Timeless myths of politics - Dems' need Evangelical vote, GOP needs Hispanic vote

Joe Klein has written a new book called Politics Lost in which bemoans the damage done to modern U.S. politics by consultants. Although Klein can be a maddening read at times, he makes some very good points about how the "hired guns" have poisoned our body politic, especially when it comes to peddling campaign myths.

And two of the most prominent political myths our there right now, that effect both parties are 1). The Republicans need the Hispanic vote and 2). The Democrats need the Evangelical vote.

Let's start with Myth No.1

Republicans average between 35 to 40 percent on the high-end of the non-White Hispanic vote per election cycle, less in some places and more in others. That's not a bad showing, but according to GOP leaders, that's not good enough anymore.

The reason being is that so long as immigration levels, both legal and illegal, stay constant or even rise, especially from south of the border, the Republican Party must broaden its base or risk becoming a minority party. Left unsaid in all of this is the popular notion that the GOP is the "white party." And as notions go, this one is as plain as the nose on your face. For almost half a century the Republican Party has done everything short of a blatant appeal to attract white voters, code words and all. And its worked for the most part. The Democrats have not won a majority share of the white vote in most elections since 1964.

Ahh, but that's going to change in large part due immigration. Immigration that's fueled in large part by the GOP's business wing's insistence upon having a steady supply of cheap labor. Supporting open borders and easing restrictions on immigration is their primary concern. But the more Hispanics and other immigrants groups that are let in, the more the white vote shrinks in relative proportion. Basically what the GOP business class is saying GOP middle class is this:

"You are going to have accept having Latinos and other immigrants in your small towns and cities and the costs of housing such immigrants because you are too lazy and too selfish to work in meat plants or as janitors. Our whole economy depends upon cheap labor and you are simply too expensive to employ anymore."

George Bush I once said the American way of life is non-negotiable, but apparently that's not true when it comes to labor markets. Apparently what's more important to the Republicans is not the living standards of their middle class base, but economic growth at all costs and in the U.S. a big part of that growth is tied up in cheap labor. Any attempts to restrict that flow terrifies GOP consultants because they are afraid such restrictionism will make the national GOP look like the state GOP in California, a weak party that's a pale shadow of the Democrats. To this day said consultants peddle the notion that the immigration restrictionist Prop. 187 ballot measure back in 1994 condemned the GOP to minority status in what was once the cradle of the new Sunbelt GOP. This myth is just that because what caused the GOP decline was due to demographics i.e. fleeing middle class whites away from the Golden State due to unlimited immigration that made places like Texas, Oklahoma, Idaho and Utah even more Republican than they already were, and because the few remaining conservatives wouldn't support GOP candidates who didn't favor such restrictions and thus withheld their votes which withheld victory from Dan Lundgren, or Matt Fong, or William Simon Jr., or Richard Riordan or pick your failed statewide California Republican candidate here.

Another myth, or should we say sub-myth around the larger myth, is the belief that allowing in large amounts of Hispanics will mean a new "conservative" class of values-minded voters to bolster the GOP ranks. Heather MacDonald recently put the kibosh on that notion in the National Review but Alan Wall and other VDARE.com writers had already gotten there first. Wall, who lives in Mexico, knows full well that religion there and in most Latin American countries, especially Catholicism, is more about tradition, myth, culture and mysticism rather than faith and dogma. Catholicism superseded and in some cases blended into traditional Indian paganism. So whatever is worshipped or followed is not done so in a strict sense. Plus, the hostility of many state governments to the Catholic Church as a rival center of power made it looser still. It's naïve to think new immigrants are just brimming with "family values" when their primary focus is making money. There's always the hope that Pentecostal Hispanics, a growing sub-group within the larger La Raza, would support the GOP but there's no guarantee. African-American Pentecostals support the Democrats.

As this all shows, sometimes race does come first over religion or class in voting preferences. VDARE.com writer Steve Sailer pointed out that the reason the GOP didn't win a majority in presidential elections from 1992-2004, was the fact that their share of the white vote declined. Once that went up in 2004, walah! George Bush II was re-elected and the GOP elected seven new U.S. Senators. This is not to say the GOP can never win the votes of Hispanics or other immigrant groups. But what it does say is that usually happens when such immigrants move from the working class to the solid middle class which is what the GOP has always represented.

Now for Myth No. 2.

Ever since the 2004 elections, consultants working for the Democrats have been begging the party to expand their horizons and try to get more faith conscious voters into their fold. They see the party struggling in many rural areas and in many states that are dominated by such voters and think by dropping in a few Bible verses into their politicians' canned speeches, they will change voter attitudes in such places.

Howard Dean's statement that his favorite book of the New Testament is the Book of Job shows how limited that theory is. Voters can spot phonies right away and a politician trying to be something he or she isn't sells about as well as a hotdish in the desert.

There's a reason why most Democrats are ambivalent (some overly hostile) to religion and it has a lot to do with culture. Two of the fastest growing denominations within the U.S are the Southern Baptists and other Protestant evangelical groups and those who claim no-religion or agnostic on their census form. Does it seem so strange that our politics is so polarized in that case since both groups form the natural base of each party? Why would Democrats suddenly get that old time religion when most of their voters don't have it or don't expect their politicians to express themselves in that manner?

Once upon a time in the U.S there was once a vibrant and politically organized religious left. It was the right that didn't want politics mixing in with religion not the other way around. In my home state of Wisconsin for example, in Milwaukee, a radical Catholic priest named Fr. James Groppi became famous by leading open housing marches in predominantly Catholic Polish neighborhoods on Milwaukee's South Side. Some of his marches ended up with violent clashes with police or with counter-demonstrators. Mainline churches and Jewish groups backed the civil rights movement and were opposed to the Vietnam War. Black preachers ran for President (Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton).

Today, there's barely a foundation for a religious left. Mainline Protestant churches are declining in influence and numbers. Liberal Catholic priests are near retirement age and soon will be replaced by more traditional younger priests. There are evangelical liberals but not many. So if you can't build a foundation among those who are religious, what's left but to do so among the non-religious and the secular? If anything, there's a popular backlash growing against the Southern Baptists and their evangelical allies because many voters perceive them as becoming just another special interest group who think they can control policy in Washington and order around politicians. Just look at the Schiavo case or at the way the heretical Dispensationalists influence U.S. policy in the Middle East. Why would the Dems' want to reach to those who are or will become suddenly unpopular? Did the GOP reach out to labor unions in their decline?

There's also a notion out there, ever since the popular book What's the Matter with Kansas? came out, that the reason the Democrats and other liberals and moderates cannot crack such religious voters is that they vote their faith more than they vote their pocketbooks. This is another sub-myth. Poorer evangelicals are only slightly more Republican than Democratic. Where the GOP advantage is found is in well-to-do Evangelical communities. The mega-churches aren't being built in rural areas or in rundown neighborhoods. They're being built in ritzy and high income suburbs. Voting one's pocketbook and one's faith comes easy when you are an upper-middle class evangelical. Tax cuts and prayer in school is a hard combination to beat.

That's not to say that if a Democrat can talk the talk when it comes to personal faith he or she should eschew it. Certainly Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine benefited in his 2005 election from speaking out about his experiences working with a Catholic mission in Honduras. But if you are someone like Dean who has no such experiences and who probably would not be caught dead in a church on Sundays, you're better off just shutting up.

Yes, Klein is right. The fewer consultants we have, the fewer myths they can tell about U.S. politics and voters.

--Sean Scallon