The election of 2000 saw President George W. Bush ride a wave of Southern Evangelical Christian support all the way to the White House.  With the feat narrowly accomplished again in 2004, the campaigns of President Bush firmly solidified the relationship between the Republican Party and Southern Evangelicals.  Since that time, the liberal Left and the DNC have used these victories and this relationship to drive a wedge between the Republican Party and American voters.  They have attempted to marginalize and regionalize the Republican Party as a party the Old South that caters only to the wishes of the Southern Evangelical community.  Through his rhetoric and at times through his actions, President Bush helped to legitimize these allegations throughout the course of his time in office.

While Southern Evangelicals are certainly a core constituency for the Republican Party, their prominence at least in perception has begun to diminish the Party’s national appeal.  At times during the Bush administration, it appeared that the Southern Evangelical message was that of the Party as a whole.  Conservatism and traditional Republican policy had been replaced by Southern Evangelical values leaving the Party with a bit of an identity crisis.  While this dilemma may have arisen only as a result of President Bush’s absolute departure from the fiscal side of conservatism rather than any real attempts to embrace the Evangelical ideology or policies, it is clear that the Republican Party has headed for troubled waters.

While it is not inherently detrimental to be associated with a constituency that aims to protect moral and social values in society, it is somewhat troubling when doing so alienates substantial portions of the Republican base.  While 76% of Americans characterize themselves as Christian, this does not mean that all Americans or even all Republicans want Christian values or more specifically Southern Evangelical Christian values driving their party’s political agenda.  In so closely aligning himself and his administration with this portion of the Republican base, President Bush appeared to be catering to a regional and deeply religious cross-section rather than the nation as a whole.  While the Party has made every effort to separate itself from the Bush presidency in every way imaginable, this perception may unfortunately still remain.

As the Republican Party continues to restructure and reformulate its policies in the years to come, it may be beneficial for the Party to move this process in a direction that lessens the role of the Evangelicals in policy determination.  Even if it only makes efforts to improve the perception of this influence, the benefits will be tremendous in revamping the Party’s image in future elections.

While conservatives are generally united in the cause of forming and maintaining a government that is guided by moral or principled values, the insertion of Evangelical Christian beliefs is not entirely consistent with a true conservative philosophy.  While the Founders gave great weight to the role of moral virtue and the importance of individual principles, they were highly skeptical of government becoming so closely affiliated with any specific religious group or dogma.

That being said, to advocate for a complete break from the Evangelical Christian segment of the Republican Party would be both counterproductive and counterintuitive.  This portion of the Republican Party represents precisely the group of Americans that the Party needs and should embrace with open arms; however, their place at the table should merely be as an equal to all other principled conservatives rather than at the head.  The center of the Party must be conservatism and a commitment to the original intentions of our Founding Fathers, not religious based policy that threatens to undermine conservatism all together.

The Founders created this nation with the ambition that it would be a place where all citizens would be free to practice religion according to their own beliefs, and they wanted to create a society that was accepting of those who wish to abstain from organized religion altogether.  The idea of religious freedom was not intended to only serve those who wished to practice according to one belief structure.  It is counter to the tenets of true conservatism to advocate for Christianity of any brand or denomination to be at the core of American government.  If the Founding Fathers had intended for anything to the contrary, we would find it in the text of the Constitution.  Conservatism aims to reflect the truest intentions of those who created this great nation and to assume that their intentions were to forge a nation in a Southern Evangelical light is simply counter to conservatism as well as common sense; and the Republican Party should distance itself accordingly with great haste and certainty.

If the Republican Party is to return as the true representative of  conservative values it must be extremely cautious in its affiliation with religion.  Translation of conservative principle to party policy is fundamentally important.  One of the most unifying factors among conservatives is their commitment to religious or moral standards.  It should be the lifeblood of the Republican Party as well.  However, while this is a common bond shared by many conservatives it is not compulsory for a conservative to be religious.  Conservatism is about believing in a moral code or core set of values, this does not necessarily have to be directly tied to religion.  This distinction is profoundly important to the viability of a conservative-oriented party.  The Republican Party has become so closely tied to the Southern states where Evangelical Christians reside that it has begun to marginalize itself as a national party.  A successfully revamped party would have to be cognizant of this dilemma and make every effort to prevent it.  It must focus on conservative values rather than merely Christian conservative values.

The emergence of this problem within Republican Party is largely to blame for many of the Party’s problems.  It has become a popular practice for some Republicans or their opposition to label conservatives with a qualifier – Christian conservative, social conservative, fiscal conservative, compassionate conservative.  They have been used by many to signify which conservative values they think are most important.  If a Republican wants people to know that he believes in conservative spending practices and taxation policy; but that he is less concerned with abortion, gay rights, or what goes on in the bedroom he announces himself as a “fiscal conservative.”  This is a fallacy and a fraud that has permeated the Republican Party in recent years and has led only to Party division and marginalization.  Conservatives cannot pick and choose when they want to be conservative in their policy formulation.  Either they are or they aren’t.

Conservatives believe in a core set of principles.  Any additional word placed in front of the label of “conservative” – Christian, fiscal, compassionate – only aims to deviate from what it means to be a conservative.  It implies that one area of conservative principles is more fundamental or important than the rest.  If the Republican Party is to find any success in the years to come, it must be conservative and conservative alone across the board.  It must champion smaller government, states’ rights, personal liberty, and mutual benefit from Voluntary cooperation.  It must not engage in distinguishing between and among branches of conservatism.  For a party to be fiscally or socially conservative implies that it abandons another set of conservative values.  This flies counter to the truest notion of conservatism and will only aim to divide a new verson of the Party in the same manner it did the old.

There can be no greater example of the divisive nature of this sort of characterization than within the state governments of the Southeast.  While these states have made up the core constituency for the Republican Party on the national level, the political environment is strikingly different in the state governments of many of them.  Many of these states have Democrat controlled legislatures and have continuously elected Democratic governors.  What causes this dramatic deviation?  It flows from the distinction between fiscal and social conservatism.  In many southern states, conservatism is widespread among both parties in state-level government.  It is the social, which often are Evangelical Christian, conservatives that cause this distinction.  The same individuals who want less government from the federal level often want to over-legislate in the name of promoting Christian values on the state level.  In doing so, they turn many Southern Republicans to the Democrat side of the aisle in state politics.

A party committed to True Conservatism can serve as the uniting force for those conservatives disenfranchised by outdated policies and platforms.  Conservatives who would prefer to not take part in those distinctions would finally have a voice and not be forced to join two political parties – one on the state and the other on the federal level.  They can hold true to their conservative beliefs without having to abandon the national party label in state government.  The current system requires conservatives to have to share congressional chambers with big government liberals just to be able to advocate a lesser religious presence in state government.  They say politics makes strange bedfellows but this is simply religion making bad politics.

The Republican party must once again articulate that conservatism shapes our policies through the way that we make our decisions.  It is about a process rather than an end result.  Focusing on fiscal or social conservatism leads to policy formulation that moves toward a specific goal.  This is counter to conservative principles.  If our policy decisions are run through the process of exploring our founding documents as step one, there would be no distinction between social and fiscal conservatism at all.  Religion must simply be an individual tool to aid and strengthen our convictions not the ultimate measuring stick.  To argue to the contrary ignores the First Amendment to the document we aim to protect.  For the Party to have any level of sustainable success it must be committed to this point.  If it does not, it will simply face the same problems of regionalization and division at the state level that has plagued the Republican Party for generations.

Put simply, the Republican Party cannot allow its conservative message to be compromised by religious preference.  True conservatism must protect all aspects of our Founding Documents including the First Amendment.  Ignoring it in the interest of expediency or convenience only discredits the Party as the true keepers and protectors of our Founding principles.

So there’s my little rant about the importance of principle rather than issues.  Thought it might add some perspective to see what two great Republicans had to say about the matter as well.

The first is Fred Thompson’s take on being a conservative -- illustrates the difference between “principles” and “issues”.  He makes a great point here that all “conservatives” should try to remember more often.

Why couldn’t this guy have got a little more motivated and staged a real presidential campaign rather than becoming a radio personality?  What a waste / shame!!

onclick='javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','www.youtube.com']);'>Fred Thompson

This is a pretty raw clip that is a bit issue driven for my like but it does relay some pivotal Reagan high points.  What does conservatism mean?  Clips from Reagan

onclick='javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','outbound-article','www.youtube.com']);'>reagan

Tags: CONSERVATISM, evangelical, fred thompson, George W. Bush, REPUBLICAN, Ronald Reagan

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 9:32 am and is filed under CONSERVATISM, DOMESTIC ISSUES, REPUBLICAN. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.