Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . INTERVIEW . TITLE . Ocotber 27, 2006

Read more of Kim Lawton's interview with Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University:

Q: What are some of the challenges facing the Republican Party and its religious base this fall?

Photo of Rozell

A: The big challenge is mobilizing the faith-based voters to the degree that the party was able to do so so successfully in 2004. But there are a lot of problems with mobilizing the conservative evangelical base in this election season, in large part because many evangelicals are very dissatisfied with the agenda of the Bush presidency. They're angry at the latest scandal on Capitol Hill involving Mark Foley's e-mails. They feel that many of their issues and concerns have been taken for granted, as has happened many times before with Republican administrations that they supported. A lot of the core base of the Republican Party right now, centered in the conservative evangelical voters, is not happy -- not happy with the way things are going with the Republican Party, not happy with the current policy agenda. And they didn't sign on necessarily for the war in Iraq, tax cuts, [the] focus on a number of economic policy issues. Their emphasis is the social agenda, and time and time again, I think evangelical voters have felt that Republican administrations have made promises on the social issues but then always told the evangelical voters to stand back, wait, take your turn, your time hasn't come yet, we've got other things we have to do first. I think it hits a boiling point, at a certain point, with many in the religious conservative movement that they feel they've been faithful to the Republican Party. They've gone out there and worked real hard for Republican Party candidates, and time and time again they feel that their agenda has been largely put on the backburner at the federal level.

Q: How key are these conservative religious voters to the Republicans' winning coalition?

A: Scholars have estimated that the so-called Christian right movement is about 15 percent or so of the voting population in American federal elections, and that of course rises or falls in different election cycles based on the degree to which conservative evangelicals in particular are enthusiastic to turn out for the Republican Party. We saw that surprisingly in year 2000; conservative evangelical voting went significantly down. The so-called values voters seemingly disappeared, and we had of course that extraordinarily close election that would not have been so close had the conservative evangelicals turned up enthusiastically for George W. Bush. But in 2004, everyone said it was the values voters who drove the election outcome and gave a much more secure victory that time to George W. Bush. So it is quite clear that the religious conservative voters are a very key component of the Republican Party base. The Republicans need a solid, enthusiastic turnout among those voters in order to be successful, and the Republican Party, I think, with good cause is very, very worried right now about the midterm congressional elections, because there are some polling data suggesting that conservative evangelicals are disgruntled with the Republican Party, not happy with the policy agenda. Some are contemplating not participating in this election this year, and there's even been a tiny move toward the Democratic Party among evangelical voters as well, according to some of the polling data.

Q: What were some of the faith-based factors that came together to give George Bush the religious base that helped him in 2004?

A: What was very interesting is that by year 2004 the leading Christian right organization, the Christian Coalition, had become pretty much irrelevant to the process, and a lot of people were very concerned about whether the so-called values voters would be effectively mobilized without a large, national-based organization such as the Christian Coalition to be out there actively mobilizing those voters. But what happened instead is that there were a lot of individuals, smaller groups that popped up around the country that replaced much of the role that the Christian Coalition used to play. What that tells me is that there is a core constituency of religious conservative voters out there who are prepared to be mobilized in support of the Republican Party under the right conditions, and they don't necessarily need a Christian Coalition-type organization to get them out to the polls. They just need a set of issues and candidates they really care about, and then a lot of the grassroots activity in the movement can do what is necessary to get those people out to the polls. Even with the decline of the Christian Coalition, a once very powerful organization for mobilizing religious conservatives, the core constituency of the religious right is still actively mobilized into politics in election cycles where there are issues that they care about and candidates they feel strongly about. That was the case in 2004 with George W. Bush, of course, and with all the gay marriage initiatives that were on the ballots in 11 states in that particular election cycle. This year, of course, there's a lot of talk about whether those same so-called values voters are going to be as actively mobilized as they were in 2004, and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that they will not be.

Q: Where are these pockets of organization and mobilization taking place? How key are the family groups in all of this?

A: There are a lot of entrepreneurs out there who have done a very good job of setting up organizations that go to various churches and instruct pastors, ministers on what they can or can't do politically; for example, what they're allowed to say, how they might try to help particular candidates or promote certain issues without violating their tax-exempt status and so forth. We saw in 2004 a number of smaller organizations, locally based, state-based, that went out there and essentially focused their political activity in the so-called key states, battleground states of that election. A lot of these smaller groups were really replacing the role of that group such as the Christian Coalition used to play. And then you have organizations such James Dobson's which have stepped in and I think partially filled that void left by the Christian Coalition, which is no longer the powerful organization that it used to be. And Dobson himself has become much more overtly political, actually endorsing for the first time in year 2004 and now holding political meetings and rallies and so forth to try to mobilize the core constituency of the religious right into political action. Up until 2004, most Americans outside the religious right couldn't even tell you who James Dobson is, and now there's a lot of talk that he might be the next major figure in the movement to mobilize activists at the grassroots, not so much, say, Jerry Falwell or, more significantly, Pat Robertson.

Q: What are some of the issues about which these religious conservatives are feeling disillusioned?

A: Well, I think where the religious conservatives are feeling disillusioned right now primarily is with the Bush presidency -- that the administration has not pushed very hard the social issues agenda, and a lot of religious conservatives feel that the administration has not put their issues to the forefront. Go back to year 2004 when Bush wins the election. Everyone says he has a mandate. The Republican Party does well in the congressional elections. The conventional wisdom was the values voters drove the election and George Bush and the Republicans owed their significant victory to those so-called values voters. A lot of the analyses at that time said given the fact that George Bush is now unconstrained by the need to run for re-election ever again, his true self can come out. The true Republican agenda can come out. They don't have to wait anymore, and we'll see a much bigger push on the social issues agenda. It just hasn't happened. The first thing the administration pushed coming out of the starting gate in the second term was Social Security reform, and that was just not an issue that resonated very strongly with religious conservatives who got involved in politics because of abortion, what's going on in the public schools, and gay rights. Right now it seems that the gay marriage issue, more than anything else, is driving grassroots activism in the religious right as much if not more than abortion is, interestingly. Perhaps one of the things that the religious conservatives and Republicans can point to that might be beneficial in this election year is the fact that there are gay marriage referenda in eight different states around the country, and a couple of them critical states with very close Senate elections, such as Tennessee and Virginia. Maybe they can try to replicate a little bit of what they were able to do in 2004, where the post-election data showed that religious conservative participation was significantly up in those states in which there were gay marriage referenda on the ballot and that those states and those voters went more heavily for George Bush than did the non-referenda states. If that's repeated in this election cycle, it could make some difference to the benefit of the Republicans in some states.

Q: How much traction does that issue have still? How long can that be the mobilizing issue?

A: The issue of gay marriage can be a mobilizing issue for the religious conservatives for a number of years to come. It really can. If you talk to a lot of leaders in the movement, they will tell you quite candidly that for their fundraising purposes, for their fundraising letters and so forth, that's the #1 issue right up there. That's the big threat that activists at the grassroots feel right now, and that's the one that gets the biggest response from people. The abortion issue, of course, has been out there for a long time, and that still plays really, really huge with the religious conservatives. But right now with these initiatives on the ballot, as there were in 2004 and again in 2006, a lot of the focus, a lot of the talk within the religious conservative community is about the issue of gay marriage.

Q: And is it developing some new coalitions with African American Protestants as well?

A: That's right. A lot of the survey data show that African Americans feel much more strongly on some social issues than do white Americans, that they're more socially conservative, more religious, pray more often, go to church more often, and therefore there is some talk within the conservative white evangelical community that there is a potential to form an alliance with African Americans in this country on social issues. But that talk's been out there for a long time, and it really hasn't materialized into something that we could call the emergence of any kind of political coalition. We have seen that black voters in this country still very, very heavily gear towards the Democratic Party, tend to vote primarily on civil rights, economic issues and not as much the social issues agenda. But there is some evidence of a little bit of a crack there in the African American community over social issues, gay marriage in particular, and a little bit of an opportunity potentially for the religious conservative movement to make some inroads.

Q: How big an issue is the war in Iraq? How much dissatisfaction is there even among the most loyal Republicans?

A: Well, there's a lot of dissatisfaction right now even among loyal Republicans over the war in Iraq, because the war, of course, is going so, so badly, and everybody acknowledges that. The polling data show quite clearly that most Americans feel that the war was a mistake. It's not going well. Something has to be done about the terrible situation over there. This is felt among groups of Americans in all categories, not just the natural opponents to George W. Bush, but among many Republicans and core supporters of the Bush administration, including religious conservatives who, I think, for the most part got on board, wanted to support their president, wanted to be a part of the big conservative coalition that's running the government, Congress, and the White House right now, not because they were in particular enthused about the U.S. policy in the Middle East necessarily, but because they wanted to be loyal supporters of the Bush administration, with the expectation that the Bush administration would also be supportive of the kinds of social issues that the religious conservatives care most deeply about and actually got mobilized into politics for -- not foreign policy, but social issues.

Q: The Democrats are talking about religion. For a long time, polls have shown that Americans think the Republicans are the party that's friendly toward religion, and the Democratic Party is not friendly toward religion. But there has been this new Democratic push. Should Republicans be worried about this?

A: I think Republicans should be a little bit worried about the fact that Democrats are making a bigger push than they have in the past on faith-based themes. We saw, for example, in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign in 2005, the Democratic candidate ran a very faith-based-oriented campaign on a lot of issues, and he was able to win the governorship in a pretty conservative, red, Republican-leaning state in the South. A lot of people said that it was his ability to reach out to different constituencies and speak the language that is so common to the so-called values voters that he established a certain degree of credibility, and a lot of those voters were willing to take a look at a Democratic Party candidate. My personal feeling is, having studied the religious conservative movement for a number of years, and not everybody agrees with me on this, that the religious right really did make a tactical error years ago when the movement decided to go so decidedly in the direction of supporting one political party rather than playing a two-party strategy. I think there actually are issues where religious conservatives can feel comfortable with the Democratic Party, but the problem is the Democratic Party for years wasn't talking to them. It wasn't reaching out. It was as though Democrats were just too afraid or too ashamed to wear their religiosity out in the open and talk about such issues in the public square. That embarrassment obviously is long gone at this point, and Democrats are speaking much more openly about faith-based issues. I would even argue some people say they've gone a little bit too far in that other direction too suddenly. But leaving that aside, I think it's very important that the Democrats not concede the territory of the faith-based issues and debates in this country to the Republicans, which I think was the case for many, many years. It was the religious conservatives within the Republican Party that [were] doing all the talking about the so-called family values issues and the social issues agenda, and they had a monopoly almost on the public debate in those areas, because the Democrats were not engaging in the debate so openly at that time. But I think in the past couple of years that's really changed.

What's going on right now is the Republicans seem to be taking much of the religious right for granted. One Republican administration after another that has in part succeeded because of the active mobilization of religious conservatives has made promises on the social issues but hasn't really delivered very much. Part of the problem is an assumption that these voters have nowhere else to go. Well, if they conveyed the message a little bit more that there are other places where they can go and give their political loyalties if the Republican Party doesn't do more for them, they might gain a little bit more tactical advantage with the Republicans.

Q: Where might they go? What might some of these voters do?

A: Well, they might start looking at Democratic candidates who appeal to them in some areas of the country on issues that they care about. And we've seen that the Democrats have been willing to try to get out there and find candidates who can actually speak the language of the so-called values voters and connect with those voters and try to break a little bit into that conservative coalition the Republicans have put together that relies so heavily on the social issues voters.

We saw in Virginia in 2005 in the gubernatorial election the strategy worked very, very effectively. But one reason why it worked is that you had a candidate in that particular case who himself is a deeply religious man who felt perfectly comfortable and came across very credible with the so-called values voters. Just picking candidates who on paper might look attractive, I don't think, is good enough. You have to find candidates who can really speak the language and come across as credible or, as some people say, come across as one of us, somebody who's not just making a pitch for the narrow purpose of trying to get political support but actually does believe certain things that are important to values voters.

Q: You said it's a small crack, not huge numbers. Do the Democrats really need big numbers? From the Republican point of view, maybe huge numbers aren't going to vote Democratic, but every little bit hurts, doesn't it?

A: Absolutely, every little bit hurts. And the Republicans are losing a little bit of their enthusiasm from their core constituencies if some of the religious conservative voters are going to sit on their hands on election day, some are going to start looking at Democratic voters, even if it's just a few percentage points' shift in voter participation or a shift in political loyalty, it could make a really significant difference in electoral outcomes throughout the country, because a lot of elections, of course, in America are fought at the margins, and a couple percentage point shift in allegiance among a significant interest group in American politics can result in a number of congressional seats being shifted from one party to the other.

Q: In the last election Catholics really seemed to shift, and the majority of Catholics for the first time voted Republican. Are they a key swing bloc of voters? Are they firmly in the Republican camp? What are the challenges Republicans have with Catholics?

A: President Bush did a really good job, I think, in reaching out to the so-called traditional Catholic voters in America, and he did so by articulating a number of themes and issues that those voters care about very, very deeply, and he was able to help affect a stronger allegiance or alliance between conservative evangelicals and Catholics in this country that worked very well in the context of the 2004 elections, certainly. Whether they can maintain that up through 2006 I'm not so sure, but, you know, in terms of whether the Catholic vote is a swing vote in American politics, well, the Catholic vote is about one quarter of the voting population in America, and it's a very diverse voting population. The Republicans have centered their outreach on the so-called traditional or regular church-going Catholics and tried to mobilize them more actively into the Republican Party, and they've succeeded a great deal to the point where by 2004 they actually got a majority of the Catholic vote for the first time in many, many years. I'm not sure how successful they're going to be in 2006. I think perhaps some of the same concerns for the Republicans pertain with regard to Republican-leaning Catholic voters as with Republican-leaning evangelical voters, and that is, is there going to be as much enthusiasm for the party in 2006 as there was in 2004, given the latest scandal on Capitol Hill, which has a lot of religious conservative voters extremely angry with the Republican Party, given the fact that the Bush administration has not pushed very hard a social issues agenda � I think the Republicans have a problem on their hands in this election.

Q: Given all of this, what's ahead for the Republicans?

A: The Republicans have a problem, and that is how to mobilize the enthusiasm, the support of religious conservative voters, conservative evangelicals, and Catholics in support of the party's candidates during a period of time when a lot of religious conservative voters are very upset with the Republican Party over the fact that the administration has focused primarily on foreign policy, Social Security reform, tax cuts, a variety of domestic policy issues that are not centered in the social issues agenda, given the latest scandal on Capitol Hill that has religious conservatives very upset with the Republican Party, given what we've learned about how that scandal was or really was not handled properly. This is a problem for the Republicans. How do they mobilize the core constituency of their party in a midterm election season, when typically voter participation is down to begin with, now that there's a lot of evidence suggesting that the Republicans could lose a substantial number of seats in both houses of Congress, possibly lose control of the legislative branch?

Q: You referred to values voters. Is this a good term for them?

A: I don't think the phrase "values voters" is actually a bad term. I know some people criticized its use after the 2004 elections. But that criticism primarily focused on the fact that there was a poorly worded question in the exit polls that led a lot of analysts to overstate the importance of the so-called values voters in that election. But the phrase itself is not objectionable. It's essentially referring to a group of Americans who feel very, very deeply about a certain set of core social issues and whose voting decisions are largely driven by where the candidate stand on those issues, and that's not an insignificant portion of the electorate in this country. There are a lot of people of deep religious faith who believe that it's important to mobilize into politics on the basis of their faith, and that's what drives them into political activity. So values voter seems like a pretty good descriptive phrase to me.

Q: How important is what happens this fall to setting the stage for 2008?

A: The outcome of the 2006 elections will certainly set the stage for the 2008 presidential campaign. It will have a big influence on who decides to run, who doesn't run, the standing of the political parties. Of course, who's in power, who gets responsibility for governing the country over the next two years is going to have a big impact on the standing of the political parties going into the 2008 elections. The Democrats right now are hoping there is a Democratic surge coming in this election season that's going to sweep them into power on Capitol Hill. That has one potential downside, and that is they take a big chunk of responsibility for governing the country and anything that potentially goes wrong over the next two years, leading into the 2008 elections. Sometimes it's almost a little bit better to be the party on the outside criticizing the incumbents, because the incumbents, of course, the incumbent party that controls Congress and the White House gets all of the blame, fairly or not, for things that are going wrong in the country.

Q: What are you going to be watching with regard to religion? How significant do you think religion is going to continue to be from here to 2008, and what are you going to be looking for?

A: Well, I think the Democratic Party is going to be working very hard to reach out to those so-called values voters who went so heavily for the Republican Party in 2004. Now we remember, after the 2000 election, a lot of the analysts said that the conservative evangelical base of the Republican Party had disappointed the Republicans, that there was a significant drop-off in voter participation in the year 2000, and Bush pulled out a close victory anyway in the Electoral College. But his chief strategist, Karl Rove, said finding those approximately four million evangelical voters who dropped off in voting participation between 1996 and 2000 were the key to Bush's victory in 2004. Well, the Republicans did a pretty good job of identifying and mobilizing the core religious conservative base of the party in 2004. Those voters showed up and showed up in big numbers and went overwhelmingly for George W. Bush. The Democrats, I think, understood that their presidential candidate, John Kerry, did not do a good job of engaging the so-called values voters in a discussion on a variety of issues that those voters care about, and that was a big downside to his candidacy, ultimately. A lot of Democratic candidates around the country now are making a much stronger push to talk about religion, talk about values, talk about the importance of their faith to their role in public life. I think that's a very good strategy on the part of Democrats. We're going to see a lot more of that between now and the 2006 election, between now and 2008 as well.

Q: Assuming that this is a good strategy for Democrats, how much are we going to be hearing about religion between 2006 and 2008?

A: I think the one potential downside is that Americans might get a little bit tired of all the faith talk in politics and see that there's a certain degree of phoniness to it, that the candidates are just overdoing it at a certain point. I think that's a danger the Democrats have to be very aware of. I think they're doing the right thing in reaching out to the so-called values voters and talking about the importance of faith in politics and not conceding that territory, that area of public debate, to the Republicans and to the religious right in particular. But there is a particularly strong core of Democratic Party voters out there who are very concerned about a too close intermingling of religion and state in this country and who might start getting turned off from their own party if they perceive that the Democrats are merely replicating what the Republicans have been doing, and exactly what the Democratic voters have been objecting to the Republican Party doing for a good many years.

Q: Are there particular people you are going to be watching as contenders in 2008 who will resonate or be popular within the faith-based world?

A: There are some candidates on the Republican side who are being talked about very openly as major contenders for the presidency -- John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, for example, who do not have a very good rapport with the religious conservative community in this country. John McCain has been trying to reach out to those voters, particularly with his visit to Jerry Falwell's community and with a number of outreach efforts that he has made in other ways and how he's addressed some policy issues and how he has cozied up to George W. Bush, which has surprised a lot of people. But religious conservatives, I don't think, see John McCain as one of them or someone they feel comfortable with. I think it's a real long shot for him to reach out to those voters and be seen as someone they can really trust on the issues they care about. Giuliani, I think, probably is the longest shot of all for religious conservative voters. And then there's a host of Republican candidates who could all compete legitimately for the religious conservative vote. But no one, I think, right now stands out as clear frontrunner for the support of the religious right.

On the Democratic side -- well, we found out that former governor Mark Warner of Virginia is not going to run, and he has, at least on paper, the kind of profile that may have suited the Democratic Party very, very well in a presidential campaign, in that the Democrats have to do better in the South; making a state like Virginia competitive would have been a big boost in the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton, of course, is spending a lot of time talking about the importance of faith and religion in her life. Those were not themes in much of her public life previously, but they really are now in a big way. I think that shows that she understands the importance of the faith factor in politics these days and that if she's going to compete with the Republicans and go after some of the so-called values voters, she has to get the rhetoric right. She has to address some of the issues that these voters care about, and she's doing a lot of that right now as a set-up to her presidential campaign in 2008.

Q: Is religion still important? Will it still be important as a political force in 2008?

A: I think religion will be a very important political force in 2008, as it was in 2004, and 2000 before that, and a number of election cycles now. We've entered into a period where the religious factor in American politics is here to stay. Members of both parties, I think, by now have finally figured it out -- that there's a significant core of voters out there who care very, very deeply about the role of faith in politics, who want to hear their public leaders talk about faith, talk about religion in the public square, and we are, therefore, as a result of that, going to hear a lot more from candidates of both political parties. I think that's the significant development in the past few years. Up until the 2004 election, we were hearing most of that talk from one political party. Now we're hearing a lot of it from both political parties. Maybe there will be a little bit of an over-saturation in the public discourse with religious, faith-based rhetoric, and there might be a little pulling back from that at some point. But it's not going to take the faith factor out of politics. It might mean that those who are seen as maybe overdoing it a little bit in talking about faith in politics a little too much might just backtrack a little bit.