The Next Generation of Conservatives

When fiscally conservative Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater (then the Senator from Arizona and pictured above), was trounced in the 1964 election, it was time for the GOP to reconfigure. Lyndon Johnson won that election with over 61% of the popular vote carrying 44 of the 50 states, the greatest margin of victory for a presidential candidate since 1820. The election hovered around fiscal policies and side-stepped the kinds of social issues have become the cornerstone of contemporary Republican policies. Party leaders needed a majority of people to elect their nominees, but it was clear that taxation and regulatory policies that favored the rich and well-heeled – basically about 5% of the population – over the middle and the bottom could not find the necessary traction to create a majority.

To make matters worse, the Democratic machine – hardly immune from cronyism and corruption – seemed to have a stranglehold on many major American cities… and the South. Light bulbs went off in the minds of GOP party leaders when they asked the “big question”: what dominating social force was big enough and powerful enough to upset that Democratic Party machine? In the South and across the “Bible belt,” the answer was both obvious and compelling: evangelical Christianity and the conservative social values that went with them. In those days, the wealthy were quite willing to embrace whatever social values they needed to if they could keep taxes and regulations down. The underlying religious values were so powerful that middle and lower class members would be willing to vote against their own economic self-interest to push their religious commitments into federal policies and statutes. So the Republican Party made the mass migration into the world of conservative social policies to get enough voters to pursue their fiscal policies.

Today, the Republican Party is as much about social issues as it is about fiscal policies. Opposition to same sex marriage, abortion and environmental regulations, support for school prayer, creationism, support for Israel (supposedly the place from which Biblically-predicted Armageddon must emanate), the right to bear arms with very few limitations and clear and oft-repeated statements – despite the First Amendment’s prohibition against a state religion – that the United States is a “Christian nation” fall from the mouths of voter-hungry Republicans in search of victory in each election year. By these measures, today Barry Goldwater might even be a “Blue Dog” (fiscally conservative) Democrat, but his 1964 election loss changed American politics forever. And as this economy has sunk deeper into the mire, the growing anger of the disenfranchised, the strongest in the groups pushing social conservatism, has been redirected into abject distrust of anything that the government does except on the military side of the equation. The Tea Party movement and the obstructionism at any cost within the House of Representatives has split the GOP and hobbled Congress from dealing with the issues of the day.

The problem for the GOP is that the younger generations, assuming that they do not find “religion” or accept fundamentalist values sometime in the future, do not remotely share the social conservatism of their parents and grandparents. They embrace the fiscal vectors of the party, but simply have grown up in a world where gays are their friends, religion is not a part of their daily lives to the degree it has embraced their elders and they actually believe that global warming is man-made, support stem cell research to save lives, aren’t so clear what we are doing militarily is such a good idea, want better educational opportunities and generally believe in equal rights for men, women, and people of differing racial or ethnic backgrounds.

For GOP operatives trying to muster the younger vote, these trends have presented some tough issues going forward. The August 8^th New York Times presents an example: “Matt Hoagland, the county leader of a group of young North Carolina Republicans, is busy trying to ramp up enthusiasm for Mitt Romney at the grass-roots level. So there are a few things he avoids mentioning to prospective young voters he wants to woo, including the hot-button topics like abortion and same-sex marriage, which have dominated campaigns past… ‘Social issues are far down the priorities list, and I think that’s the trend,’ Mr. Hoagland, 27, said. ‘That’s where it needs to go if the Republican Party is going to be successful.’

“Zoey Kotzambasis, vice president of the College Republicans at the University of Arizona, considers herself a conservative. But she supports both same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Those are not just her opinions… ‘A lot of the College Republicans I know share the same liberal-to-moderate social views,’ she added. ‘And I think that’s changing the face of the party.’

“In a break from generations past and with an eye toward the future, many of the youngest leaders of the Republican Party are embracing views on some social issues that are at odds with traditional conservative ideology — if they mention such issues at all, according to interviews, experts and some polling… ‘When it comes to what you do in your bedroom, or where you go to church, or where you want to put a tattoo, we just couldn’t care less,’ Mr. Hoagland said at a meeting last month of young Republicans in Charlotte.”

But social conservatives point to hippies from the 1960s and 70s who are now Tea Party adherents and the fact that having children and raising a family often draws social liberals into a more conservative mindset. “Give ‘em time,” say the elder social conservatives. Where do you think the future of the GOP lies? And if there is to be a change, how do you think the Republican Party can navigate the process when there are so many strongly-held conflicting views?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the only thing that never changes is that change is inevitable.