Guest Post by Morbo
In the wake of the 2006 Democratic sweep of the congressional elections, self-appointed media pundits started telling us that the Religious Right is dead. They’ve kept up that drumbeat for more than a year.
I wonder how this dead movement has managed to resurrect Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign? As columnist Ruth Marcus noted recently, Huckabee’s surge in Iowa can be pretty much attributed to socially conservative evangelicals, some of whom abandoned Mitt Romney for him:
With evangelicals expected to comprise four in 10 Republican caucusgoers, voters such as [Pastor Jeff] Williams hold the key to a Huckabee victory — and they could deliver it. In the latest Post-ABC News poll of likely GOP caucusgoers, the former Arkansas governor led Romney 44 percent to 22 percent among evangelical Protestants.
It’s amazing how this dead movement managed to propel Huckabee, whose candidacy was on life support three months ago, to the top tier. And isn’t it incredible that Romney is in such a state of panic trying to win over this dead movement that he gave a major speech this week on how much he loves Jesus and hates those mean, old courts that uphold secular government?
How did it happen? I can’t prove this, but I suspect Huckabee’s appearance before the “Values Voter Summit” in October helped him quite a bit. I was there and heard Huckabee’s speech. While the content appalled me, I have to admit it was expertly delivered and chockfull of the red meat Religious Right activists love. Word started getting around that this guy was worth a second look.
Huckabee has also been trooping around to fundamentalist churches nationwide, speaking in pulpits on Sunday mornings. It hasn’t captured much media attention, but it generates a lot of buzz in the fundamentalist community.
At the same time, lingering doubts over Romney and the Mormon issue intensified. Fred Thompson’s candidacy started to wilt once everyone realized he’s lazy and near incoherent on the stump. Sam Brownback dropped out. McCain is still disliked for mean things he said about the Religious Right in 2000. Giuliani is perceived as too liberal. That leaves Huckabee.
Even as this dynamic unfolds, some in the punditocracy refuse to admit what is happening. They keep pointing to polls that supposedly show that today’s evangelicals are less partisan and more moderate on issues like the environment, health care and education.
Those polls are flawed because they rely too heavily on self identification. For some reason, people in this country love to glom on to the term “evangelical.” People who attend a church that is in no way evangelical will claim to be evangelical. People who rarely go to church will tell pollsters they are evangelical. Thus, the pollsters are misled and in turn mislead.
What’s really going on is that a core faction of ultra-right religious conservatives continues to mobilize for political action through fundamentalist churches. Obviously they are stronger in some parts of the country than others, but the Religious Right hasn’t gone anywhere. It remains a fixture on the political scene and has enough power to shift the balance in Iowa. It may even have enough to give Huckabee the nomination.
The Religious Right supposedly died during the TV preacher scandals of the 1980s. Then it died again when Pat Robertson’s presidential campaign went up in flames in 1988 and Jerry Falwell shut down the Moral Majority in 1989. It died once more when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 and croaked anew when he was reelected in 1996.
What’s sad is that some reporters and analysts who ought to know better have fallen for the “Religious-Right-is-dead” line. They’re simply wrong; the Religious Right, unfortunately, remains alive and kicking.