Lobbyists and preachers in the GOP

Cynthia Tucker writes on how Right-wing Christians now plague GOP Atlanta Journal-Constitution 12/16/07, confirming among other things that "Christianist" is now an official part of the vocabulary by using it without further definition in her column.

Unfortunately, Tucker's receptivity to new words isn't matched by a willingness to discard conventional wisdom truisms in this case. She writes about what is sometimes called the Wall Street/Main Street division within the Republican Party in terms of corporate Republicans vs. the Christianists in the context of Mike Huckabee's soaring popularity in the GOP at the expense of Mitt Romney and Benito Guiliani:

It's quite a quandary for those among the Republican establishment who see Romney as not only the most electable among the GOP nominees - he has more intellectual heft than Huckabee and none of Rudy Giuliani's considerable baggage - but also as a genuinely well-qualified candidate.

And they're beginning to fret over those right-wing Christians who have painted Mormons as the children of Satan, a faction that wasn't placated by Romney's recent speech in which he declared his belief that "Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the savior of mankind."

This curious fracture among the GOP faithful conjures up another bit of biblical wisdom: "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." (Hosea 8:7) For more than two decades, the Republican Party has employed a deliberate strategy of injecting "moral values" and religious beliefs into political and civic life — a strategy that found its apex in the election of George W. Bush, who, during a presidential debate, named "Jesus Christ" as his favorite philosopher.

It's been common since the first Reagan Presidential term to wonder when the Christianists and the plutocrats would split the Republican Party. They've split it, all right, into a division of labor between them.

Joe Conason devotes a chapter of his book It Can Happen Here (2007) to the alliance between the Christian Right and the corporate Republicans. He describes "the informal but clear division of functions" between the two groups as follows:

The corporate sector (and especially corporate lobbyists) provide the hundreds of million of dollars needed to fuel and lubricate the party, while the religious right (and a few other related constituencies, such as gun owners) motivates and mobilizes the millions of volunteers and voters needed to win elections. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the rest of Washington's vast network of trade associations and lobbying outfits funnel their money to Republican candidates, taking direction from the party leaders and mostly shunning Democrats. The Family Research Council, Traditional Values Coalition, American Family Assocation, Focus on the Family, the enormous religious broadcasting apparatus, and state and local ministries and megachurches send their devout followers into Republican campaigns while demonizing the Democrats.

Although this coalition, he writes, "may appear contradictory and fragile", in fight his has proved to be remarkably durable. Many of the leaders of the Christian Right are themselves wealthy individuals. And both the Christianists and the corporate lobbyists in the coalition have maintained "a high tolerance for hypocrisy" in supporting each other.

He describes how the message of Jesus is transfigured in today's Republican Party into the Gospel of Dick Cheney:

Whatever their differences, however, the religious right and the corporate right have much more in common. They hate the public sector, regulation, and government spending, except when they can get a grip on the federal teat through faith-based programs, privatization, and other contracts. They hate social insurance, welfare, and health programs, including Social Security, which the Birchers among them have wanted to abolish for sixty years. Rod Parsley, the Columbus, Ohio, megachurch pastor who is a rising star among right-wing evangelicals, parrots the free-market fundamentalism that serves as economic gospel. "I'm convinced the best thing government can do to help the poor is to get out of the way," Parsley told the American Prospect magazine. [With God On His Side 10/23/05] "If government reduced taxes, removed industrial restraints, eliminated wage controls, and abolished subsidies, tariff[s], and other constraints on free enterprise, the poor would be helped in a way that welfare, Social Security, and unemployment insurance could never match." (my emphasis)

All that "blessed are the poor" nonsense is like, you know, soooo first century!

And even though the business lobbyists may not give first priority to the Christian Right's favorite issues like forcing abortion into the back alleys again, the Christianists have shown repeatedly that they are generally not willing to insist their version of the politics of the Lord take priority over getting Republicans elected.

Besides, as Conason observes, "The Chamber of Commerce types and the Baptist preachers both hate unions with a special passion." And he concludes:

Whatever contradictions and tensions exist between the religious right and the corporate lobby - over such intractable problems as immigration, for example - they continue to be outweighed by their shared objectives and mutual control of the Republican Party. Each side may believe that it is using the other, and both may have reason to think so. The theocratic, dominionist ideology of the religious right and the corrupting money of the corporate lobbyists continue to threaten democratic self-government. Their combined power continues to make that threat formidable, particularly when arrayed behind a messianic president who believes that he is inspired by God and empowered to rule without constitutional constraints. As traditional conservatives have begun to realize, this brand of politics is neither traditional nor conservative — and is increasingly hard to recognize as American. (my emphasis)

Cynthia Tucker is looking at a real difference within the Republican Party. But she seems to be overestimating its ability to break the alliance of Wall Street and the pulpit that today's Republican Party represents.

And she has to get in a plug for that bold Maverick McCain:

To win Republican primaries, GOP candidates are expected to kowtow to those Christianists, and they have, all the while dismissing as immoral "secular humanists" those Americans who want to protect the wall separating church and state. In recent years, there have been few establishment conservatives willing to stand up to the zealots — and those who did have paid a price. (John McCain, who rightly labeled Falwell and Robertson "agents of intolerance" in his 2000 presidential campaign, comes to mind.) (my emphasis)

Tucker must have momentarily blanked on the great Maverick's furious pandering to the Christian Right in his current campaign. Hard Pundit Law, as the Daily Howler calls it, requires respectable commentators to genuflect before the altar of the straight-talking, independent Maverick McCain. No matter how much ideological pandering or Party-line voting and talking he does.

Tags: christian right, christianism, cynthia tucker, it can happen here, joe conason, mccain