Controversy of the Week

For a generation, the religious right has practically been synonymous with the Republican Party. Now, said Michael Finnegan in the Los Angeles Times, this marriage of mutual convenience may be headed for an ugly divorce. Christian evangelicals say they see no “principled conservative” among the Republicans’ first-tier crop of presidential candidates, and are alarmed that Rudy Giuliani, the thrice-married, pro-choice, gay-friendly former New York City mayor, is leading in the polls. So this weekend, about 40 evangelical leaders met in Salt Lake City to discuss a radical idea: abandoning the Republicans and forming a third party. This showdown has been brewing for years, said Rachel Zoll in the Associated Press. Christian conservatives have been fuming that the Republicans they helped elect have given only lip service to issues such as gay marriage, abortion, and school prayer. “Conservatives have been treated like a mistress,” said direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie. “They’ll have lots of private meetings with us and tell us how much they value us, but if you see me on the street, please don’t speak with me.” Giuliani’s ascendancy, he said, was the last straw.

If evangelicals made good on their threat, said Dick Polman in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Democrats “would be thrilled.” About one out of three Republican voters is a Christian conservative; remove their votes, and the GOP has zero chance of winning the White House in 2008. “Purists” in the evangelical movement say they can’t support John McCain because he “warred” with them in 2000. They dislike Mitt Romney because they consider his Mormon faith a heresy, and don’t trust his newfound opposition to gay rights and abortion. They have no enthusiasm for Fred Thompson because he’s no churchgoer, and once served as a paid lobbyist for abortion rights. As for “more genuinely ‘authentic’ social conservatives like Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback,” said Pierre Atlas in RealClearPolitics.com, they’re so far behind in the polls that the base is ignoring them. That pretty much leaves evangelicals without a favorite son and, in all likelihood, Republicans without a president.

Don’t bet on it, said Steve Kornacki in The New York Observer. The fact is that evangelical leaders such as Focus on the Family’s James Dobson and the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins—who were both at Salt Lake City—are drunk on their own presumed power. Their third-party threat is a big “bluff,” designed to make the GOP bow to their agenda. On a grass-roots level, Giuliani enjoys strong support from cultural conservatives in states as diverse as California and South Carolina. Besides, said David Kirkpatrick in The New York Times, there’s one nightmare social conservatives fear more than any other: President Hillary Clinton. Phoning in to the Salt Lake City powwow, former Family Research Council leader Gary Bauer warned that Clinton would wind up winning the election if his brethren split the Republican vote. “I can’t think of a bigger disaster,” Bauer said.

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That’s why the Christian leaders’ threat to bolt the party means little, said Steve Huntley in the Chicago Sun-Times. Most social conservatives hold more nuanced views than “the conventional wisdom” allows, and in Giuliani they recognize a man whose instincts, if not life history, are conservative. He’s promised to appoint “strict-constructionist jurists” to the U.S. Supreme Court, so the court would continue in the conservative direction it has taken under President Bush. Evangelicals “know more about what’s in their best interest” than either James Dobson or “the Beltway beacons of enlightenment,” and a conservative Supreme Court and a tough stance on Islamic terrorism top their list. So when the time comes, Giuliani will get their vote, his ex-wives and gay friends notwithstanding.