David Kuo, the former White House faith-based factotum, has written a rather puzzling non sequitur as a postelection follow-up to his eminently sober Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, whose 300-page theme was that Bush & Co. is -- and I'm sure you braced yourself for this revelation -- cynical and manipulative. So are politics in general.
Having recovered from those unexpected blows, Kuo went on to speculate in Tempting Faith that perhaps it's time for evangelicals to take five from political activism; that the new light of religion and the dark art of politics are bad roommates. He urged the spiritually motivated to concentrate on something novel for a change, like, rather than dialing for Republican pols, maybe helping the poor? That occurred to Jesus, too, when he wasn't busy passing out anti-Pilate leaflets.
Kuo's op-ed today is an effort to keep hope alive that evangelicals are indeed awakening nonpartisanly, contrary to "The conventional wisdom about the Democratic thumping of Republicans last week [that] says something a little different about the religious right -- that its members are beginning to migrate to the Democratic Party."
Perhaps in a bit of introductory overstatement, he posits that "There has been a radical change in the attitudes of evangelicals," but concludes "it’s just not one that will automatically be in the Democrats’ favor" [emphasis added]. This perceived change, as Kuo hopes, is that evangelicals are following his prophetic exhortation to detoxify themselves from their addiction to politics, and not simply switch party allegiances.
"So before rearranging their public policy agenda in hopes of attracting evangelicals" -- a pleasant dig at the GOP's historical reshuffling -- "the Democrats would be wise to think twice."
He attempts to puncture Democrats' misplaced optimism with that most malleable friend of all debaters -- a few statistics: "Yes, it is true that almost 30 percent of white evangelicals voted for the Democrats [last week], up from the 22 percent Senator John Kerry received in the 2004 presidential race. But that 2004 number was aberrantly low. More typical were exit polls from the 1996 Congressional election, where 25 percent of white evangelicals voted for Democrats." Aberrantly low? More typical? No explanations?
Nevertheless if Kuo is largely right about evangelicals' devotional change to political withdrawal, he's profoundly wrong in the electoral conclusion he draws.
What he misses, or ignores, or misinterprets -- the end all of "We will have to wait until 2008 to see just how deep this evangelical spiritual re-examination goes, [but] evangelicals aren’t flocking to the Democratic Party" -- is that evangelicals' broad disillusionment with right-wing politics, if true, means if nothing else a critical reduction in the GOP's base turnout.
And that means an electoral transmutation "that will," indeed, "automatically be in the Democrats' favor."
It makes no difference if evangelicals fail to jump parties. Their mere withdrawal translates into a Democratic windfall of far fewer door-knockers, van-drivers and lever-pullers for the enemy camp.
As exposed by once-faithful followers such as Kuo, the religio-political cynicism and manipulation practiced by the GOP in general and George W. Bush in particular have operated, in effect, as a massive campaign of negative advertising and thus voter suppression directed at their own party. The ensuing backlash may not inflate Democratic Party identification, but it sure will deflate GOP turnout.
That's assuming Kou is right, of course -- meaning he couldn't be more wrong.