Religious Wrong
Democrats vs. the “American Taliban.”

By Ramesh Ponnuru & John J. Miller
January 7, 2002 12:10 p.m.

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.