When the confetti finally settles at DNC headquarters and the bottles of champagne run dry, Americans will get a good, hard look at their new leaders. With the House, the Senate, and the statehouses in their grasp, the country has spoken. But for many voters, lured by the promise of fresh faces and ideas, the reality may be sobering.
For the GOP, racked by personal scandal and policy inefficiency, losing the majority wasn’t so much a foregone conclusion as it was a necessary one. In the end, voters had grown tired of a party whose lapses in judgment were overshadowed only by its lapse of belief in core values. When conservatives realized that Republicans had abandoned their ideology, they ultimately abandoned the GOP. The values voters of 2004 became the integrity voters of 2006, who sent the message that party isn’t nearly as important as principle.
While frustration over Iraq helped to oust a 12-year majority, three quarters of the electorate cited corruption as their motivation for sending the GOP packing. For the first time since the New Deal, the values gap was bridged by opportunistic Democrats. Howard Dean, the Democrats’ party chairman, all but admitted that the DNC was recruiting candidates that more accurately reflected the country’s voters. Targeting America’s values base, the DNC ran ads on Christian radio stations nationwide in an attempt to leverage their newfound “convictions.” Little did voters realize that this “new direction” the DNC advertised wasn’t new at all. Democrats became the attractive alternative mainly because they seized on a platform largely forsaken by the GOP — social values.
Riding a wave of popularity fueled by red-state resentment, the Democrats roared back into power by making political morality the biggest fad since low-rise jeans. Now, ironically, pundits on both sides of the aisle are blaming social conservatives for the loss. Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) is already saying his party will have to become “a lot more progressive and a lot less ideological.” But consider this. Ninety-four percent of FRC Action’s “True Blue” members who tallied 100 percent on our vote scorecard were reelected; marriage amendments passed overwhelmingly in seven states; and candidates like Heath Shuler (D., N.C.) and Brad Ellsworth (D., Ind.) openly ran
as believers — not away from them.
How could social conservatives lose the House for Republicans if social conservatives won the House for Democrats? From Indiana and Pennsylvania to Florida and Kentucky, Democratic challengers embraced a partisan realignment — not as Nancy Pelosi wannabes, but as the beneficiaries of some obvious GOP identity theft. These “self-proclaimed” pro-life and pro-God Democrats, once considered extinct, returned to compete for America’s vote of confidence — and got it.
Now what?
Social issues may have prevailed at the polls, but the greater question is whether they will prevail in Congress. After all, this is the same Democratic party that was quoted in the
Washington Times on October 31 saying, “This year, winning trumped ideology.” It’s the same Democratic party that spent millions to defeat state marriage protection amendments, an issue the people that elected them obviously care deeply about. And this is the same Democratic party that paraded Rep. Harold Ford (D., Tenn.) around as a token evangelical without mentioning
his pro-abortion record.
Will the real Democratic party please step forward?
Fortunately, America won’t have to wait long to determine if the social shift is genuine. Democrats claim to be a new party, yet their first vote in Congress will be to elect the most liberal House speaker in American history. Clearly, the moral winds of change have yet to reach San Francisco, where Rep. Nancy Pelosi resides. If Pelosi, the radical brain trust of the party, thinks her city’s retro, summer-of-love, anything-goes mentality will fly, she underestimates the character of the American people.
While a handful of true pro-family Democrats may have tipped the election in their favor, don’t expect Pelosi & Co. to feel indebted to the moderate platform. Instead, anticipate the fiercest assault of our time against abstinence, marriage, life, good judges, and religious freedom. Pro-life Democrats are likely to be marginalized in positions where they have little influence. But don’t take my word for it. The party has already said as much. In the October 28 edition of the
New York Times, Shaila Dewan and Anne Kornblut note that “if this crop of moderate and conservative Democrats arrived on Capitol Hill as members of the Democratic majority, they would not have much power individually to change the face of Congress… Instead, party veterans would remain in chairmanships and House leadership posts.” As speaker, Rep. Pelosi and the old guard of liberal extremists will surely pounce on the opportunities that their new committee chairmanships will afford them.
Make no mistake. The battle for a public creed in Congress will be the biggest and most costly confrontation in decades. To survive, social conservatives must work to peel off members of the new majority from their radical leadership and hold them responsible to the standards and platform that elected them.
In the end, this majority will only be as durable as the true change it delivers. The voters who overwhelmingly held the GOP accountable will be back in 2008, and the Democrats will have to prove that their conservative credentials are based on more than rhetoric. Will the Dems spark American revolution or revulsion? They have two years to persuade the electorate that they belong in power. If they fail, the Democrats, just like the 2006 Republicans, will learn the hard way that their party’s over.
— Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C.
