GOP’s crisis of faith
Washington Post - May 18, 2007
The GOP’s Crisis of Faith By E. J. Dionne Jr.
It isn’t always easy to notice, but this year’s Republican
presidential campaign has become the occasion for the collapse of
conservative orthodoxy.
In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, every
leading candidate declared independence from some piece of dogma or
another — even as all of them clung for dear life to the word
“conservative.” They sounded like religious doubters who compensate
for their ebbing faith by shouting ever more fervently: “I believe!”
It wasn’t just that Rudy Giuliani seemed to be reading from Rep. Rosa
DeLauro, the liberal Democrat from Connecticut who has long argued
that helping pregnant women in order to reduce the number of
abortions is preferable to an outright ban.
You also had Mike Huckabee defending his decision to raise taxes when
he was governor of Arkansas, John McCain reaffirming his support for
campaign finance reform (just one of his apostasies) and Mitt Romney
speaking out for a strong federal role in education.
It’s come to this: The only Republican litmus test seems to be
support for torture — excuse me, “enhanced interrogation
techniques.” McCain was alone in standing up forcefully and
unapologetically against torture by whatever name, a welcome return
of the independent-minded dissident willing to risk votes for principle.
One dynamic forcing Republicans to new ground is the failure of the
Bush presidency. This is leading liberals to insist that President
Bush’s tenure proves conservatism doesn’t work, and conservatives to
insist that Bush was never a real conservative (something they didn’t
say when his poll ratings were high).
Something similar happened to Jimmy Carter in 1980 when conservatives
attacked him as a liberal while liberals disowned him. Carter’s
defeat by Ronald Reagan was followed by an extended liberal nervous
breakdown. Now it’s conservatives who are panicking.
But Republicans also know in their guts that their old axioms don’t
work anymore because their constituencies are breaking up.
The obituaries this week for the Rev. Jerry Falwell often took the
form of elegies for the entire religious right. Younger and suburban
evangelicals may be more or less conservative, but they do not share
the ideological fervor of the Moral Majoritarians. These new
evangelicals care about issues other than abortion and gay marriage.
They yearn, along with almost everyone else, for problem-solving
competence.
Thus did McCain stress his ability “to reach across the aisle on
issues that are important to America” and the need to “work together,
as they used to in the past when I first came to Congress.” That
particular “past” predated the Great Bush Polarization.
Huckabee was challenged on taxes by former Virginia governor Jim
Gilmore, who sticks punctiliously to every last detail of the old
conservatism. Huckabee not only insisted that he had cut taxes “94
times,” but he also had no apologies for raising them to build roads
or “to improve education in a state that desperately needed it.” Read
his lips: Tax increases are sometimes necessary.
Romney and Giuliani could easily join the race to moderation –
otherwise known as the Who Sounds the Most Like Arnold Schwarzenegger
Contest. But they are worried about their own straying, past or
present, on the abortion issue.
Incidentally, my column about Giuliani earlier this week quoted
Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput’s critical words in 2004 about
John Kerry. But it’s worth noting that in the same interview, the
archbishop predicted that if Giuliani were the 2008 Republican
nominee, “you’re going to see the Republicans screaming at the church
for making such a big issue of a pro-life matter.” We’ll find out.
Giuliani thinks he can overcome all the social issues by out-toughing
everybody on terrorism. Imagine: His breakthrough moment Tuesday
involved going after not McCain or Romney but the nowhere-in-the-
polls libertarian Ron Paul.
Romney, meanwhile, is trying so hard to be a true-blue conservative
that he’s not playing his strongest card as a decent manager at a
time when the country gives competence a much higher priority than it
did before the Bush era. But even Romney split with conservative
purity in defending the No Child Left Behind education law.
If conservative ideologues were the dominant force in Republican
primary politics, Giuliani would not be at the top of the pack,
Gilmore the Pure would be doing better, and McCain and Huckabee would
not be placing bets on pragmatism and political reconciliation. Yes,
every Republican still wants to be called a “conservative.” But they
are all feeling pressure to pour new wine into that old vessel
because it’s almost empty. And Democrats beware: A less orthodox
Republican Party would be a lot more popular.