THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN AUGUST 31, 2011
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While few in either the mainstream media or the conservative commentariat have been so bold as to deny that the Republican Party is a lot more ideologically rigid than it was four or twelve or thirty years ago, there has been some regular pushback against attaching such terms as “radical” and “extremist” to the party’s views. Some conservatives like to claim that they just look extreme when compared to a Democratic Party dominated by a radical socialist president. Others admit their party is in an ideological grip unlike anything seen since Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign, but argue the whole country’s moved with them. (Just observe Michele Bachmann’s recent statement that the Tea Party represents the views of 90 percent of the U.S. population). But more common is the effort, which extends deep into the media, to push back against charges of Republican extremism on grounds that, well, a party that won over half the ballots of 2010 voters cannot, by definition, be anything other than solidly in the mainstream. And so it becomes habitual to denigrate even the most specific text-proofs that something odd is going on in the GOP as “liberal hysteria” or mere agitprop.
This 45-million-Americans-can’t-be-wrong meme has been deployed most recently to scoff at those progressive writers who have drawn attention to the rather peculiar associations of presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. The most typical retort came from Washington Post religion columnist Lisa Miller, who deplored those scrutinizing Bachmann’s legal training at Oral Roberts University or the “dominionist” beliefs common among many key organizers of Perry’s recent “day of prayer and fasting” as “raising fears on the left about ‘crazy Christians.’” New York Times columnist Ross Douthat offered a more sophisticated but functionally equivalent rebuke, suggesting that Bachmann and Perry were representing a long Republican tradition of co-opting religious extremists with absolutely no intention of giving them genuine influence.
But the recent resurgence of militant Christian Right activism, alongside its close cousin, “constitutional conservatism,” is genuinely troubling to people who don’t share the belief that the Bible or the Constitution tell you exactly what to do on a vast array of political issues. From both perspectives, conservative policy views are advanced not because they make sense empirically, or are highly relevant to the contemporary challenges facing the country, or because they may from time to time reflect public opinion. They are, instead, rooted in a concept of the eternal order of the universe, or in the unique (and, for many, divinely ordained) character of the United States. As such, they suggest a fundamentally undemocratic strain in American politics and one that can quite justifiably be labeled extreme.
CONSIDER THE LANGUAGE of the Mount Vernon Statement, the 2010 manifesto signed by a glittering array of conservative opinion-leaders, from Grover Norquist to Ed Fulner to Tony Perkins:
We recommit ourselves to the ideas of the American Founding. Through the Constitution, the Founders created an enduring framework of limited government based on the rule of law. They sought to secure national independence, provide for economic opportunity, establish true religious liberty and maintain a flourishing society of republican self-government. …
The conservatism of the Declaration asserts self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God.
An agenda speaking with the authority of “self-evident truths based on the laws of nature and nature’s God” and advancing the “enduring framework” of the Founders is, by definition, immutable. And in turn, that means that liberals (or, for that matter, their RINO enablers) are not simply misguided, but are objectively seeking to thwart God and/or betray America. Think that might have an impact on the tone of politics, or the willingness of conservatives to negotiate over the key tenets of their agenda?
From this point of view, all the recent carping about liberal alarm over the religious underpinnings of contemporary conservatism seems to miss the big picture rather dramatically. Both Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry have conspicuously offered themselves as leaders to religio-political activists who, whatever their theological differences, largely share a belief that God’s Will on Earth requires the repeal of abortion rights and same-sex relationship rights, radical curtailment of government involvement in education or welfare, assertion of Christian nationhood in both domestic and international relations, and a host of other controversial initiatives. Does it ultimately matter, then, whether these activists consider themselves “dominionists” or “reconstructionists,” or subscribe to Bill Bright’s Seven Mountains theory of Christian influence over civic and cultural life? I don’t think so.
Similarly, the frequent mainstream media and conservative recasting of the Tea Party as just a spontaneous salt-of-the-earth expression of common-sense attitudes towards fiscal profligacy is hard to sustain in light of the almost-constant espousal of “constitutional conservative” ideology by Tea Party leaders and the politicians most closely associated with them. Perhaps Rick Perry, just like his Tea Party fans, really is personally angry about the stimulus legislation of 2009 or the Affordable Care Act of 2010, and that’s fine. But no mainstream conservative leader since Goldwater has published a book challenging the constitutionality and morality of the entire policy legacy of the New Deal and (with the marginal exception of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) the Great Society. Ronald Reagan, to cite just one prominent example, justified his own conservative ideology as the reaction of a pure-bred New Deal Democrat to the later excesses of liberalism. Reagan also largely refrained from promoting his policy ideas as reflecting a mandate from God or the Founders, and he treated Democrats with at least minimal respect.
In that sense, major presidential candidates like Perry and Bachmann really are something new under the sun. They embody a newly ascendant strain of conservatism that is indeed radical or extremist in its claims to represent not just good economics or good governance, but eternal verities that popular majorities can help implement but can never overturn. They deserve all the scrutiny they have attracted, and more.
Ed Kilgore is a special correspondent for The New Republic.
9 comments
We haven't gone to arms yet (unless the blowing up of the Federal building in Oklahoma was our Fort Sumter). But I can't help wondering if somehow or other we are seeing the beginning of the second American Civil War. Is it the war of the blue states vs. the red states? The first Civil War divided families in terrible way, but that will be nothing compared to a path we may be heading down.
- skahn
August 31, 2011 at 12:48am
Skahn: I think we are seeing a "religious Awakening" American Exceptionalism, Political Power and the Holy Spirit The 2012 Republican Presidential Primary Candidates One of the trends I find "exceptional" about the USA today is the number of religious sects and cults participating directly in the electoral process. The leading contender for the Republican nomination for President, Gov. Mitt Romney, is a Mormon, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a religion considered heretical by most mainstream Christians like nearly all mainstream Protestant Churches and the Catholic Church. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas began his Presidential campaign by organizing a “Christian only” evangelical, and "Dominionist" prayer meeting, “The Response: a call to prayer for a nation in crisis.” “Dominionism” is the belief that holds the Holy Bible as dominant over laws made by man. The relationship between Gov. Perry and the “New Apostolic Reformation” movement, see: http://www.texasobserver.org/cover-story/rick-perrys-army-of-god. “The Response” was a gathering of the different tribes of American fundamentalism – Christian Zionists, prayer warriors, apostolic and prophetic types, etc. – under the umbrella of political and spiritual revival, see: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908//vp/44098787#44098787 Like Governor Perry, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann espouses a "Dominionist" religious perspective and spent her student years in law school studying the "Dominionist" approach to society, law and government, see http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/90014/michelle-bachmanns-worldview. Gov. Sarah Palin is a member of a "The Wasilla Assembly of God." The “Wasilla Assembly” is a member of the "Assemblies of God," a Pentecostal Christian denomination founded in 1914 in the United States. The ‘Four Core Beliefs’ of the Assemblies of God are Salvation, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Divine Healing and the Second Coming of Christ. A dramatic insight into Pentacosaltlism is found in the 1997 film, The Apostle, written, directed and starring Robert Duvall, as a charismatic “Pentecostal” preacher. Pentecostals are known to “speak in tongues:” see a clip from Duvall’s movie, The Apostle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FwMu9WW_bg. The Apostle’s main character” Sonny” is what social scientists once politely referred to as “Other Protestants.” Sonny was actually a preacher in the traditional holiness movement, distinct from the Pentecostal movement, which believes that the baptism in the Holy Spirit involves speaking in tongues. Many of the early Pentecostals were from the holiness movement, and to this day many "classical Pentecostals" maintain much of holiness doctrine and many of its devotional practices, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holiness_movement. Modern “Demoninatism” is largely unknown to most Americans. The list of largely unknown individuals, schismatic sects, cults, groups, exotic beliefs and churches, which the contenders for the Republican nomination belong to or are in agreement with, are "exceptional." The religious fringe, it seems, has become the Protestant mainstream. Today’s Republicans could be re-branded the “Christian Republican Party.” The center core of Protestant faith has migrated from “Liberal Protestantism” to an entrepreneurial-style, evangelist and fundamentalist faith, which votes heavily on the Republican Row. It was once believed that such sects originated mainly among the religiously neglected poor. Clearly, this is now no longer the case. It has been argued by social scientists that insecurity, differential status and anxiety characterize these religious movements. The effects of the Great Recession and the affects of geographic relocation and workplace displacement have contributed to a sense of anxiety and anomie among the American middle-class. Ernst Troeltsch, the major historian of sectarian religion, has characterized the psychological appeal of fundamentalist religious sects in a way that might as appropriately be applied to extremist politics. A direct connection between the social roots of political and religious extremism has been observed in a number of countries. It was observed by the American sociologist S. M. Lipset, as early as the 1960s that “the point here is that rigid fundamentalism and dogmatism are linked to the same underlying characteristics, attitudes, and predispositions which find another outlet in allegiance to extremist political movements.” Many western democracies have “Christian Democratic Parties,” the US, because it is “exceptional,” has a “Christian Republican Party.” The candidates for the Republican nomination have made their religious views of scripture known, by degrees. To discover what these candidates deeply and sincerely believe requires the investigative work of a "large metropolitan newspaper." The ascendancy of the “nouveau fundamentalist Protestant elite” to high leadership positions in the Republican Party needs to be understood as a serious step toward a profound redefinition of church and state in America. The ascendancy of hard-core chronic “know-nothing-ism” and “anti-intellectualism,” so eloquently written about by Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter, and sectarian belief systems, is undoubtedly "exceptional" for a modern mass political party with governmental responsibilities. While it is argued that Europe is experiencing a “crisis of faith,” the United States is experiencing a revivalism parallel with the Second Great Awakening of the 1800s. The decline of mainstream Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Episcopalians as forces affecting the direction of the Republican Party, has been statistically significant, and the rise of “Other Protestants,” and sects, has marked a realignment of voting patterns and political commitment. Is it possible to image Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy organizing a 30,000 person “Catholics only” prayer service as a campaign launch? One of the famous quotes from Kennedy’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, during the 1960 national election, was, “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me.”
- LawrenceGulotta
August 31, 2011 at 7:57am
"They deserve all the scrutiny they have attracted, and more." The "more" that Kilgore means to say is that one party's candidates' views are so fringe that their ascendancy would actually subvert democratic republicanism in the sense that the views of 10-20% would govern the whole country.
- chaitless
August 31, 2011 at 8:28am
Brilliant posting, Ed. It's time that moderate commentators call a spade a spade. I'll note that neither Bachmann nor Perry find it at all difficult to lay blame at "Liberal" feet, with much less accuracy or concern for the truth. It's about time that moderate commentators lay the Tea-Party distortions at THEIR feet. The truth is too important for it to be put under a barrel simply because it's inconvenient or "extreme".
- AllanL5
August 31, 2011 at 12:46pm
Has Kilgore forgotten, or is he ignoring, that an appeal to "Nature and ... Nature's God," using that exact phrase, is in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence? I don't disagree with Kilgore's observations here, but sneering at the language of the Declaration - and thereby ceding its rhetorical authority to the Right - is stupid, and a political loser.
- rriley
August 31, 2011 at 12:55pm
Rriley: The whole point I was trying to make in this piece is that "constitutional conservatives" and overlapping elements of the Christian Right are using this language to justify and place off-bounds to democratic debate an extremely specific policy agenda. Far from "sneering at the language of the Declaration," I am protesting its abuse by people who want to claim that their position on the debt limit and abortion and Social Security and a host of other issues is a matter of "self-evident truth" and/or divine edict. My own suggested title for this piece was "God and the Founders Said So!" It is the effort to lift conservative policy prescriptions into the realm of eternal truths that I find so radical and extreme.
- Ed Kilgore
August 31, 2011 at 2:08pm
Ed, As observed, read the Declaration of Independence. Secularism didn't exist with our founding fathers. Need another strategy
- mr_rationale
August 31, 2011 at 9:40pm
No, Ed is right in principle. Whatever their use of language the Founding Fathers were rational people. They sought to create a democratic union. Not so, today's far right; unless, they are rational - they are rationally and ruthlessly and deliberately pursuing power, using whatever means they have at their disposal including the fear of God. Either way, skahn is probably right. I have feared the rise of Nazis in America all my life. People who are as radical and hidebound as these new Right wingers, who snow millions of True Believers into acting against their own interests and into demonizing other Americans, could easily bring about such a catastrophe.
- Sophia
August 31, 2011 at 9:57pm
While it is argued that Europe is experiencing a “crisis of faith,” the United States is experiencing a revivalism parallel with the Second Great Awakening of the 1800s. The decline of mainstream Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Episcopalians as forces affecting the direction of the Republican Party, has been statistically significant, and the rise of “Other Protestants,” and sects, has marked a realignment of voting patterns and political commitment. Is it possible to image Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy organizing a 30,000 person “Catholics only” prayer service as a campaign launch? One of the famous quotes from Kennedy’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, during the 1960 national election, was, “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters — and the Church does not speak for me.”
- LawrenceGulotta
September 1, 2011 at 10:31am