Evangelicals in Exile

Without a viable candidate to back, evangelicals face an unpalatable choice: Either hold their nose and rally behind Romney, or throw their support behind a long-shot contender who doesn't have a prayer of winning, such as Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas or former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. "We're going to work hard in the primaries to support the candidate of our choice," says Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values. "But if it comes down to McCain and Romney, I'm in Romney's camp."

Beyond the field of candidates, however, the Christian right faces an even more formidable problem: The Republican Party itself is beginning to rethink its longtime union with evangelical voters. The alliance has always been an uneasy marriage of convenience, wedding business-oriented, tax-cutting centrists to an ideological, militantly evangelical base. Now, emboldened by the defeat of "pro-family" issues and candidates in November, moderates in the party are trying to loosen what they see as the Christian right's stranglehold on the party.

The rebellion by the moderates started in 2005, when former Sen. Jack Danforth of Missouri, a mainline Episcopal priest and the author of Faith and Politics, ignited a firestorm among the religious right by writing an Op-Ed in The New York Times that slammed Republicans for having "transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians." Then last fall, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey stunned evangelicals by calling their de facto leader, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, a "bully." Rep. Christopher Shays, a liberal Republican, was even harsher: "This Republican Party of Lincoln," he warned, "has become a party of theocracy."

The revolt of the moderates was especially evident in Kansas last year, when a host of GOP politicians left the party to run as Democrats. "It's increasingly clear that most voters don't share the priorities of the evangelical right," says Peter Montgomery, who follows religious voting trends for People for the American Way. "That's why you see so many Republicans starting to speak out against them."

The Christian right also faces a stiff challenge from Democrats, who successfully reached out to evangelical voters last November. In some cases they did so by fielding candidates with pro-life credentials, including newly elected Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina. In other cases they did so by simply recasting the party's rhetoric and reaching out to church groups. "They were smart," says Genevieve Wood, director of strategic operations at the Heritage Foundation and a former staffer at the Family Research Council. "They made a deliberate attempt to go after those folks."

Case in point: Ohio. In 2004, Ohio provided the critical margin to re-elect Bush, as evangelical voters flocked to the polls to support a ballot measure banning gay marriage. But in 2006, the political landscape shifted dramatically. In the governor's race, the Democrats nominated Ted Strickland, a former Methodist minister who spoke movingly about his religious beliefs, met with voters at churches, placed ads on Christian radio stations and reframed traditional Democratic issues -- improving health care, ending poverty, protecting the environment -- as "Christian values." In the end, Strickland won the race with nearly half of the white evangelical vote -- almost as much as his Republican opponent, Ken Blackwell, a conservative evangelical.

It was a stunning result. "We split the white evangelical vote and won outright among mainstream Protestants and Catholics," says Mara Vanderslice, a political consultant who helped the Democrats target Christian voters in Ohio and other key battleground states last year. As a result, Republicans lost ground among their traditional religious base. In 2004, the GOP won seventy-eight percent of the white evangelical vote nationwide. In 2006, the party's share dipped to seventy percent -- a significant swing in hotly contested races.

"It's not like you have to win 'em," says James Carville, the Democratic strategist who engineered Bill Clinton's rise to power. "You just have to do better. Even if you go up five points, it's a big deal." The swing certainly got the attention of the Christian right. "Man, a couple of points difference -- that's what the political consultants get paid the big bucks to deliver," says Yoest of the Family Research Council. "In a divided electorate, that's significant."

Despite GOP losses among evangelical voters, most observers agree that the religious right remains the bedrock of the Republican coalition. According to John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the GOP must win back evangelical voters in Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio if it hopes to retake Congress. "It's hard to imagine the Republican Party making a comeback in the Midwest without evangelical voters," says Green.

That's a view evangelical leaders are quick to echo. "The Republicans can't win without their base," insists Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, which includes 43,000 churches. "And Christian voters are their base."

Democrats are also careful not to underestimate the continuing strength of the religious right, saying it is far too soon to predict the end of social conservatism. The Christian right has been repeatedly proclaimed dead over the past twenty-five years, particularly after the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 -- only to rise stronger than ever.

"The reports of their demise have been greatly exaggerated," says Carville, noting that the religious right's media empire and network of churches provide the Republican Party with a permanent national infrastructure. "If anybody thinks that they're not going to exert influence in the Republican nominating process in 2008, they're nuts."