The 2008 campaign has proved to be remarkable in so many ways: the incipient election of an African American president (with us keeping our fingers crossed and our GOTV feet on the ground), the choice of a blatantly wingnut and unqualified VP candidate, the near total breakdown of the GOP campaign, the defection of prominent Republicans from their party's nominee, the ability of Obama to inspire masses of people, just to name a few.
Yet electoral results are notoriously transient. The Dick Nixon who you won't have to kick around any more becomes The One who recaptures the White House for the Republicans and becomes again the disgraced and hated man fleeing the White House in a helicopter.
But for one group, 2008 may be a watershed, and not in a good way (at least for them). I'm speaking of the Religious Right. In a nutshell, not only is their candidate losing the presidential election, they are becoming marginalized.
In 1969, Richard Nixon was able to characterize his supporters as the silent majority. It was a powerful phrase, suggesting that underneath the revolutionary and hedonistic buzzings of the hippies, the yippies and their fellow travelers lay a vast real America (sound familiar?) with traditional values and little patience for the agenda of the left. Nixon's speech did not expressly reach out to fundamentalists or their churches, but they were certainly among the target audience.
And when Nixon took every state but Massachusetts in 1972, it seemed that maybe he was onto something. But for his overreaching and paranoia (again sound familiar?) the 1970's and 80's might have been two solid decades of Republican rule in the Executive Branch.
Though the Religious Right were not an explicit force during Nixon's reign, that changed beginning in the 70's, when The Moral Majority, and later the Christian Coalition and other groups became not only vehicles for fundraising, developing positions and lobbying, but also active allies with the Republican Party.
In the 2000 campaign George W. Bush, though identified in part by his strong expressions of religion, was not yet explicitly identified with the Religious Right, nor did he do any better among that group than Bob Dole four years previously.
It wasn't until the 2004 election where evangelicals and the remainder of the Religious Right came into their own, being widely credited for Bush's victory in Ohio and across the country generally.
And this year the influence of the Religious Right on the GOP is recognized even by the lowest information voter. From the pandering of John McCain, to the minority of GOP primary candidates who believe in evolution, to the choice of Sarah Palin as dauphin, the dependency of the party on Religious Right voters is undeniable. And with the catastrophic failure of the GOP to either maintain the country in good operating order or convince independents that continued Republican rule would be in their interest, the McCain campaign felt forced to weld themselves ever more closely to the wingnut sector of the party in order to mobilize supporters and change the campaign narrative.
And we have watched with a mix of fascination and horror the result of giving a national-sized megaphone to the likes of Palin: polarization on a scale perhaps not seen since the days of slavery and the Civil War. Palin (with help from some in the McCain campaign) has divided our country into ProAmerica and UnAmerica. The former is alleged to constitute everything good in this country while the latter everything wrong. Her supporters are so terrified and angry that many lose the normal behavioral restraints and commit acts of violence or terrorism, endanger their careers and reputations via overtly racist statements, or threaten candidates and supporters. And the crowds cheer her on as if it were Germany in 1933.
But unlike that time and place, the momentum is against them. The Left and the rest of the Democratic party are motivated, active and effective in a way they have not been since the New Deal. Moderates and Independents are backing away from the GOP with all due speed. In a way, Sarah Palin is doing us all a favor: she and her mobs are offering the country an unobstructed view of the real face of intolerance and racism, and many, including those who maybe are less aware of their own racism, are recoiling in horror.
So to this point the Religious Right has followed an arc from so-called silent majority to active political players to political pariahs. They can no longer claim the mantle of solid, dependable, everyday volk who keep the country going while the degenerate, spendthrift elitists sell the country down the river. They can no longer keep their innermost hate bottled up, and feel compelled to let the world know just how dangerous that smooth-talking black Antichrist is to our wives, our children and our country. They can no longer, through sheer weight of numbers, ensure that their candidate and party remain in power.
What will happen to the Religious Right after the election? Can they slink back to their churches and think tanks, regroup, and come roaring back in 2012 if the country remains in the grip of a deep Depression, or in 2016 if not? Will they once again be able to slowly grow their congregations and take over school boards and corrupt state governments? Will they force the GOP to pick a wingnut candidate for president next time?
I don't think so. The success of the Religious Right has been due in large part to their image as everyday Americans who are just more motivated in their defense of traditional values than the rest of us. Their Janus-faced leaders cut radical deals in dark places and infiltrated mainstream congregations while publicly claiming to be the face of conservatism. Now, however, they are revealed as intolerant, dangerous people who have an unholy (pun intended) grip on the Republican Party.
I am not ready to predict what will happen to the GOP after this election, whether there will be an internal struggle for the soul of their party (while we are having ours) our will split into pieces, or whether there might even be a realignment across the board into three or more parties. But I do believe that any political party, Republican or otherwise, that relies on the Religious Right for power will be branded as such by the remainder of the country, and will be seen as a party unable and unwilling to deal with the immense problems we all face. In 2008 and beyond you will not be able to win a presidential election by claiming that our economic woes have been inflicted upon us by God because we tolerate homosexuality.
Thus the Religious Right will no longer be able to play the role of conservative Uncle Joe who has a pivotal role as family advisor because of his level head and his wise investments. Instead they will be seen as the snarling Doberman that needs to be kept locked in a cage when children are around. The dog will come out an growl a lot, but everyone in the neighborhood will know to keep well away.
That doesn't mean that there won't be local strongholds. There are reasons that some states remain solid red even in the Obama avalanche, and a major national loss will not turn them deep blue. And parents all over the country will still need to monitor their school boards for candidates who want to ban books or teach Creationism under whatever new marketing phrase they deem effective.
But the Religious Right will cease to be a kingmaker (and in 2008 couldn't even quite manage that much). They will be considered by parties and candidates, they will have some influence, but that will be it. Republican strategists (I'm not talking about the second teamers who populate the McCain campaign, but those people who prudently stayed away from the debacle from the beginning) are too smart to leave their party in the same damaging crucible every primary season, where in order to snare the GOP nomination a candidate has to be unacceptable to the electorate as a whole. I don't know how the GOP is going to change that, but it will happen.
And we'll just have to be ready for whatever new brand of snake oil they foist upon us.