Those of you who follow the news have probably noticed the recent articles analyzing the fall of the Republican Party — or GOP for Grand Old Party. Without a doubt, the American public has turned on the GOP, as seen not only in this year’s presidential and congressional elections, but also in the landslide congressional elections of 2006.
The groups that together constitute the GOP seem to be polarizing into their various factions as the party attempts to remake itself. In my opinion, the faction that will continue to cause the GOP the biggest problems will be social conservatives, especially Evangelical Christians.
According to Ramesh Ponnuru of Time magazine, the argument that evangelicals are dragging the GOP down with their intolerance got harder to make after California voters passed Proposition 8. That California, one of the most liberal states in the country, authorized an amendment to its Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman is evidence of social conservatism’s continued relevance.
But Ponnuru fails to consider how social attitudes evolve. Laws that discriminate against a particular group, such as those that excluded women from voting, were at one time uncontroversial. Opponents therefore didn’t elicit much sympathy when they challenged those laws.
But over time, more people thought otherwise and made their opinions known. The law still had majority support and so remained, though consensus had eroded.
It is usually at this stage that Supreme Court decisions have been made ending such discriminatory practices. Over time, the trajectory in American history has been to extend civil rights to more and more minority groups.
If we apply our nation’s past evolutionary trajectory to the future, it is hard not to come to the conclusion that the liberal side will eventually win the “culture wars” — a term popularized by Pat Buchanan at the Republican National Convention in 1992 to describe the debate over issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Consider the waning of homophobia that has taken place since Bill Clinton attempted to lift the ban on gays in the military. The opposition of military leaders was nearly unanimous. In November, however, 104 retired military leaders signed a statement recommending that the ban be lifted and gays be allowed to enlist.
So, while fewer Americans seem to be troubled by the gay issue, evangelicals continue to focus on it; pointing to the passage of gay-marriage bans in Florida and Arizona, as well as California. I can’t help but thinking that this is a generational issue that increasingly more Americans are moving past. I also think that the economic crisis and the fiasco in Iraq have made Americans more pragmatic than ideological, and thus more tolerant.
Republicans have dominated American politics since 1968 because Americans came to associate liberalism with the instability of the 1960s. For many, liberalism came to mean crime and disrespect for marriage, God and country. Republicans succeeded because they promised stability and a return to traditional values.
Now, however, the situation has reversed. While Americans have become increasingly tolerant, they have come to associate conservatism with the deregulation of financial markets that has led to the present economic crisis. This in turn has left Americans craving stability of the economic sort.
It seems that the GOP’s answers are to yesterday’s issues.
Christopher Herrin is a graduate Religious Studies major and a columnist for the Daily Forty-Niner.