Maybe it has finally happened. Has the coalition between traditional conservatives and religious conservatives, which has held the Republican Party together since the days of Goldwater, finally become untenable?
The Terri Schiavo case seems to have forced the two sides to look at each other and ask, “Do we really want you trying to run our party?”
Traditional conservatives have been nervous about the religious conservative faction of the party for some time, but have always been able to keep their hands on the reins of the Republican Party.
Their grip on those reins appears to have become weakened recently, as the Congress passed legislation giving the federal courts jurisdiction over the Schiavo case in the most transparent display of pandering to the religious right that most people have ever seen.
However, the religious right isn’t happy either. They’re angry that Congress didn’t just tell the courts to re-insert Schiavo’s feeding tube, and are increasingly incensed that neither the Congress nor President or Governor Bush are taking further action now that the federal courts have ruled against Schiavo’s parents at every step.
This situation has, for the first time, broken the religious right’s habit of following the Republican leadership and President Bush blindly, and has led some of its members to ask the question, “What have you done for us recently?”
The answer for Christian conservatives is very disturbing – not a heck of a lot.
The Republican Party has failed its Christian conservative followers on nearly every issue.
Abortion is still legal, gay marriage and civil unions are gaining in favor and Christian conservatives still scream about losing the “culture wars.”
This is on top of the fact that many Christian conservatives aren’t exactly enthralled by many of the Republican Party’s economic policies.
Even the current Bush administration is more talk than walk when it comes to issues important to Christian conservatives. Yes, Bush and the Republican Congress passed a ban on late-term abortions, but they intentionally wrote the ban in a way that guaranteed that it would be ruled unconstitutional.
Other than that, Bush has been virtually silent on the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
The number of abortions performed has increased under Bush after years of decline under Clinton. Other “moral statistics” such as teen pregnancy rates are also on the rise under Bush’s watch.
It’s only a matter of time before Christian conservatives find that they’ve been the victim of one of the biggest bait-and-switch schemes in the history of politics.
Even if the leadership of the GOP is genuinely against abortion or gay marriage, they have little incentive to actually ban either. Why? Motivation of the religious right.
The Republican Party has learned that they can talk about abortion and gay marriage every time there is an election, certain to get the religious right worked up and ready to vote Republican. This is necessary because without religious conservatives, the Republican Party wouldn’t be able to get a majority, especially in presidential elections.
However, once in power, Republicans typically support an agenda that helps out those interests that are the primary sources of funding for the party – big business.
And why not? If religious conservatives are going to vote Republican election after election without question, why even bother solving the issues that gets the religious right motivated to vote in the first place? The Republican leadership responds by saying simply, “Who else are you going to vote for? The Democrats?”
There are several possible outcomes to this conflict.
The most probable outcome is that the religious conservatives will continue to vote Republican, hoping that next time will be the time that their issues are actually addressed.
There are several other interesting possible outcomes, however.
If the religious right gets frustrated enough, they could attempt to form their own party, fracturing the Republican Party in two.
Another possible outcome is that the religious right finally takes over the leadership of the Republican Party. This would almost certainly cause most of the traditional conservatives to either form a third party, join the Democratic Party, or join an established third party like the Libertarian Party, again fracturing the party.
If the religious right decides that they would rather try to solve problems in a real way instead of just banning things, they may decide to join the Democratic Party.
It will be interesting to see how this conflict resolves itself, especially heading into the 2006 mid-term elections.

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