Partisanship & Reasoned Dialogue
Thu Oct 11, 2007 at 11:40:16 AM PDT
Update: Check the second link for a response to my criticism from the paper's authors, posted right here on Street Prophets.
Yesterday's post on the "Come, Let Us Reason Together" study has drawn a lot of response. Some has been public, and a good deal more has been behind-the-scenes. Either way, the basic problem people have had with my critique of the paper seems to be that I've mistaken a dialogue-starter for a partisan strategy paper.
I'm apparently not the only one to make that mistake, as you can see in the comments to the last post. I'm also a bit baffled that people would be surprised by my analysis. The study itself mentions voting patterns and common political ground. Seems fair to analyze the partisan implications. In fact, thinking through the partisan implications of religious life is pretty much what we do here, except when we're doing the vice versa. So of course I'm going to pick it apart to see what it might have to say about the next couple of elections.
There are a couple of structural problems to the paper that seem to be causing some difficulty. The authors are comparing apples and oranges in a sense: "evangelical" is a religious identity, and "progressive" is a political one. If they had set up a comparison between evangelical social attitudes and mainline Protestants or Catholics, that would have brought the points of common ground into sharper focus. More interesting would have been evangelicals and seculars, who are often considered more or less at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Or again, a consideration of common ground found by progressive and conservative organizations would have been clearer.
As it stands, we're not really sure who's being brought into dialog, which is the other problem with the paper. Had the authors stated explicitly, "this is what the evangelical community thinks is middle ground," it would have been a better starting point for a conversation. What we have at the moment is "this is what evangelicals and progressives agree on," which is odd, since we don't have a clear picture of who was in those conversations, or why those people are representative of our communities.
I'm sure the response to that critique is going to be, But look at the organizations that have praised the document! And sure, it's nice to hear that the HRC and Americans United don't have a problem with this study.
But I think the authors of the study make a serious mistake in assuming that representatives of those groups equal grassroots support. I don't remember being a part of these conversations. Do you? I don't remember agreeing with these ideas, in general or in specific. Do you? This might be a nice place to start a discussion - inside the Beltway. The rest of us are left scratching our heads, wondering what it's all about.
It is true that I got one thing flat-out wrong about the study. There is some new data about evangelicals:
•One-fifth of Evangelicals (representing 5% of the general population) are
progressive;
• One-third of Evangelicals (representing 8% of the general population) are
moderates who share some progressive values; and
• One-half of Evangelicals (representing 13% of the general population) are
conservatives who may be partners on particular issues.
So yes, evangelicals are not as monolithic as they're assumed to be, and this is new information.
But I think this paragraph in the very next section of the paper tells you all you need to know about that data (my emphasis):
Evangelical diversity of views has not translated proportionately into diversity of voting. Evangelicals vote far more conservatively than this profile would indicate. In 2004, Evangelicals voted 78% for President Bush and 74% for congressional Republicans (NEP Exit Poll 2004). Not surprisingly, traditionalist Evangelicals voted for President Bush in overwhelming numbers (88%). But 64% of centrist Evangelicals, who are open to many progressive ideas, also voted for President Bush in 2004. Even among the most progressive modernist Evangelicals, only 52% voted for Democratic candidates John Kerry and Al Gore over George Bush in both 2004 and 2000 (Green 2004). In 2006, Evangelical support for congressional Republicans flagged but was still strong at 71% (NEP Exit Poll 2006).
Sure, a small swing in evangelical opinion can make quite a change in electoral outcomes. But that swing doesn't seem likely to happen, and if it does, it will be because of...Iraq and health care, the issues that aren't addressed here. Nor does this negate my point that the swings in evangelical opinion are likely to come in Southern states where they'll be all but swallowed up in overwhelming Republican advantage.
Even granting the paper's supposed non-partisan stance doesn't address the questions raised by this section. Why should I, as a political progressive, be interested in dialoguing with people who may have some sympathies with me on particular issues, but are never going to supply the votes on those issues? And why should I be interested in dialoguing on issues that are low on the list of public priorities, and where the majority opinion seems to be moving ever more toward the progressive position?
That may seem excessively partisan to some people. But we live in a hyper-partisan age. I didn't make it so, and I don't necessarily enjoy it, but that's the reality. Without votes to back up good intentions, precious little is going to come out of these discussions.
I'm really not trying to be snide here. There is value in this conversation over the long haul, but in the foreseeable future, evangelicals are going to be the base of the Republican party. And given current voting patterns, I'm just not convinced that there's enough middle ground to be worth contesting. So what's in it for people like me?
Since I just linked to Tom Schaller's work, it seems worth wrapping up my critique of the paper by asking how its authors counter his argument in Whistling Past Dixie. That is to say, why bother with swing votes on hostile territory now when it seems likely that they can be incorporated into the base a few years down the road?
