The Republican Party owes most of its national election successes of the past ten years to its unified base of evangelical Christians and economic conservatives, but a new book could create cracks in the otherwise concrete alliance. "Tempting Faith" is an insider story by David Kuo, an Evangelical Christian who served in President George W. Bush's Faith-Based Initiative Office, reveals how the White House courted religious conservative leaders and adopted their agendas in public while they mocked and disregarded them in private.
Kuo charges President Bush with betraying his "compassionate conservative" agenda and falling short of his promises to enact sweeping legislation to help the poor. He goes even further to reveal that the White House systematically used faith for political ends and that the supposedly non-political Faith-Based Initiative Office, under Kuo's supervision, engaged in partisan campaigning for struggling Republicans. If anything, the controversy over this book serves to highlight the potential weakness in the Republican Party: that the agenda of its evangelical Christian base is incompatible with that of its economically conservative leadership.
Kuo stated in an interview with Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes" that he first became interested in working with then-candidate Bush during the 2000 campaign after hearing a speech in which he promised $8 billion to aid the poor. After the election victory and two years of service in the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, which was designed specifically to aid religious charities, Kuo reports that only $60 million had been allocated.
These figures could be easily discredited in light of the reprioritization of funds after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but Kuo noted the same inaction on the part of the White House beforehand. In light of the fact that Bush's party controls all branches of government, it is inconceivable -- at least in Kuo's mind -- for the White House to want the funding and not receive it.
The real issue is that economic conservatives cannot continue to only pay lip-service to evangelical Christian voters without eventually losing their support. At some point, big business and the Bible Belt will have to reconcile the differences in their missions. Libertarians can deal with the social conservative agenda that includes banning gay marriage, partial birth abortions and human cloning because such action is cheap and provides enormous party unity.
However, when the Christian agenda continues into the areas of helping the poor and pursuing government-sponsored charities, which would include raising taxes and increasing welfare, fiscal conservatives balk. Libertarians are diametrically opposed to social conservatives in this way because they fight tooth and nail against welfare, taxes and big government, while the social conservatives want the government to use its power to preserve social order.
One would think that now, since they control all branches of government, this division should have been recognized and weakened Republicans' unity, but this is not the case. The debate has been forestalled in light of the rise of the "neo-conservative" faction of the party. This faction, philosophically lead by the "Project for the New American Century," advocates the use of military strength to support and maintain American dominance of global affairs. To the chagrin of the small-government conservatives, the PNAC agenda requires "significant increases of U.S. military spending" and open confrontation -- including military action -- against perceived international threats. This philosophy has thus far led to record deficits and has obliterated the public notion that the Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility. Regardless of this distraction, if the debate ever moves beyond legislation allowing for prayer in classrooms and constitutional amendments defining marriage, the Republican leadership will have to make a choice as to which side it will satisfy.
Following Kuo's departure from the White House, officials say that $740 million have been put into the program. With any other president, this would have been an accomplishment. But considering that President Bush hails this program as his "signature domestic policy initiative," and that its total budget is hundreds of millions of dollars less than the cost of one week of U.S. occupation in Iraq, it falls short of mediocre.
What the White House and the Republican leadership fail to see is that there is a party that has adopted the Christian ideals of giving to the poor, caring for the sick, housing the homeless and feeding the hungry: the Democrats.
If the Christian base is serious about its commitments to the political extension of its faith and sees how they have been exploited for political gain, the Republican base is in jeopardy. But if the Evangelicals remain apathetic and focus on inane wedge issues such as homosexuality and abortion, the Republicans will enjoy its rock solid base -- and election victories -- for years to come.
