Griper Blade: GOP Losing the Religious Right -- Will They Have a Third Party Problem in '08?

The religious right has been experiencing a split for some time now. Issues like same sex marriage and abortion still unite most of what's referred to as the 'evangelical right', but other issues are creeping in and disagreements about priorities has taken a toll. Aggravating the situation for those who'd use 'value voters' as their ace card at the polls are high profile scandals in Washington, the Iraq war, a debate over torture, and issues that have been seen -- until now -- as secular concerns, such as global warming and net neutrality.

As evangelical opinions become more diverse, the Republican party -- historically the party of choice for the religious right -- are having a harder time reaching the 'values voters' they've come to rely on. In fact, it's looking like GOP can't count on the voters as much as they could before and it's making November look pretty bleak for the GOP.

As I said, there are a lot of factors here, but the Mark Foley harassment scandal may have been the final straw.

Washington Post:

ANOKA, Minn. -- Lynn Sunde, an evangelical Christian, is considering what for her is a radical step. Come November, she may vote for a Democrat for Congress.

Sunde, 35, manages a coffee shop and attends a nondenominational Bible church. "You're never going to agree with one party on everything, so for me the key has always been the religion issues -- abortion, the marriage amendment" to ban same-sex unions, she said.

That means she consistently votes Republican. But, she said, she is starting to worry about the course of the Iraq war, and she finds the Internet messages from then-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) to teenage boys "pretty sickening." When she goes into the voting booth this time, she said, "I'm going to think twice. . . . I'm not going to vote party line as much as to vote issues."

Sunde represents a shift in the movement. You can only take people so far left or right before many of them begin to drift back toward the center. The Post article tells us, "A nationwide poll of 1,500 registered voters released yesterday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that 57 percent of white evangelicals are inclined to vote for Republican congressional candidates in the midterm elections, a 21-point drop in support among this critical part of the GOP base." They still have a majority of evangelicals, but a 21% drop is a hemorrhage -- the movement is bleeding out quickly and Foley's only making it worse. "Even before the Foley scandal, the portion of white evangelicals with a 'favorable' impression of the Republican Party had fallen sharply this year, from 63 percent to 54 percent, according to Pew polls..."

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