Last week’s less-than-positive jobs report revived ever-hopeful mainstream media talk that economic issues would decisively trump cultural or constitutional issues in the Republican Party’s councils. And indeed, some reporters saw this long-awaited sign even in the entrails of the Christian Right: the annual Washington get-together of Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition, which attracted most of the GOP presidential field. Here’s how Reuters described the confab, under the title, “Social issues fade as Republicans court conservatives”:
Christian conservatives looking to put a Republican in the White House heard a lot about the economy on Friday in a sign that their social issues may take a back seat in 2012…. In contrast to some previous presidential campaigns, social issues like gay marriage and abortion have not been prominent topics for Republicans hopefuls seeking to replace President Barack Obama in next year’s election.
That’s a Beltway wish-fulfillment view of the FFC event, and of contemporary Republican politics generally.
But it’s also not exactly right: There was lots of talk about those supposedly forgotten “social issues” at Ralph’s soiree. The proto-candidate for president who defines the left wing of the GOP these days, Jon Huntsman, did not consign these issues to the “back seat.” Here’s what he had to say:
“As governor of Utah I supported and signed every pro-life bill that came to my desk,” Huntsman said, rattling off legislation that made second trimester abortions illegal, a bill that he said allowed “women to know about the pain that abortion causes an unborn child,” a bill “requiring parental permission for an abortion,” and another piece of legislation “that would trigger a ban on abortions in Utah if Roe vs. Wade were overturned.”
“You see,” Huntsman explained, “I do not believe the Republican Party should focus only on our economic life to the neglect of our human life.”
Turning the “social issues don’t matter” meme on its head, another supposedly non-social-conservative candidate, Mitt Romney, argued that economic and fiscal problems represented a “moral crisis.”
Most MSM treatment of the FFC event missed the rather central point that Ralph Reed’s organization is not a full-on Christian Right group purely devoted to social issues, but instead a “teavangelical” effort explicitly designed to merge the religious and limited-government impulses of the GOP. There is already a massive overlap of affiliation with Tea Party and Christian Right identities. And there’s a more important if less understood overlap in the Tea Party and Christian Right theories of what’s gone wrong with America: an emphasis on alleged judicial usurpations of state and private-sector powers going back to the New Deal, and a hostility to supposed cultural elites who favor both secularization of American society and maintenance of the progressive legacy of New Deal/Great Society programs.
There’s really not that much tension between the economic and social wings of today’s conservative movement. And both appear to converge in an aggressive foreign policy, focused especially on the Middle East. FFC Speaker Rep. Michele Bachmann ended her remarks with a prayer that concluded:
Our nation hangs precariously in the balance financially, morally and also in our relationship with the rest of the world — with our position toward Israel.
Another already-announced presidential candidate, who reportedly received the most impressive response, Herman Cain, told FFC attendee:
“The Cain doctrine would be real simple when it comes to Israel: You mess with Israel, you mess with the United States of America,” he said to a long standing ovation.
In general, bad economic indicators don’t seem to be tilting the conservative movement or the Republican Party in any sort of economics-only direction. Indeed, to the extent that Republican economic policy now focuses on short-term federal spending cuts and long-term elimination of New Deal/Great Society entitlements, it converges with non-economic policies aimed at a cultural counter-revolution remaking America according to mid-twentieth-century values and opportunities. The very people who want to criminalize abortions and restore “traditional marriages,” also want to get rid of unions and collective efforts to make health care or pensions universally available.
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On the presidential campaign trail, Mitt Romney formally declared his candidacy, but on the same day, in Boston, Sarah Palin spoke out against the Massachusetts health reform plan. Palin’s impossible-to-divine ambitions received vast attention. … Michele Bachmann has reportedly recruited Ed Rollins, Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign manager, to her cause. … Newt Gingrich followed up his disastrous campaign launch by suddenly announcing a two-week vacation to the Greek Islands, subsequently losing his Iowa political director. … Jon Huntsman became the first candidate to officially announce he was skipping Iowa. And polls consistently show Mitt Romney narrowly leading a field of candidates who will soon be attacking him on many grounds, most notably RomneyCare. While Romney appears to think his economic message and resume will make him ultimately irresistible to both primary and general election voters, it’s unclear he can overcome hostility to his health care record among the former, and coolness towards his Wall Street Republican orientation among the latter. We’ll soon know if what Romney has to do to get the Republican presidential nomination will prove to be too much for him, or too much for the November 2012 electorate.