Howard Fineman has a piece up at Huffington Post in which he makes the daring, bold, and forthright argument that the GOP has become what he calls the American Faith Party. He calls them the "first overtly religious major political party" in American history.
Typical Fineman. He presents this argument as if he'd discovered something of great significance which he is hereby announcing to the world.
He's about 30 years too late. The GOP shifted into full-religion mode in 1980 and was up to warp speed by the mid-80's. In 1988, Pat Robertson won the Iowa primary, and G.H.W. Bush--and Episcopalian, for cryin' out loud--declared himself "born again."
You've had to go through Colorado Springs to get the GOP nomination ever since Reagan. If Fineman is just figuring this out, he, until just now, has completely missed one of the great political stories of the past three decades.
The more interesting recent development, one that has potential to further contract the GOP base, is that the white working class is starting to leave the church. For those of moderate education, the drop was from 50% monthly attendance to 37%. For those with less education, the drop was from 38% to 23%.
Those are some big and relatively sudden declines, and that's reported attendance. People famously say that they have attended church more than they have actually attended.
This is a sign of the further alienation of the white working class. Paul Krugman has already noted the dire economic straits of those less educated. To summarize his point in his words, "We have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits."
This demographic used to be Democratic, then went more Republican over the years. Obama did fairly well, people said, by managing to lose it by only 6%. If the white working class is dropping out of church, how will that affect its participation in the "first overtly religious major political party" in American history?
We should know fairly soon. Howard Fineman will figure it out thirty years from now.
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