Andrew Sullivan has some really interesting thoughts on Reagan vs. Bush. Sounds like he's increasingly browned off w/W. It's interesting to see a "conservative" who's not exactly rushing to compare W and the Gipper favorably. Sullivan goes on to say that if there’s a Republican alive in the mold of Reagan, it may be Arnold Swarzenegger, not Bush.
Read this Economist article (membership required) and you’d be forgiven for thinking there may be an irreversible gulf forming between the Republican and Democratic parties along religious lines, leaving the GOP with all the religious folks and the poor Dems with all the untouchable heathens.
But I wonder if Andy Sullivan isn't right when he says someone more secular like Schwarzenegger might be the future face of the Republican party--someone who can reach across the divide. Surely not Arnie though? Well, I bet they said the same about the Gipper, too. Never mind that Arnie wasn’t born here; if some have their way, that qualification will be a thing of the past. As a naturalized American myself, I can’t much protest that.
Sidebar: What I wouldn't mind betting, in fact, is that if there's an atheist president in our lifetime, it'll be a Republican. Not suggesting Arnie's one, though it wouldn't surprise me if he were. As the Economist article points out, currently, “Voters do not like atheists: 41% say they would never vote for one, far more than say they would not vote for an evangelical, Catholic or Jew.” Thing is, Republicans wouldn't vote for a heathen Democrat, no, but I suspect they would vote for a heathen Republican who was strong on the military, fiscally conservative, and not too liberal socially. Bonus points if he were a movie star. The Repubs really dig it when Hollywood coughs up a conservative: Reagan, Charlton Heston, Chuck Norris, Dennis Miller (remember when he was funny?), etcetera. They're so dazzled by the aura of celebrity, they'll apparently vote them into practically any office or position. OK, maybe I'm generalizing now.
Back to the current reality, though, and I think that although the Repubs *are* heavily influenced by the right-wing religioso, those folks don't represent the average American, and the Repubs may shoot themselves in the foot if they pay too much attention to these fringe dwellers (they may have already). That wouldn't necessarily preclude them from being the party of the mainstream religious folks as the Economist suggests. But, I think, the mainstream is becoming more socially liberal anyway. So, maybe the GOP will have to lurch left regardless. Let's face it: the GOP's been having to lurch left for decades now.
How much impact does the religious right have on the current administration? A lot, I’m afraid. More so than they did on Reagan. But I’m not too worried. To use one front as an example, the right may be salivating over the Federal Marriage Amendment and Bush may be egging them on, but many of us suspect it won’t pass constitutional scrutiny. I'll get a lot more scared when the fundies succeed in banning shows like Queer Eye and replacing them with Bible Eye for the Secular Guy. The point being that gay culture is steadily seeping into mainstream culture, and we’ve not gone to hell in a hand basket for it yet. In fact, the more we’re all exposed to real gay culture—not the fringe gay culture the fundies focus obsessively on, but regular every-day, 9-to5 gay culture—the more folks realize that homosexuality is nothing to be afraid of.
OK, maybe I am *a little* scared at the progress the far right has been making, but I just think if their impact gets any greater, there'll be a massive backlash. We’ll get sick of being told what to say, what we can watch on television, whether we can be married or not. And things will move the other way. Hopefully, before anything so grotesque as the FMA is passed. The pendulum effect.
But I do tend to be overly optimistic sometimes. You only have to read about what the Republican party's doing in Texas, and it's enough to scare the bejesus out of you.
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