, and choice.
Howard Fineman
reported on this emerging strategy in Newsweek last week,
but there have been several hints before now. A number of liberal
and centrist intellectuals have previewed the arguments (see "What
We're Not Fighting For," Nov. 5, 2001).
The much-discussed memo from James Carville, Stanley Greenberg,
and Bob Shrum on how Democrats should handle the war claimed
that it would increase the appeal of liberal positions on moral
issues.
Republicans
should be, well, praying that Democrats take up this strategy. It
would be a reprise of their mid-1994 attack on religious conservatives,
which flopped so badly that it was abandoned before the midterm
campaign even began in earnest.
A lot has changed
since 1994, to be sure. The Christian Coalition and allied groups
were rising forces then, whereas they're hardly a factor now. But
consider what impelled religious conservatives to political activism
in the first place. The banning of school prayer and anti-abortion
legislation played a role, as did regulatory attacks on conservative
Protestant radio stations and schools. But more than discrete policy
shifts, it was Christian conservatives' pervasive sense that they
were under attack — that ruling political and cultural elites
were ignoring or ridiculing them and their values — that caused
them to turn assertive.
Christian conservative
activism has declined for a lot of reasons. An underappreciated
one is that this feeling of marginalization no longer runs so strong.
Rhetorically, the political mainstream has moved closer to the Christian
Right. The president is a born-again Christian, and the last Democratic
candidate for president said toward the beginning of his campaign
that the purpose of his life was to glorify God. Conservative Christians
have made a few inroads on policy, too. We treat crime as a punishable
sin rather than as an understandable response to social ills. We
fund abstinence education. Our welfare policies have shifted in
the direction of acknowledging the importance of two-parent families
and personal responsibility. The good works of religious groups
have instructed our public debates.
Nothing could
be better calculated to revive the Christian Right than a campaign
to demonize conservative Christians as an American Taliban. Going
to the polls to vote Republican — maybe even joining a Christian
Right organization — would again be a way of defending an identity
and expressing defiance to hostile groups.
A liberal campaign
against the Christian Right would face an additional problem. The
de facto leader of the Christian Right in America is President
Bush. His approval ratings are now in the mid-to-high-80s, which
is probably better than motherhood or apple pie could get. A GOP
with even modest political talents could easily convert a Democratic
campaign against Christian conservatism into 1) an expression of
religious bigotry and 2) an attack on a wildly popular president.
Fineman suggests that the Democrats want to use the Taliban strategy
to draw the president into a fight at home — that they'd then
have him right where they want him. Really?
There is also
the difficulty that Americans who do not consider themselves Christian
conservatives will find a campaign likening them to Osama bin Laden
unfair, extreme, and exploitative.
So the strategy
is risky to the point of folly. Our guess is that liberals will
try it anyway. They won't be able to help themselves.
|
