Voting for a Republican president runs in the blood of places like Gainesville. The pretty little town of 15,000 sits in north Texas ranch country and it is safe to say that Barack Obama has few fans here. Certainly Jim Farquhar, who works in the justice system, has taken to heart warnings that Obama has links with dangerous radicals, such as former 1960s militant Bill Ayers.
‘Obama scares me. He has all these friendships. You just don’t know how that might effect him once he gets into office,’ Farquhar said as he stood outside Gainsville’s sturdy old courthouse. ‘I’m voting for John McCain.’
Such worries are increasingly not shared by many other Americans. Weeks of relentless attacks on Obama by McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin have not succeeded in denting Obama’s lead. Instead it has strengthened. Across America, battleground states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania are falling into Obama’s column and southern states such as Virginia and North Carolina are going from red to blue. Some Democratic insiders are even whispering about the prospect of a landslide.
The flipside of that is a potentially devastating Republican loss. If current polling holds true, the party may be reduced to its core support in the solid red heartland that runs through Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Georgia and other southern and western states. That would trigger a profound crisis for a party that just three years ago was basking in the afterglow of a convincing presidential win and dreaming of creating a ‘permanent majority’.
Now that same Republican party could face a prolonged period in the political wilderness, working out how to appeal to an American public that seems prepared to send a pro-life, black senator from Chicago to the White House and reject a conservative Republican war hero.
‘The Republican party is going to have to work out what sort of party it actually wants to be. It’s a changing world for them,’ said Professor Shaun Bowler, a political scientist at the University of California at Riverside. It might not be easy. A powerful Democratic win could wipe out Republican moderates. It could leave the party in the grip of its conservative and evangelical base who remain critical of figures such as McCain but who are wildly enthusiastic about politicians such as Palin. The Republican party could end up in a bitter civil war for its political future.’
One of the key battlegrounds in that conflict will be the role of religion in Republican politics. The evangelical base has been a key part of the political coalition that has brought the party such success in recent years. Political guru Karl Rove cemented evangelical ideas into President George W Bush’s brand of conservatism and used them to inspire a very effective ‘get out the vote’ team in elections.
Rove focused on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion as a way of ensuring fanatical evangelical support. Nothing came to symbolise the power of the evangelical movement more than the rise of mega-churches, especially in staunchly Republican areas. These enormous edifices now dot the landscape of many states and Texas is no exception.
In the northern Dallas suburb of Prosper, a new mega-church has just opened. It is called Prestonwood North and is a branch of its mother church a few miles south in Plano, a fast-growing city of some 260,000 people. At first glance the church looks like a sparkling new office development, identical to many other buildings popping up on farmland as these ‘exurbs’ of Dallas succumb to development. But the large cross on its front reveals the truth. Taken as a whole, Prestonwood now has almost 30,000 members, making it one of the largest churches in America. It was recently named as one of America’s 50 most influential churches.
It certainly fits in in Prosper. Once a hamlet, it is gradually being swallowed by the suburbs, but its politics remain God and guns. ‘People around here all voted for Bush. That has not really changed. It’s a churchgoing kind of place,’ said Michelle Williams, 32, a dental nurse.
In Texas, church and politics have been mixing. In recent weeks, leading evangelical leaders in the state have endorsed McCain from their pulpits. They include Pastor Gary Simons, who heads a church near Dallas. He compared Obama to King Herod, the biblical child killer, because of his support for abortion. ‘How many of you would want to go to the polls and vote for Herod?’ Simons asked his congregation.
But increasingly such nakedly political preaching is looking out of step with many religious voters. Obama, who is a regular churchgoer and looks at ease in religious surroundings, has made huge strides in appealing to evangelical voters. His campaign has aggressively courted the religious vote, holding regular meetings with evangelical leaders.
That is in marked contrast to the 2004 Democratic nominee, John Kerry. It has worked too. A recent survey showed Obama and McCain in a virtual dead heat among born-again Christians, with support for McCain running at 45 per cent and Obama on 43 per cent. In 2004, Bush won 62 per cent of that vote. ‘If Obama goes on to win, one of the significant stories will be the profile of the faith vote … the Democrats are poised to make up significant ground among born again and evangelical voters,’ said David Kinnaman, president of the evangelical research group that carried out the poll.
The trend is also likely to reflect growing differences in the evangelical movement itself; changes that are leaving the Republican party behind. Far from being a monolithic bloc, evangelicals have increasingly embraced a wider variety of causes. Some are just as likely to campaign on fighting Aids and issues in the developing world as to crusade against abortion and gay marriage. One of the hottest topics in conservative Christianity at the moment is environmental conservation and global warming, neither of which is a Republican strong suit.
