Faithful Republicans
by digby
It is taken as an article of faith (pardon the pun) that the evangelical base of the GOP is upset about this Foley scandal and will fail to turn up at the polls this November as a result. I wonder.
This article in the NY Times asks the question and finds that evangelicals don’t hold the Republican party responsible:
“This is Foley’s lifestyle,” said Ron Gwaltney, a home builder, as he waited with his family outside a Christian rock concert last Thursday in Norfolk. “He tried to keep it quiet from his family and his voters. He is responsible for what he did. He is paying a price for what he did. I am not sure how much farther it needs to go.”
The Democratic Party is “the party that is tolerant of, maybe more so than Republicans, that lifestyle,” Mr. Gwaltney said, referring to homosexuality.
Most of the evangelical Christians interviewed said that so far they saw Mr. Foley’s behavior as a matter of personal morality, not institutional dysfunction.
All said the question of broader responsibility had quickly devolved into a storm of partisan charges and countercharges. And all insisted the episode would have little impact on their intentions to vote.
[…]
But as far as culpability in the Foley case, Mr. Dunn said, House Republicans may benefit from the evangelical conception of sin. Where liberals tend to think of collective responsibility, conservative Christians focus on personal morality. “The conservative Christian audience or base has this acute moral lens through which they look at this, and it is very personal,” Mr. Dunn said. “This is Foley’s personal sin.”
To a person, those interviewed said that Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois should resign if he knew of the most serious claims against Mr. Foley and failed to stop him. They said the degree of Mr. Hastert’s responsibility remained to be seen. Many said the issue had not changed their view of Congress because, in their opinion, it could not sink any lower.
But all also noted that the swift Democratic efforts to broaden the scandal to Mr. Hastert and other Republicans had added more than a whiff of partisanship to the stink of the scandal.
[…]
Brian Courtney, a Republican-leaning sales manager attending the concert, said the Foley affair had led to “the kind of mudslinging one would expect to see at an election time like this.” He added that he was paying closer attention to the “values and character” of the candidates, and that he would probably vote Republican again.
This is just anecdotal, but it rings true to me. These people have a faith based worldview and they have given over their faith to the Republican Party. And the Republican Party has found a way to have it both ways with these people — there is no “collective responsibility” for their party, but they are able to assign collective responsibility to Democrats, liberals and secularists for destroying the culture. It’s a good trick.
As for the election, a lot depends on the pastors and as far as I can tell, most of them are totally in the tank. Certainly the big ones are. And if this is any indication, the regular pastors are right where the GOP wants them:
David Thomas, a father taking his family to the concert, said that he, too, was leaning toward voting Republican and that the scandal only reinforced his conservative Christian convictions. “That is the problem we have in society,” Mr. Thomas said. “Nobody polices anybody. Everybody has a ‘right’ to do whatever.”
In an interview on Friday, Pastor Anne Gimenez of the 15,000-member Rock Church here said the scandal “doesn’t change the issues we are voting on,” like abortion, public expression of religion and same-sex marriage.
The church has been actively registering parishioners and reminding them to vote. “Every Sunday already,” Ms. Gimenez said.
We can hope that the Christian Right finds this state of affairs just uncomfortable enough that they will be too busy to volunteer and forget to vote on election day. Those voices don’t give me a lot of hope that they will. Evangelicals are just as full of shit and able to rationalize the failure of their party as other Republicans are. They’ll do as they’re told.
If there is any group that may really abandon the GOP, I think it’s the suburban women, who are seeing a bunch of depraved middle aged politicians sending young men to Iraq to get killed for political reasons and looking the other way when young men are being preyed upon in the halls of congress — and suburban men, who are watching the out of control spending, the cronyism, the botched war and the loss of international prestige.
I’m basing this on nothing but my gut instincts so it’s about as meaningful as a ouija board, but I truly do have doubts that a group of people whose worldview is shaped by authoritarianism will abandon the party unless their leaders do. I see no evidence that the leaders of the Religious Right are ready to withdraw from worldly concerns.
Update: Here’s one reason why I don’t think the pastors are going to lead their flock away from politics:
In recent years, many politicians and commentators have cited what they consider a nationwide “war on religion” that exposes religious organizations to hostility and discrimination. But such organizations — from mainline Presbyterian and Methodist churches to mosques to synagogues to Hindu temples — enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes. And the number is multiplying rapidly.
[…]
As a result of these special breaks, religious organizations of all faiths stand in a position that American businesses — and the thousands of nonprofit groups without that “religious” label — can only envy. And the new breaks come at a time when many religious organizations are expanding into activities — from day care centers to funeral homes, from ice cream parlors to fitness clubs, from bookstores to broadcasters — that compete with these same businesses and nonprofit organizations.
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