POLITICS : The GOP Weighs Support From Christian Coalition

News that House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) has pledged to bring up for vote the essential elements of the Christian Coalition’s 10-point “blueprint” for moral and social reforms raises the old question concerning the relationship between the Republican Party and its social-conservative factions: Can the Republicans ever become a majority party if, as a party, they decide to embrace the restrictive attitudes of their religious fundamentalist supporters?

Some would say that the current plight of the Democratic Party can be traced to its willingness to adopt the agendas presented to it by factional leaders representing blacks, organized labor, environmentalists, activist women and homosexuals--giving Democrats the image of a party that doesn’t care about the economic problems and values of middle-class Americans.

What the Republicans face is whether their image, as a party willing to give people more individual control over their lives at a time when cynicism over government is rampant, will be tarnished if it appears that they only mean to have this individuality exercised within limits drawn by fundamentalist Christians.

Such a result would appear hypocritical, at best, to most Americans and downright cynical if Republican calls for down-sizing government and returning power to the people are accompanied by severe limits on what individuals can actually do or think in exercising their enhanced range of choices.

I have been witness many times abroad to conversations between Americans and foreigners (usually late at night) that evolve into the foreigner asking the American, “What is it about America that makes it so different from any other country?” Without hesitating, the American will say, “freedom.” When told that other countries can also elect people to public office, the American will say, “No, no, that’s only a small part of it. In America, I can do anything I feel like and as long as I don’t hurt anyone else, everyone will stick up for my right to do it. I don’t have to do what ‘most people’ do--in fact, people will respect me if I am different; I don’t have to accept any values I don’t want to.”

Somewhere during the American’s speech, the foreigner’s eyes begin to glaze over--since everywhere but in America social and cultural uniformity is a desired thing. In most places, social and cultural attitudes, gleaned from the experience of hundreds of years of living by past generations, are indeed thought to be the most helpful guide to the current generation with regard to how happiness can be obtained from life.

It is no wonder that once foreigners understand that Americans believe nothing should be left unquestioned, that each individual should decide on the basis of his own reason and experience how to derive happiness from his life, and that even the matter of what is right and wrong should be an individual decision, they tend to think we are crazy.

But it isn’t crazy when one reflects on the American experience. Our ancestors came to the United States to get away from these structured societies, either because they discriminated against them for holding minority beliefs or because they were unwilling to put up with the economic life the dominant society reserved for them.

Our ancestors decided to go it alone in a land they knew nothing about and, even today, we see hundreds of thousands of people from Latin America, Asia and Eastern Europe literally risking their lives to enter the United States for the same opportunity.

The Christian Coalition claims a membership of 1.5 million people and has been given considerable credit for helping to elect numerous GOP officeholders in last year’s elections.

It is often stated that organizations of such size and alleged influence raise fear in the general public since there is the implicit threat that such a well-organized and politically powerful minority might thwart the will of the majority--but this is inaccurate. The real fear occurs because each individual person feels threatened by such power.

The Equal Rights Amendment failed because of the very success of its backers. No one (with any sense) argued that women weren’t entitled to the full benefits of citizenship, but as the movement grew, as the National Organization for Women was seen threatening any politician who dared to withhold his support for its agenda, as individuals received the impression that to achieve the kind of equality that NOW demanded, the equality of others might have to be sacrificed, the movement lost its momentum.

Jesse Jackson, in 1983, announced plans to register 3 million new black voters before the 1984 election. As he traveled the country, proclaiming his progress, those watching registration figures noticed that for every new black registrant, there were about 1.5 new white registrants. Americans are frightened of organized political efforts.

Many observers think that the hidden objective of the Christian Coalition is to gain control of the Republican Party and use it to impose its social and cultural standards upon all Americans. I don’t hold such fears. Should the social conservatives gain open control of the party, it would lose its appeal to those people not interested in the social agenda. By capturing the GOP, the social conservatives would render it useless for purposes of enacting its agenda.

The Christian Coalition seems to have realized this, since their contract with the American family, which Gingrich has endorsed, is well within what House Republicans have already said they are for. School vouchers, communal prayer, flat taxes, abolition of the Department of Education, limiting abortion, cutoffs in federal spending for the National Endowment of the Arts and the Corp. for Public Broadcasting and the ultimate return of welfare to private charities--all are on the Republican agenda already.

When Ronald Reagan was running for President in the 1970s, it was sometimes embarrassing to learn some insignificant fringe group, with no encouragement from Reagan, had endorsed him. But his response was always the correct one: “They are supporting me, I’m not supporting them.”

As long as the Christian Coalition stays within the boundaries of supporting the Republican Party, its support is certainly welcome, and the old political rule that one should never discourage support can be easily honored.