Okay, that was an exaggeration. David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, downplayed liberal assertions that this was an election of socially radical, right-wing knee-jerkers overtaking America. "There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life," Brooks wrote, and "Bush … did not gain significantly in the 11 states with gay marriage referendums." The question on the exit polls that freaked everyone out, that one about moral values, was simply poorly worded, Brooks asserted. "If you ask an inept question, you get a misleading result."
Well, as much as I'd like to believe David Brooks, the argument I'm hearing from him is similar to the one I'm getting from moderate Republicans. Even if the Evangelicals decided the election-and Brooks concedes at least that more of them voted this time around, and that many more of them voted for Bush-they aren't going to redefine the party of small government and capitalistic values. Hmmm, does anyone else hear a hint of rationalization in that argument? Sure, most of the people who voted Republican last Tuesday were not Evangelical Christians, and plenty of religious conservatives voted for John Kerry, citing social justice and poverty-alleviation (two values several of my more religious friends note have been lost in the shouting match over gay marriage). But that doesn't mean the moderate Republicans are right about the future of their party. The Evangelicals have different plans.
On Nov. 5, Carl Hulse began his Times article with: "Angry conservatives flooded Senate phone and fax lines on Friday demanding that Republicans prevent Senator Arlen Specter from presiding over the Judiciary Committee after he remarked that strongly anti-abortion judicial nominees might be rejected in the Senate." Some moderates call that a post-election surge. Soon these conservatives are going to go away, they maintain, and the Republican Party will embrace middle-of-the-road social values of the moderate, libertarian wing. Wrong.
Religious conservatives have been citing Bush's new mandate, the one that he keeps bringing up in his excited fervor over winning for real this time, as their mandate. They don't see it as only an endorsement of his war on terror, and it sure isn't a vote of confidence over Iraq (the exit polls were very indecisive on that one). Many in the Republican leadership are seeing the election as a mandate for social change, for banning gay marriage at a national level, overturning Roe v. Wade and stopping those nosy justices once and for all for trying to excise things like "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. The Religious Right isn't stupid; it knows it was the integral part of Karl Rove's successful re-election strategy for the President. And it isn't going to sit back and watch as people like Arlen Specter, moderate Republicans who stand with the party on fiscal and international policy, try to take away its victory. Karl Rove opened up a powerful Arc of the Covenant, to remind readers of that excellent Indiana Jones movie. While the moderates who happily used social conservatism to privatize social security and reassert uncaring capitalism as a national value may be seeing this as their victory, they'd better not think they can just close up the Arc and send it back to where it came from. It's open now, and it's going to take more than a "now, wait a minute, this was an election about leadership, not the Bible" to close it.
So, I call upon the moderates in the community to stop using religious radicals to get elected. Read the numbers: 60 percent of Americans agreed with gay marriage or civil unions in the national exit polls and 55 percent said abortion should be always legal or mostly legal. The intellectual conservatives may respond that gay marriage should be banned, that the telos of marriage is pregnancy, and that this can only occur between a man and a woman, and of course I've heard those arguments and I think they all depend on God creating nature to stand as morally persuasive (but I'm not getting into that here). What I will say is that of the 11 states to pass gay marriage bans, seven also banned civil unions. The leadership of such efforts to stop gay marriage may make arguments like the one I cited above, but the truth is the people voting for these efforts and for candidates endorsing them aren't trying to "defend marriage." They're defending America from homosexuals, from pre-marital sex and birth control and the evil, promiscuous ways of European atheism. I've yet to hear a "principled argument" that attacks civil unions, unless you count the now famous "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Perhaps the Religious Right doesn't think God created homosexuals, but that they spontaneously generated themselves. Perhaps God could not find an appropriate rib.
In summation, here's the deal: It's 2004, not 1950, and it's time that the moderate Republicans among us stand up for what they believe. A shy shrug, indicating a disapproval of the social agenda but an unwillingness to do anything about it, isn't enough anymore. If you disapprove of gay marriage, then fight for nationalized gay unions, and stop worrying about losing the Evangelical vote. This is for real, now: There are sharp Republican majorities in every branch of government (assuming Bush listens to those conservatives calling about Arlen Specter and his propensity for not litmus-testing judges on Roe v. Wade) and things like the Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage are possible this time around. Don't count on moderates like Specter to stop this from happening: Here's a man on the verge of becoming the chair of the Judiciary Committee who might lose out because of an insinuation that he wouldn't vote anti-abortion in all of his decisions. I'm sure he'll throw away his entire political career to appease the left that won't vote for him anyway.
The Republican Party is becoming a Christian conservative sect, one with enough power to ignore the social progress of gay rights groups and to criminalize almost all forms of abortion. (Read between the lines: How would you do this without making America a police state for women?) Now that the election is over, it's time for all of you Republican moderates to come out of the woodwork. Because if you don't, don't expect the rest of us who see America turning and are very, very afraid, to forgive you in four years. You may think your tax cuts are worth the rights of your closest friends, but I assure you that they don't agree. It's time you co-opted the mantra of the social conservatives in Vermont: Take back the Republican Party. Bumper stickers, anyone?