McCain and the Changing Religious Right

It's the middle of rainy season here in Silicon Valley; we've had rain almost every day this past week with only periodic glimpses of blue sky. Fortunately, we've gotten some sun from the Sunshine State, where John McCain just won the Republican primary!

Despite finally reclaiming the title of front-runner, it'll still be a slog for McCain to win the Republican nomination, given his lack of support among many hard-line conservatives. McCain has a 83% rating from the American Conservative Union, but he does hold some moderate positions, particularly when it comes to issues like climate change, immigration, and campaign finance reform. However, I happen to agree with a moderate approach to these particular issues, and I don't think I'm alone.

I'm an evangelical. I've listened to Focus on the Family for most of my life (love James Dobson, but don't agree with many of his views), and I attend church activities more than once a week. I was born and raised in the South -- I'm still proud to have grown up a Southern Baptist -- and I'm pro-life and pro-family. I came of voting age around the time of the rise of the Christian Coalition, and I credit the Christian Coalition for contributing to my interest in politics.

I also believe that humanity is in danger of irrevocably upsetting nature's delicate equilibrium (or at least that equilibrium in which we've grown accustomed to living), and that our government should do more to protect the environment. Most Christians agree that we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the environment, as Christianity Today notes. Major evangelical leaders, most notably (and controversially) Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, have argued in favor of actions to slow down global warming. While there is still considerable debate on this issue within the evangelical community, evangelicals can no longer be relied upon to echo business interests in rejecting the threat of climate change.

Applying Christian principles to immigration, evangelicals should be more sympathetic to giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship than most other conservatives. Christianity has always been about loving your neighbor, and if the parable of the Good Samaritan doesn't speak to the current debate about immigration, I'm not sure what it speaks to. In addition, the foreign missions focus of many evangelical churches has led these Christians to become more familiar and comfortable with foreign cultures than other native-born Americans from the same regions. For example, the Southern Baptist church in which I grew up had a very active ministry to the local Chinese immigrant community -- which is how I ended up attending that church. While evangelicals are also generally in favor of law and order -- and have little patience for lawbreakers -- I suspect that an increasingly significant segment of this population will begin to support giving those illegal immigrants who haven't otherwise broken the law a chance to stay in the country legally.

What seems to be at the heart of at least some evangelical leaders' disdain for McCain is campaign finance reform -- or, more specifically, McCain-Feingold, which prevents organizations (including evangelical organizations) from participating in certain electioneering activities. Campaign finance reform is a very complex issue, but ultimately it's not a values issue. It is an important issue, and I personally think that our current system forces candidates and elected officials alike to spend too much time raising money instead of governing and dissuades some of the most qualified individuals from getting involved in politics at all. But evangelical leaders should move past their own self-interest to focus on the social issues they claim to be most interested in.

Many commentators have suggested that the 2008 Republican primary is a referendum on the coalition of neo-conservatives, fiscal conservatives, and evangelicals that Reagan built. I'm not sure that's entirely the case, since, if my own views are any indication, many evangelicals are proponents of small government, individual responsibility, strong defense, and fiscal accountability. However, those positions don't justify giving carte blanche to business interests on issues like the environment and campaign finance reform or succumbing to parochialism or thinly-veiled racism on issues like immigration. I agree with many anti-McCain pundits that it's time for the Republican party to return to its core principles, but I think it's also time for evangelicals in the party to redefine how those principles are applied.

Slippery Mitt

I heard part of Mitt Romney's remarks following the Florida primaries, and one particular line caught my attention. Here's the line from the transcript in the Washington Post:

"We look to Washington for leadership, but Washington has failed us. . . . We asked them to end our dependence on foreign oil. They haven't."

Statements like this typify what annoys me about Romney. Here he is speaking to Super Tuesday voters, making the argument that you can't expect a Washington insider to fix Washington. While it may sound good, there are quite a few problems with Romney's logic, such as the fact that it is McCain's maverick status in DC that has made it difficult for the Republican establishment to line up behind him and the fact that it often takes someone who knows the game to beat the game. To a casual Silicon Valley voter who may not be following the Romney campaign very closely (and who is likely to be in favor of increasing fuel efficiency), Mitt's statement has the added benefit of implying that Mitt is actually in full agreement.

Just a scant two weeks ago, however, Romney said something very different to the Detroit Economic Club:

"In fact, in face of all of the existing burdens that weigh down our domestic auto industry, instead of throwing over a life preserver, Washington has dropped yet another anvil on Michigan with higher CAFE standards. And now, it's passively sitting back to see if the car companies can swim."

What's Mitt's problem? He identifies our dependence on foreign oil as a problem, but he rails against a rational solution to that problem. Why does a guy as smart as Mitt take such an odd position? Because he was trying to court Michigan voters. If that's not politics as usual in Washington, I don't know what is. It's exactly politics like this that prevent Washington from taking real action to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

To underscore the point, here's a Romney quote on the same subject from back in 2005, when he was governor of Massachusetts:

"Dad was a man ahead of his time. . . . He also coined the term 'gas-guzzling dinosaurs.' That's what we're driving today and that's got to change."

When it comes to oil, Mitt's one slippery guy.