Chairman of the National Constitution Party
The New York Times recently editorialized that the religious right is in disarray. A casual look at the Republican presidential race would seem to bear that out.
There appears to be no consensus candidate among the social conservatives.
- Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has garnered endorsements from a number of key movement conservatives including political activists Paul Weyrich, Jim Bopp, Bob Jones III and Jay Sekulow, among others.
- The National Right To Life Committee has endorsed former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.
- American Family Association founder Don Wildmon, Faith2Action founder Janet Folger, FOX News commentator Rick Scarborough and a host of lesser political lights, but influential in the religious community, have endorsed former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
- Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a powerhouse among social conservatives, threw his support behind Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Meanwhile, conspicuously absent from the endorsement list are other prominent conservatives such as Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family and Phyllis Schlafly, author of A Choice, Not an Echo. Schlafly likes California Congressman Duncan Hunter who is barely a blip on the radar screen and Dobson doesn’t seem to see anyone in the game that he likes.
Then there is former UN Ambassador Alan Keyes, who articulates the Christian conservative message more clearly than anyone else on the national scene. Keyes is being virtually ignored by the religious conservatives, even to the point of not being invited to the Values Voters Conference despite the fact that invitations were extended to all the other Republican candidates with national name recognition.
Even more confusing, there have been at least two meetings reported of influential religious conservatives meeting to discuss alternative strategies in the event the GOP gives its nod to Giuliani or someone like him. Dobson has publicly stated on more than one occasion that he would not support or vote for Giuliani, McCain or Thompson.
At the first of these meetings, it was reported that of 50 people in attendance, 43 stood to assert that they would vote for a third party candidate if the Republican nominee is pro-abortion.
Does all this bear out that the religious conservatives are in disarray? I suggest it may be a necessary process for the social conservatives to find their way, to rethink their strategy and crystallize their objectives.
For the seven years of the President Bush’s administration, social conservatives have been the loyal water boys for the Republican Party. Most social conservatives are also fiscal conservatives and believe not only that the federal government should be smaller and less intrusive, but that there should be limits on the reach of government power.
These conservatives swallowed hard as they saw the greatest expansion of federal government power and spending since the "Great Society" days of President Lyndon Johnson's administration. They saw non-military, discretionary spending increase at a rate more than three times that of the Clinton administration, at a time when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House.
To make matters worse, they saw a president who wore his Christianity on his sleeve as he appointed more open homosexuals to higher office than Clinton. They watched as their president bowed to a Shinto shrine, declared Islam a religion of peace and said that Muslims, Jews, Christians and –- by a fair interpretation of his remarks –- all other religions worship the same God and their various paths all lead to salvation.
It is not coincidental that many religious conservatives are now saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” and are not following lockstep with leadership.
What comes out of this next election cycle will be a re-aligned social conservative movement, more committed to the principles on which its foundation rests than a political party. This is where the movement will find true strength –- when it is willing to step out of the confines of a single political party and let it be known that the party is only a vehicle to achieve its goals. When that vehicle begins to destroy the movement’s goals, it is time for a “Declaration of Independence” from that party.
