The Christian Right and the Country Club Republicans

Yuval Rubinstein of the Left Coaster blog sees a potentially serious split developing between the Christian Right Republicans and the Country Club Republicans: Are You Ready For Some Internecine Republican Warfare? 01/25/05.  He identifies the difference between those two groups (though he doesn't use my terms for them) as "a fundamental tension within the Republican coalition."

Ever since 1968, the party has succeeded by holding together an incongruous mix of Wall Street/K Street plutocrats and Southern reactionaries formerly within the Democratic fold. But the Social Security debate demonstrates how fragile this coalition truly is. After all, the ideological shock troops can only vote against their economic interests for so long; the prospect of "dude's kissin" in front of the county courthouse may repulse these Real Americans, but so does the possibility of grandma and grandpa living (and dying) in poverty.

I agree with him that in the long run, most people will tend to vote their economic interests. But that also reminds me of the famous saying by John Maynard Keynes that in the long run, we are all dead.

Rubinstein is making a point in a kind of symbolic shorthand here. Which is that a lot of working-class white Southerners would stand to benefit from Democratic economic policies more than Republican, and he's right about that.  He's using the Christian Right as more or less synonomous with white Southern Republicans.  Many of them are Christian Right types, but of course the Christian Right extends beyond the South.  And there are also white Southern Republicans who wouldn't really qualify as Christian Right.

People don't just vote on economics. Foreign policy, defense, education, health care, and "cultural" issues like gay marriage or abortion also play a role, and that's always true. And so does race.

But Rubinstein is right to see this as a significant division in the Republican Party. But he's also right about the "since 1968" part as far as the South goes.  So it already has lasted a long time, i.e., 37 years by that measure.

On the other hand, I don't want to get too much into "red state/blue state" kind of thinking, because each state has a significant mixture even in the South. Even in Mississippi, which is solidly Republican in presidential elections, the Democrats have remained competitive in statewide races. And two of Mississippi's four Congressional Representatives are Democrats.