ident: Q: selector: rnstr: priority: r: category: c: format: bx: BC-RNS-DEMS-RELIGION: NEWS FEATURE:

c. 2007 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Republican presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani is a dream opponent for Democrats, a person who takes the abortion issue off the table and could prompt many “values voters” to stay home or turn to a third-party candidate. Or … The twice-divorced Giuliani could prevail against the Democrats, despite his support […]

c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Republican presidential front-runner Rudy Giuliani is a dream opponent for Democrats, a person who takes the abortion issue off the table and could prompt many “values voters” to stay home or turn to a third-party candidate.

Or … The twice-divorced Giuliani could prevail against the Democrats, despite his support for gay and abortion rights, by convincing economic and political conservatives that they can kick religious conservatives to the curb.


These scenarios are among those envisioned by scholars on religion and politics in advance of the 2008 election, which they say is turning out to be a referendum on both the religious right and left.

While Republicans worry about holding on to their religious base, any Democrat who courts religious voters could risk alienating the party’s secular base and appear unconvincing to a public that does not think the party cares about issues of faith, scholars say.

Is the religious right dying? Can Democrats fix their “religion problem”? Hang on.

“Isn’t this fun?” Laura Olson, a Clemson University political scientist, said earlier this month in Tampa, Fla., at a meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion and the Religious Research Association. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

The evidence so far suggests that Republicans are losing some of their edge. A national survey in October by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found 55 percent of Republican white evangelicals would consider voting for a third-party candidate if the race was between Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Giuliani.

Unlike in 2004, when exit polls showed that 78 percent of white evangelicals voted for George Bush, only 67 percent of white evangelicals said they would vote for Giuliani in a race against Clinton. The Catholic percentage would be reversed in 2008; while Bush won 53 percent in 2004, Clinton is estimated to win 53 percent against Giuliani.

These numbers are significant.

“You win elections at the margins,” said Corwin Smidt, executive director of the Paul Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. “To lose 5 percent or 10 percent of the evangelical vote has consequences.”

Some loss could be expected, as Bush’s story of turning his life around when he sought out God was compelling for evangelicals, scholars said.


Franklyn C. Niles, a political scientist at John Brown University in Siloam Springs, Ark., and Smidt also noted that younger evangelicals have a broader political agenda _ issues such as the environment and hunger.

Still, many faithful are hardly racing to embrace Giuliani.

“With Giuliani, you just can’t possibly spin” his story to appeal to religious voters, said J. Matthew Wilson, associate professor of political science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “A guy who had three wives. … He’s pro-choice, pro-gay rights. That is a bridge too far.”

Not that the Democrats will have an easy time picking up religious votes from the GOP.

The Pew survey found that 60 percent of evangelicals who support Giuliani said their ballot would be more a vote against Clinton than a vote for the former New York City mayor.

Scholars see some openings for Democrats to pick up religious voters. Connecting faith to social justice issues could appeal to potential swing voters such as mainline Protestants, Catholics and younger evangelicals.

(David Briggs writes for the Plain Dealer in Cleveland)

KRE/RB END BRIGGS

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!