Beltway wisdom reflects imaginary past elections.

Yesterday Digby focused on the discussion between Michael Duffy (Time Magazine) and Chris Matthews (MSNBC - Hardball) on how the Democrats have somehow dissed "Christians" for 25 years, to their political disadvantage. She provides a transcript of their TV discussion and then explains how absolutely out of contact with reality it is. (Media Matters also provided some analysis.) The degree to which "Christians" and people of faith have been dissed is highly questionable, and even if true, the amount of political damage that has resulted for Democrats in Presidential elections is questionable.

Suffice to say that the inside the beltway common wisdom may be common, but it can't be wisdom when it is completely wrong. It is, however, powerful right-wing propaganda, and totally bought into by the inside-the-beltway media.

Today Digby has found a really good political analysis by Lance Mannion of the effect of so-called religious voters on national elections since 1980.

Very briefly, what happened with a significant number of religious voters was that in 1980 the mostly Southern evangelist voters came out to vote while the older conservative reactionary Catholics in the North Eastern U.S. switched to vote for Reagan in reaction against the social changes of the late 50's, the 60's and the 70's. Though they voted nationally for Reagan as President, they also voted for Democrats for lower level offices.

The inherent conflict between the reactionary Northeast Catholic voters and the (anti-Catholic) Southern protestant religious voters was papered over by the Catholics ignoring the fact that the evangelists do not consider Catholics to be Christian. Those groups were a nationally important voting block in the elections of 1980, 1984, and 1988, but decreasingly so ever since.

Manion points out that the religious right has not been the deciding factor in Presidential elections at least since 1988. The Republican candidate has lost three of the last four Presidential elections (including 2000) and may have lost in 2004 except that Rove was able to both suppress a number of key Democratic votes while stealing the election in other key locations. But let me quote him:

Reagan Democrats were not moved so much by their religious beliefs as by a reaction to trends of the 60s and 70s, one of which included Roe vs. Wade. Their motivations were also economic---times were tough and Jimmy Carter didn't seem to be helping or have a clue how to---and "patriotic"---they hated the anti-war movement which they confused with the counterculture in general; they accepted the cant that Democrats were soft, not just on defense, but on crime, drugs, and bad behavior by uppity women, uppity black people, uppity college kids, and uppity gays.

In short, Reagan Democrats were reactionaries, angrily at odds with the times. But times always change, and with them so do people's attitudes. Reagan Democrats have been disappearing from the political landscape since the middle of Reagan's second term. Many have died, many have gotten used to the changes they used to hate and fear, and many have just come to realize that, mad as they were at the "Liberals," the Republicans are not on their side, economically, culturally, or even spiritually---the Religious Right is anti-Catholic, after all.

Meanwhile, the evangelicals have allowed themselves to be used as tools for the Republicans' Southern Strategy, which has always been racist not religious. Piety is just the mask for the the racial animus of a great many white male voters.

The racism that has undergirded Republican victories for the last four decades has never figured in Beltway Insiders' analysis of the political scene. Republican Presidential candidates make the pilgrimage to Bob Jones University every four years because they like the food in the dorm cafeterias.

To the degree that the evangelical vote has been actually a vote of religious conviction, it has been an anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-gay, anti-feminist vote.

How Democrats are supposed to win that vote, or why they'd want to, just by talking more about God and Jay-sus, I don't know.
[Emphasis mine - Editor WTF-o[

Manion's evaluation is extremely insightful. He goes on to explain why the inside-the-beltway crowd does not understand the real impact of religious voters, and he points out that they refuse to factor in the fact that the Republicans are depending on the (aging and declining in numbers) racist voters.

The key point Manion makes is that the religious voters are of steadily declining importance in Presidential elections.

Besides, the Evangelists and Biblical Inerrantists are Christian fundamentalist extremists. They don't just reject Democrats. They also reject most other christian denominations, partly by claiming that they are not Christian since they don't follow the Biblical Inerrantists catechisms. They are not a growing political movement. They are powerful in the South, but even there they are coming under effective attack in the urban areas.

The key to the 2008 election is not going to be Southern religious fundamentalist (largely rural) voters. It is going to be suburban voters in suburbs of major cities, and they are increasingly moving towards the Urban Democratic voters. Americans vote their pocketbooks before they vote their religion.

Beside, Jerry Falwell is dead, Ralph Reed has been proven to be a corrupt politician, the Rev. Ted Haggard has publicly admitted that he is a homosexual and Pat Robertson is a nut job calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez. Oh, and Mitt Romney is a Mormon, not a Christian, while Rudy Giuliani is a transvestite Roman Catholic who has been married three time, the more recent two times to the mistress he had while married to the previous wife. What unites the Republican Religious Right behind any Republican candidate for President?