The Scapegoating of Religious Conservatives

The effort to makes the fault of social Conservatives the last election cycle is baffling. I think the National Review had a very good piece here at Religion and the Right and a further piece at Scapegoating the Social Right A fact-free distraction . Both are good reads and just basically state the facts.

RAMESH PONNURU is piece ends with this sensible piece of advice "The attempts to blame social conservatism for Republican defeats will not reduce its influence in the party. What they will do is distract attention from the changes the party really does need to make."

I think that is very true. Also religious conservatives need to be careful from getting into this game that in the end is counterproductive.

Creative Minority Report has written generally good pieces on this at his place. For instance see My Conservative Manifesto . I generally agree though in the comment section I told him I disagreed with this part:
Ironically, it was these very same "conservatives" who forced John McCain on the rest of a reluctant party in part because he did not wear his religion on his sleeve in the same way that Romney or Huckabee did . They wanted to distance themselves from the "religious right" in the party. Now, still stung with defeat, they want to pin the blame on, as one analyst called them, the God fearin' oogedy boogedy right. I can't take this point on at any length in this already lengthy post, but suffice it to say the religious right didn't have a dog in this fight.

First I am not sure how much Romney wore his religion on his sleeve. Second I am not sure how this actually went down. As a Huckabee supporter I watched the Catholic vote in some very Conservative states. On a regular basis McCain cleaned our clock though he made promising inroads as the race went on. In Louisiana Republicans that are often Social Conservatives voted for McCain in large numbers.

The problem we have is our "Social Conservative Candidates" are put into a box by the media and we allow it to happen. For instance I am sure the whole world knew Huckabee and Palin were not big evolution fans. The fact that their States had not become a every day Scope Monkey trial seemed to go unnoticed. In fact about everything they did in their States and their achievement that had nothing to do with Social Conservatism went unnoticed and un talked about by the mainstream media. I suppose the raging issue if Sarah Plain ever talked in tongues was more important.

As people have pointed out Social issues were not a huge part of this year scene. For those that blame the GOP, I say it takes two to tango. If the grassroots are not working to make it a issue and part of the discussion in the public square I hardly expect the people running to make their nightly 25 second soundbite on it. There was a failure on our side. The McCain folks were outspent 4 t0 1. If we are not making Judges a issue for instance then they are not going to get much of a return.

Anyway this just goes to show that the arguments against the Social conservatives seem to be a epic fail.

I am not sure the GOP nor religious conservatives or fiscal conservatives are noticing the electoral danger here with Obama. I think Ross Douthat made this very good observation the other day among many others that I hope start to get noticed

The Legs of the Stool

Poulos, responding to this post:

Ross also claims that "Of the three legs of the modern right-of-center stool - social conservatives, small-governmenteers, and foreign-policy hawks - it's the hawks who almost always have the least to fear from savvy Democratic Administrations." But there are growing numbers of social conservatives out there -- including Catholic Democrats -- who actually do like the idea of universal health care and a New Deal for energy, and know they can't do much about the liberal judges who will prop up the incoherent and crippled Casey/Roe regime. And small-governmenters will continue to accept more cultural libertarianism for the void that political libertarianism used to fill -- bigger cages, longer chains, as some punks put it not so long ago.

It's certainly the case that a successful Obama administration has the potential to peel both socially-conservative and libertarian voters away from the Republican coalition, albeit for different reasons - as indeed, an ascendant Democratic Party already has. But I had the GOP's activist and journalistic core in mind - the people who staff think tanks and advocacy groups, who write for the Standard and NR, and so forth. And within that core, I think, you're a lot more likely to hear and see national-security hawks praising Obama, arguing that his foreign policy actually displays real continuity with George W. Bush's approach, and so forth, than you are to hear, say, pro-lifers praising his judicial appointments or small-government conservatives praising his budgetary priorities. Or put another way, I suspect that Obama will receive more kind words from Robert Kagan and Max Boot over the next four years than he will from, say, Robert George or Dick Armey.

In fact are we not seeing this happening. I saw early signs that Obama is a tad more Hawkish than many of his Democrat Daily Kos and Dem Underground supporters might like. In fact if I had a prediction . In a work more pragmatic and some thinks of this nature might govern to the right of Clinton. In fact I think we are seeing that with some of Obama's Foreign Policy and National Security pick while not what I would like are not horrible from my more Hawkish point of view. I find his staff as to Domestic affairs and those touching on Catholic issues I have concerns about frightening.

Where I disagree with Douthat slightly I think is that all this new Coalition stuff will stay in the D.C. bubble.

If Obama can transform himself into a slightly Dem Hawk realist (A Republican Demo in elections often) then he can give the Dem Underground the finger. Where will they go. Hew I gave you Health Care!!!

The key in this is that all factions of the GOP and Conservative movement need each other. We are not going to regain power by "getting smaller".