Editorials

A few days before the recent election former Texas Republican congressman and House majority leader Dick Armey predicted an “electoral rout” because the GOP had been hijacked by religious conservatives who would rather talk about flag burning, same-sex marriage and Terri Schiavo than about real Republican issues like limited government and fiscal responsibility.

Specifically, Armey blamed “self-appointed religious leaders” like James Dobson of Focus on the Family for splitting conservative Christians into two camps: the true Republicans who want to “practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government” and the “big government sympathizers who want to impose their version of ‘righteousness’ on others.”

Was Armey right? Was the “thumpin’” the Republicans took the “electoral rout” he predicted?

In a way it was.

Polls are beginning to reveal that religious moderates who had come over to the Republicans drifted back to the other side.

In this election, Democrats recaptured the Catholic vote, which they lost in 2004. They made gains among weekly church-goers nationwide and even picked up votes among white, evangelical Protestants.

And how did the Democrats accomplish this?

First, with Republican help.

Sick and tired of GOP scandals and corruption, the so-called “Values Voters” did not stay home (as Dobson claimed). They turned out in numbers just as large as 2004, only this time a lot of them switched parties.

But also with the help of the Religious Right.

As Armey suggested, in a number of cases the causes and candidates were just too extreme for voters. So they rejected the South Dakota abortion ban, passed the stem-cell research measure in Missouri and defeated three of the conservative Christians’ staunchest supporters — Rep. John N. Hostettler, R-Ind., Rep. Jim Ryun, R-Kan., and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.

Kansas, which has been a battleground for conservative Christian causes, also voted out the attorney general who had made a name for himself investigating abortion clinics.

On what has become the litmus test for many on the Religious Right — same-sex marriage — seven of the eight states that had such bans on the ballot passed them, but more narrowly than similar votes in other states two years ago. In Arizona the initiative failed, a first-time loss for ban supporters.

Now all of this may be just a blip on the chart, a one-time protest after which the protestors will return to the Republican fold.

But this defection might also offer Armey and his allies the opportunity they apparently want. While the moderates are away, traditional conservatives could move to purge the party of people like Dobson who want to increase the power of government over people’s private lives and hand the GOP back to fiscally conservative, socially libertarian folks like themselves.

And if they do, the party Karl Rove built will be no more.