{"id":64,"date":"2012-05-03T19:12:37","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T19:12:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/?p=64"},"modified":"2012-05-03T20:09:59","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T20:09:59","slug":"romneys-real-evangelical-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/anxiousbench\/2012\/05\/romneys-real-evangelical-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Romney’s Real Evangelical Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Republican Party has an evangelical problem.<\/p>\n

My very simplistic theory of American presidential politics over the past half-century is that when Republican nominees have the overwhelming support of evangelical Christians, they win. See Richard Nixon, 1968 and 1972; Ronald Reagan, 1980 and 1984; and George W. Bush, 2000 and 2004. Particularly in the 1980, 2000, and 2004 elections, evangelical backing was
\ncrucial, if not decisive.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
Mitt Romney at the 2007 Values Voters conference (courtesy of c.berlet\/publiceye.org)<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

One could probably include George H. W. Bush\u2019s 1988 victory on this list. Despite the primary challenge from Pat Robertson, Bush courted evangelicals quite effectively in advance of general election before alienating them to a large extent over the course of his presidency.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Conversely, when Republican candidates lose when they don\u2019t connect with evangelical voters and lack close relationships with evangelical leaders. See Bush, 1992; Bob Dole, 1996; John McCain, 2008.<\/p>\n

Many pundits see the Religious Right as an albatross dragging the Republican Party to ever-more-certain defeats in a secularizing America. There is some truth to that argument. When Republican candidates become too closely associated with the Christian Right, they alienate other voters. Ironically, Bush\u2019s desperate attempt to mend fences with the Religious Right during the 1992 campaign may have turned off voters uninterested in a culture war in the midst of an economic downturn. The Religious Right can be toxic to a candidate\u2019s attempt to win the middle.<\/p>\n

Moreover, one would presume that Republicans could take the votes of white evangelicals for granted. \u201cEvangelicals voted Republican in 2008 because they had nowhere else to go,\u201d writes Dan Williams in God\u2019s Own Party<\/em>, a detailed history of the Christian Right in America. [Even if you are already familiar with Dan\u2019s book, see this recent discussion of his book<\/a>.] Unless Tim Tebow runs for president as a Democrat (about as likely as Tebow throwing the football like Tom Brady, and he\u2019ll have to wait until 2024 anyway), Republican presidential nominees are going to win large majorities of evangelical voters for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

Still, I would argue that the level of evangelical support has been a critical factor in electoral outcomes over the past fifty years. And that bodes very poorly for Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n

This is not primarily because of virulent evangelical anti-Mormonism. Last fall<\/a>, Robert Jeffress gained attention for terming Mormonism a \u201ccult\u201d and Romney \u201cnot a Christian.\u201d The media loves to run stories about evangelical ministers who say negative things about Mormonism. It makes for easy reporting.<\/p>\n

Compare, though, anti-Mormonism in 2012 to anti-Catholicism in 1960. It\u2019s pretty tepid stuff. Billy Graham probably wouldn\u2019t have warmly spoken of Roman Catholics as \u201cbrothers in Christ\u201d in 1960, as Joel Osteen recently did of Mormons<\/a>. Rick
\nWarren<\/a> questions Mormonism for its departure from trinitarian Christianity, but he hardly makes it sound sinister. Jeffress, moreover, has now decided he\u2019d rather have a cultist than Barack Obama in the White House. [See, amid a hilarious discussion of political anti-Mormonism<\/a>, Jon Stewart\u2019s analysis of Jeffress\u2019s change of heart]. Many evangelical leaders, as well as Christian Right organizations, have already lined up behind the presumptive Republican nominee. A large majority of evangelical voters will back Romney in the fall.<\/p>\n

The problem isn\u2019t whether most white\u00a0evangelicals will support Romney. It\u2019s the lack of evangelical enthusiasm. In what most commentators expect to be a close election, if evangelicals do not turn out in droves for Romney, encourage their neighbors to vote for Mitt, and become the heart of his grassroots operation, Romney has a much-diminished chance of winning. Romney is acceptable to most evangelicals, but simply far from ideal.<\/p>\n

The problem includes but extends far beyond Romney\u2019s faith. Evangelicals have gotten used to voting for one of their own, and Mitt isn\u2019t. Moreover, conservative evangelicals would be skeptical of anyone who at least at one time positioned himself as a moderate in Massachusetts. Perhaps the only way that Romney might overcome the enthusiasm gap among evangelicals would be to select a bona fide evangelical Christian as his running mate. McCain probably helped himself with this approach in 2008, but let\u2019s just say that his election also had drawbacks.<\/p>\n

The conventional (and correct, in my view) wisdom is that evangelical Christian leaders have been far too beholden to the Republican Party for the past several decades. Evangelical voters, however, make up such a large portion of the Republican coalition that the party is also beholden to them, a reality that Republican politicians often forget until it is too late.<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Note this analysis in the May 3rd <\/sup>issue of<\/a> the Economist, within an article attempting to argue that young evangelicals are deserting the GOP:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe prominence of evangelicals within the Republican Party is increasing: they made up more than half of all Republican voters in the first 16 primaries and caucuses where entry and exit polls were taken, up from 44% in 2008. And fully 70% of white evangelicals consider themselves Republican these days, up from 65% in 2008.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Republican Party has an evangelical problem. My very simplistic theory of American presidential politics over the past half-century is that when Republican nominees have the overwhelming support of evangelical Christians, they win. See Richard Nixon, 1968 and 1972; Ronald Reagan, 1980 and 1984; and George W. Bush, 2000 and 2004. Particularly in the 1980, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15,1],"tags":[13,2806,17,18],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-turner","category-mormonism","category-uncategorized","tag-evangelicals","tag-mitt-romney","tag-mormons","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nRomney's Real Evangelical Problem<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Republican Party has an evangelical problem. 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