The Twilight of the Religious Right? Don't Be Premature

Boy, do we live in a fast-moving culture. I'll admit that twenty-four years ago isn't exactly yesterday, but it doesn't seem far enough in the past for expectations to have changed so much that Jerry Falwell could've been named the second-most admired man in America (behind only Ronnie Reagan) according to a Good Housekeeping poll. But that's what Frank Rich reminds us today. It was a whole different world back then.

Or was it? In his latest column, "The Reverend Falwell's Heavenly Timing," Rich argues that Falwell is making his exit just as his power is finally eclipsed.

Though Mr. Falwell had long been an embarrassment and laughingstock to many, including a new generation of Christian leaders typified by Mr. Kuo, the timing of his death could not have had grander symbolic import. It happened at the precise moment that the Falwell-Robertson brand of religious politics is being given its walking papers by a large chunk of the political party the Christian right once helped to grow. Hours after Mr. Falwell died, Rudy Giuliani, a candidate he explicitly rejected, won the Republican debate by acclamation. When the marginal candidate Ron Paul handed "America's mayor" an opening to wrap himself grandiloquently in 9/11 once more, not even the most conservative of Deep South audiences could resist cheering him. If Rudy can dress up as Jack Bauer, who cares about his penchant for drag?

The current exemplars of Mr. Falwell's gay-baiting, anti-Roe style of politics, James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, see the writing on the wall. Electability matters more to Republicans these days than Mr. Giuliani's unambiguous support for abortion rights and gay civil rights (no matter how clumsily he's tried to fudge it). Last week Mr. Dobson was in full crybaby mode, threatening not to vote if Rudy is on the G.O.P. ticket. Mr. Perkins complained to The Wall Street Journal that the secular side of the Republican Party was serving its religious-right auxiliary with "divorce papers."

Yes, and it is doing so with an abruptness and rudeness reminiscent of Mr. Giuliani's public dumping of the second of his three wives, Donna Hanover. This month, even the conservative editorial page of The Journal chastised Republicans of the Perkins-Dobson ilk for being too bellicose about abortion, saying that a focus on the issue "will make the party seem irrelevant" and cost it the White House in 2008.

I think it's a phase. If evangelicals stay home in 2008 and the Republicans go down to dramatic defeat, it won't be long before bridges start being mended. The Repubs may be interested in electability, but after a big loss it won't take much to convince them that electability has to include the religious right. Rich mentions those brought down (and being brought down) by the Abramoff affair, and we still haven't seen how Monica Goodling might do the movement some real damage, but even if Falwell is remembered only in ignominy and those like Dobson and Robertson still hanging around in no better esteem, the movement itself is not going to be very far away. All the religious right needs for a resurgence is a charismatic (no, not that kind of charismatic) figure who's a bit more inclusive, a bit more moderate, a bit more willing to engage the modern world of gay rights and pro-choice politics, and the religious semi-right will be right back in business.