Gop Politicians Must Walk Fine Line

Potential presidential candidates streamed into Atlanta this month - even so-called moderate ones such as U.S. Rep. John Kasich (R-Ohio) and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander - to receive the blessing of the powerful Christian Coalition at its annual meeting.

They came even though there’s talk the coalition’s influence has peaked and has no place to go but down, with the loss of Ralph Reed as its guiding light. But from the Southern vantage point, I don’t see it. The coalition’s blessing is as vital as oxygen for the red-blooded Republican politician.

I am shocked always by the coalition’s success in convincing folks that personal moral, religious decisions are the business of politics - policy intrusions that infringe on basic individual liberties guaranteed under the Constitution. But you don’t have to be a history major to realize that religious influences on parties are nothing new in America.

“It’s not uncommon,” says Merle Black, Emory University professor and author of many books on Southern politics. Black points to the political role of New England Congregationalists in the 19th century. They were intolerant Puritans, of course, but the base they laid at least had a positive side effect in influencing Republican leaders to reject slavery as morally wrong. Likewise, the positive side effect of the Christian Coalition has been to turn the attention of Americans to crumbling family structures. Even non-members say that contribution can’t be all bad.

Black says that the coalition’s agenda is still not a majority agenda. So GOP politicians have to walk a fine line in seeking the group’s blessing without turning off traditional economic conservatives in both parties who don’t buy into the fundamentalist religious stands.

“It’s myth, though,” says Black, “to call the influence of the Christian Coalition the kiss of death.” Certainly when it comes to the growing power of the GOP in the South, he’s right. Eight of 11 Southern governors are Republicans and 72 of 125 Southern congressional representatives. Literally none of them got through a GOP primary - and few a general election - without the money and organizational clout of the Christian Coalition.

Still, Black adds, if the coalition really pushed its agenda, it might lose votes for the party. That agenda, which includes prayer in schools, a constitutional amendment to ban abortions, a dilution of rights women have won and an end to all forms of affirmative action, is contrary to the historical emphasis on individual liberties that marked the party of Abraham Lincoln. But the liberties’ champions in the GOP have been a dwindling number for almost two decades. As a result, women and minorities have migrated to the Democratic Party, making conservative Democrats uncomfortable with their traditional base.

Black says these shifts have made it difficult for either party to achieve a substantial majority. Too many people feel shut out of both.

My hope is that without the savvy Ralph Reed guiding the Christian Coalition, it will be less able to couch its fundamentalist positions in mainstream family values terms. Without the Reed spin, its agenda may stand more naked. It may be seen as more radically intrusive in personal decision-making than most Americans can stomach. And that could mean a loosening of its stranglehold on the GOP.

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