Deal Hudson is editor and publisher of CRISIS, America's fastest growing Catholic magazine. You can email him at hudson@crisismagazine.com.
Case in point: Newsweek’s political writer Howard Fineman reports that Democrats are planning to label the religious right as America’s Taliban. Fineman writes, “This is an incendiary battle plan — essentially comparing the GOP right with the Taliban — designed to draw an outraged response from the president. Then Democrats would have Bush just where they wanted him: in a firefight at home.”
Now it’s one thing to call someone a name in jest. We all do it. But it’s quite another thing to associate 15 percent of the American electorate and approximately 19 million Christian citizens with a political group who held control over a country by the threat of torture and execution.
Yet the attempt to link the GOP with intolerant extremists comes at a sensitive moment. Bush’s leading political strategist Karl Rove recently made news by declaring that only 15 million of the 19 million religious conservatives who could have voted in 2000 actually made it to the polls. There’s a growing concern that the voting block created by the combined efforts of Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and Gary Bauer is becoming fragmented and disenchanted with politics.
Some say the reason for the drop in turnout is lack of effective leadership. Reed now runs his own consulting business in Atlanta, Robertson has retired from the Christian Coalition, and Bauer has been marginalized ever since his unfortunate decision to back John McCain.
But I think there’s a deeper reason for the disappointing turnout in 2000: People of sincere religious faith will, from time to time, withdraw from the political arena in order to reassess and reestablish their priorities. They will, as the Bible says, “watch and pray.”
This ebb and flow of involvement is unavoidable, because it follows from their determination that religion be their primary concern. If a series of events, or candidates, leaves them disappointed and frustrated, they’ll hunker down for a season at home and at church until they feel prepared again for political battle. The 1996 Dole campaign and subsequent scandal-ridden term of Bill Clinton left many of them asking, “what’s the use?”
Political strategists don’t need to think too hard about how to activate religious conservatives. Thus far, the record of the Bush presidency on issues important to that group — life, family, education, values — will itself be the best remedy.
I’d guess that the 2000 Bush candidacy kept that 15 million number from dropping even lower. In my opinion, Bush developed his strong appeal to religious conservatives over the course of his campaign. He certainly didn’t start out with them in his pocket.
Rather, Bush earned their support with a message that addressed their concerns without sounding like their spokesman. He continues in that vein.
That’s why the attempt to bait him with the charge of consorting with an American Taliban will fail. There’s an enormous difference between Americans with sincere religious faith, and the brutal, inhuman Taliban regime. Intelligent people know that. If only some political partisans did as well.
