Vox Bloguli
Hugh Hewitt
asks bloggers to comment on the following passage from a Jonathan Rauch
piece in the Atlantic. Subscription is required, but here's the key paragraph:
“On balance it is probably healthier if religious conservatives are inside the political system than if they operate as insurgents and provocateurs on the outside. Better they should write anti-abortion planks into the Republican platform than bomb abortion clinics. The same is true of the left. The clashes over civil rights and Vietnam turned into street warfare partly because activists were locked out of their own party establishments and had to fight, literally, to be heard. When Michael Moore receives a hero’s welcome at the Democratic National Convention, we moderates grumble; but if the parties engage fierce activists while marginalizing tame centrists, that is probably better for the social peace than the other way around.”
Hugh requests "comments on this passage, what it says about the author, The Atlantic, and the left's understanding of the Christian culture in America in 2005."
First, most obviously this passage reveals a startling misunderstanding of religious conservatives. Rauch's point seems to be that if religious conservatives are frozen outside the party system that they will turn into abortion clinic bombers. This is absurd, of course.
La Shawn Barber and
Michael Gallaugher are not bomb throwers. Indeed, it is extremely questionable to consider people who would do something like bombing an abortion clinic as "religious" or, ironically, "pro-life".
Second, I'm not sure what he means by "locked out of their party establishment". To a certain extent, it may be true that the radical left is locked out of the Democrats; but that is a historical fact caused mostly by the fact that the radical left was never able to live up to its claims of being able to deliver victory for Democratic candidates. By contrast, the religious conservatives have done a bang-up job of delivering the votes needed for their side to win, and I would hardly say they're locked out of the party establishment.
Third, Rauch obviously suffers from Vietnam protestor nostalgia. It is reasonably true that the Democratic party organs were closed to the antiwar crowd in 1968; but the left spent the next several years infiltrating the machinery and in 1972 they were able to nominate the candidate of their choosing (with disastrous results).
And finally, Rauch plainly misunderstands the size of the radical left versus the size of the religious conservatives. The radical left is tiny (if vocal and influential) compared to Christian conservatives. If the Republican party were to vocally distance themselves from the Christian right, they would not win another election. If the Democrats were to jettison the left wing, they would stand a darned good chance of winning.
Why? Well, I call it the two votes for the price of one rule. Let's say that by calibrating its position on an issue slightly to the right, the Democrats lose one voter on the wings, but pick up a voter in the middle. Sounds like an even trade, right? But it's not; it's better than that (for the Democrats). Why? Because that voter on the left is not going to vote for a Republican. They might vote for a Green, or a Communist or a Socialist, but they are highly unlikely to move to the GOP. By contrast, if the Democrats don't get that voter in the middle, it will probably go to a Republican. Thus, picking up that vote in the middle is like getting two votes for the price of one; the vote you take away from your opponent and the vote you pick up for your candidate.
