"Values Voters": Big Government Liberals

Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute published an article last week
"What if Economic Conservatives Stay Home on Election Day?" and discusses "economic conservatives" abandonment of the Republican party…or rather, the Republican Party’s abandonment of economic conservatism. Religious conservatives, on the other hand, will maintain their support of Republicans with a level of faith rivaling that in Jesus.

He says:

There is no doubt that religious conservatives are an important part of the Republican coalition. Yet the media, and more importantly, the candidates, seem curiously unconcerned with another discontented part of that coalition: economic, small-government conservatives.

Yet it was the Republicans' big-spending, big-government ways that helped ensure their defeat in the 2006 midterm elections. It wasn't evangelical Christians or so-called "values voters" who deserted Republicans. Roughly 70 percent of white evangelicals and born-again Christians voted Republican in 2006, just a fraction less than in 2004.

It was suburbanites, independents, and others who were fed up not just with the war and corruption, but also with the Republican drift toward big-government who stayed home, or even voted Democratic, on election day 2006. That night, more than 65 percent of voters told a pollster they believed that "The Republicans used to be the party of economic growth, fiscal discipline, and limited government, but in recent years, too many Republicans in Washington have become just like the big spenders they used to oppose."

I think this statement is largely true. I know a few die-hard, truly fundamentalist Christians who are equally (if not more so) devout believers in the Republican Party. In my opinion, if Jesus Christ himself came back and ran as a Democrat, they would vote against him.

I ran this quote by one of my acquaintances and asked him for his opinion. I asked him, doesn’t this imply some very frightful things about "values voters"? Does it suggest that they have no problem with war, torture, destruction of the economy, abandonment of our Constitutional order…just so long as we keep "the gays" down.

Granted, I’m not a particularly religious man. I try to maintain a neutral perspective to other people’s religious beliefs, despite mountains of personal experience that religious people tend not to be the most virtuous of character types. But I have to worry when I look around me and see a correlation between the level of religiousness of a person, and their willingness to dismiss everything the Bush administration does, no matter how unconscionable.

One other thing…

Mike Huckabee? As governor, he never saw a tax increase he didn't love. He presided over a massive increase in state spending, including an expansion of Medicaid, and approved increases in the sales, income, and cigarette taxes. On its annual governor's report card, Cato gave him an "F" for fiscal policy. Most Democratic governors received higher grades.

For those of you who live here in Ohio…Bob Taft always got grades of F from Cato. Think about that when you are voting.