In the 1980s, very few Republicans in Congress were social conservatives. A substantial minority, especially in the Northeast, were pro-choice, and most of the others preferred to avoid discussion of abortion and other social issues entirely. Economic issues, they thought, were the key to winning elections in a culturally divided America, because even if Republican voters could not agree on abortion policy, they could unite around a promise of fiscal conservatism, lower taxes, and pro-business initiatives. But that changed in the 1990s. By the end of the twentieth century, Congress was filled with Republicans who had won their seats on a promise of socially conservative legislation. How did this happen? Was it the result of party strategy or something else?
Marty Cohen's Moral Victories in the Battle for Congress answers this question with a detailed statistical analysis of congressional races throughout the United States during the 1980s and 1990s and concludes that the shift toward social conservatism in the Republican Party came from grassroots Christian Right activists, not from party leaders, and that it first occurred on a wide scale in 1994. Cohen also argues that this strategy has endured because it worked.
The Religious Right, of course, emerged long before 1994, and if movement leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had had their way, Republicans in Congress would have embraced antiabortion policies at least a decade earlier. But during the 1980s, the Christian Right, despite its influence in the Reagan administration, gained little traction in Congress because the movement could not deliver victories in congressional races. Cohen analyzes several races from the mid-1980s where socially conservative candidates won House district Republican primaries only to lose in the general election to Democratic candidates who probably could not have defeated a more moderate Republican. Cohen argues that the socially conservative candidates lost in safely Republican districts because of the opposition of traditionally Republican, socially liberal, fiscal conservatives who were willing to cross party lines to defeat the candidates of the Christian Right. And he argues that this was mostly the fault of Christian Right candidates who frightened moderate voters away with their overtly Christian rhetoric.
But by 1994, the Christian Right had learned from its mistakes, and it began fielding candidates who were socially conservative but did not market themselves as Christian Right activists. By placing more emphasis on Republican economic issues, they made themselves acceptable to pro-business, socially moderate Republicans while also benefitting from increased turnout from evangelical Christian voters who were energized by a promise of social conservatism. The result was a winning coalition for the GOP. But the impetus for this strategy came from the Christian Coalition and local evangelical activists, not from party leaders, Cohen argues. If the Republican Party leadership had had its way, the party message in 1994 would have focused on Newt Gingrich's Contract with America, which said nothing about abortion or other causes of the Christian Right. But Gingrich did not have the last word on party strategy. Instead, due to Ralph Reed's leadership at the Christian Coalition and the work of grassroots activists at the precinct level, the Christian Right succeeded in fielding candidates who transformed the party into an instrument of social conservatism.
This transformation made the party far more successful than it had been before. Before 1994, Republicans could not win congressional races in many socially conservative areas of the country, especially in much of the Deep South, and as a result, the GOP could not control Congress. From 1955 to 1995, the House of Representatives remained under Democratic leadership, but Republicans controlled the House for all but four of the twenty-four years between 1995 and 2019. The primary reason for the Republican resurgence in Congress, Cohen argues, was because Republicans began winning the South. Before 1994, Republicans never held more than forty percent of southern House seats, but since 1994, they have held the vast majority. Social conservatism has been the key to taking over the once solidly Democratic South, Cohen argues, because socially conservative messages energize voters far more than economic policies do. Abortion is an emotionally charged issue that brings socially conservative voters out to the polls; tax credits, by contrast, do not have the same motivating power.
Cohen's findings will probably not surprise anyone who is familiar with previous studies of the Christian Right because his work largely confirms what historians and political scientists have been saying about the Christian Right for many years—namely, that it was a movement of pastors, not party leaders, since many Republicans opposed both the movement and its issue positions. But perhaps Cohen's meticulous study of individual campaigns will help put to rest a popular misconception that the GOP's antiabortion platform was a Machiavellian strategy orchestrated by party leaders who were looking for a way to broaden their party's appeal among working-class voters. It was not, Cohen argues; Christian Right candidates who opposed abortion were the last thing that most Republican strategists wanted in the 1980s.
Cohen is a political scientist, not a historian of religion, and he does not devote much attention to the religious beliefs of the socially conservative voters who are the subjects of his study. Historians of American religion may be disappointed with this omission. But though Cohen may not connect all of the dots, a historian of American religion may still find the book helpful in explaining how a certain group of churches and pastors succeeded in the space of only a decade in taking over a major American political party against the wishes of the party leaders—a success, Cohen argues, that was due mainly to the fact that voters care more about moral values than economics.
