Dana Milbank takes the failure of any of the conservative evangelical candidates as evidence of the diminishing clout of the once-formidable Religious Right. His expectation seems to be that religious conservatives—especially those of the evangelical stripe—ought to support a flawed candidate (Michele Bachmann? Rick Perry?) over someone who is less theologically correct but perhaps electable. A 2008 analogue on the Democratic side would have been the conclusion that Dennis Kucinich’s failure to win the nomination was evidence of the weakness of the Left in that party.
Not everyone seeks ideological (or theological) purity or plays identity politics. Indeed, an alternative narrative making sense of the actual “data points” in Milbank’s column would be of the growing political maturity of conservative evangelicals. Certainly they had to recognize that the candidates who emerged from their ranks (above all, Bachmann and Perry, but also—remember him?—Tim Pawlenty) failed to catch fire for reasons only partly explicable by their social conservatism. And they also had to recognize that almost every day there’s a reminder of how bad a second Obama term would be for the “culture of life.” Under those circumstances, electability has to be a major consideration.
Yes, there’s still some political immaturity and wishful thinking out there, as when people think that smacking down the liberal media and trouncing in debates a President who’s amazingly inarticulate when the teleprompter is malfunctioning are the keys to winning a general election. These are temptations to which some who identify with the Religious Right are prey, but they’re far from the only ones in the Republican electorate who are susceptible.
I don’t mean to imply that Mitt Romney is the only candidate a grown-up can support. He has flaws of his own, but not the sorts that give birth to a proverbial fatal attraction.
But the facts that Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin didn’t get into the race, and that Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann aren’t among the last candidates standing aren’t indicators of the diminishing influence of evangelical social conservatives, just that playing identity politics isn’t enough to win their support. This is a good thing, no?
