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Edited on Tue Apr-05-05 09:28 AM by LuckyTheDog
Now is the time for liberals … yes, liberals, to reach out to Christian fundamentalists.
We should do it because we have (believe it or not) a lot in common with them. And unlike the GOP – which panders to them only to let them down – liberals are in a position to work with fundies in an honest, above-board manner that could benefit both groups.
The sad case of Terri Schiavo case brings home the way the GOP panders to the fundies, but fails to deliver. Republican leaders, including the Bush Brothers, stood before the cameras. They made statements. They expressed concern. But they did not – in the face of public opinion polls showing widespread disgust with their interference – use the power they had. They did not intervene.
I am not saying that I wanted the Bush Brothers to send in the cops. I am glad they didn’t. But one has to wonder: If the Bushes really thought they were on the side of right – and if this really was a matter of principle for them – why didn’t they send in the cops?
Pundits such as William Bennett pointed out that, while such a move would have been legally questionable, it could have been defended. In a recent article he co-wrote for the National Review Online, Bennett points out that Jeb Bush could have used his police powers to enforce Florida’s statute known as Terri’s Law, which made the removal of Schiavo’s feeding tube illegal. The fact that the law had been struck down the courts would have guaranteed a big legal battle. But, as Bennett says, Gov. Bush should have been willing to fight if he felt it was the right thing to do.
There also can be no doubt that Congress and the president could have found some way to step in, had they really wanted to and been willing to face the music. Instead, they chose a milquetoast approach that allowed them to say they were on the side of the fundies, but which accomplished nothing.
In short, Bush Brothers and the rest of the GOP leaders talk the talk, but do not walk the walk. They want fundie votes and money, but corporate interests and electoral advantage come first. They are worse than a fair-weather friend. They are the guy from college who raids the fridge, sleeps on the couch for a month and then won’t drive them to the airport because he has a date.
The Schiavo case is not the only example of how the Republicans have betrayed the interests of Christian fundamentalists. In their zeal to raise taxes, the Republicans have cut programs that might otherwise help to reverse a rising abortion rate, increasing poverty and Bush’s big broken promise to improve public education. And, oh yes, Roe v. Wade is still the law of the land and no progress has been made toward changing that.
There is evidence that fundamentalists are waking up to the idea that they are being used. A Gallup taken while the Schiavo case was in the news showed President Bush losing support among men, self-described conservatives and churchgoers. And Crossroads, an anti-abortion group, openly compared Jeb Bush to Pontius Pilate and accused him of failing to act in order to preserve his political career.
Progressives can seize on this growing disillusionment with the Republicans by pointing that progressives and Christian fundamentalists share a lot of common goals – even if we disagree on how to get to them – and that in many cases, what we want is very consistent with their values.
The bottom line is that we want strong families, and they want strong families. We want fewer abortions and they want fewer abortions. We want good jobs and a growing middle class and they want those things, too. We also can find common ground with them on many issues related to civil rights and the compassion for the plight of children and the poor.
Sure, we liberals have a more broad view of the family than the fundies have. Most of us would oppose reducing the number of abortions by making them illegal. But that should not keep us from working with them where we can and, more importantly, striving to win them over to our positions.
There is, for example, no Bible-based reason, for example, for opposing universal health care, or beefing up environmental protections. Many fundamentalists probably are opposed, for example, to the Kyoto Protocol. But here is no reason why someone who believes in a literal interpretation of Genesis cannot also want to reduce the level of greenhouse gases in the air. We just need to make our case in a way that respects our honest disagreements on theology.
There will always be issues upon which the fundies and we will never, ever find common ground. Gay marriage and creationism in schools are prime examples. In those cases, we liberals should not hesitate to say “uh, folks, you’d better go talk to the Republicans if you want that.”
However, because we pretty much know going in what the agree-to-disagree issues are going to be, we could be more honest with fundies than the GOP dares to be.
Yes, we can tell them, a progressive Democratic Florida governor probably would have opposed the passage of Terri’s Law. But were you really better off with Jeb Bush, who raised your hopes only to wimp out in the end? With liberals, we can assert, they at least will know where they stand.
If we approach them with respect and an eye toward achieving common goals, we can and should break the GOP’s hold on the Christian fundamentalist vote. In doing so, we could not only win more elections, we also could help defuse the red/blue divisions that made the last presidential election the nastiest and most divisive in history. In the process, we could win friends on issues we care about.
I am not saying that we’ll ever turn the fundies into a bunch of liberals. However, by failing to reach out to them, we have basically ceded the vast majority of their votes to those who will betray the economic interests of all but the wealthiest Americans. By largely ignoring the fundies – many of which are working people – we have helped created a huge hole in our own base that the GOP has used to drive their “God, guns and gays” truck through at high speed.
We can create some big speed bumps if we start winning a bigger chunk of the fundamentalist vote. We can do it without ceasing to be progressive and without giving up on our values. There is no reason not to start today.
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