In the previous post I talked about the religious right’s rise in the national Republican party over the last forty years. One G.O.P. president after another courted and welcomed them, beginning with Richard Nixon in 1972 and peaking most recently with the nation’s first fundamentalist chief executive, George W. Bush. Given that arc, it comes as no surprise to see the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls racing to prove their Christian conservative credentials to woo a bloc of voters that outright dominates the primary process in certain states.
But the real story of the religious right’s infiltration and takeover of the Republican Party isn’t just about which president opened his arms to them. After all, winning the presidency only gets you one-third of the federal government. And even at that, presidents are doomed to be mired in compromise, festooned with broken promises, and lamented by a frustrated political base; that’s just the nature of the beast. Certainly the Commander-in-Chief plays an important role in U.S. politics, but that importance is often overestimated. Looking at American politics writ large, the White House is just the tip of the iceberg.
When examining the political success Christian conservatives since the 1970s, the real story is the incredibly effective and thorough organizing they’ve done at the local level. The religious right has put secularists, liberals, and more moderate religionists to shame by developing dedicated leaders and mustering a committed rank and file, most of whom champion a unified agenda. All across the country they have built strong political organizations at the county level. And that’s where the rubber really hits the road in American politics.
Working from the ground up, Christian conservatives have gone on to dominate the Republican Party in one state after another. In many places, that means controlling, or at least greatly influencing entire state governments.
When it comes to the social policies the religious right seeks to overturn and implement, local is where it’s at. Planting your man in the White House or launching a few senators is great in a lot of ways, but it is actually quite diffic
ult to implement strong social policies at the federal level. Why? Because the framers designed a system that is predicated on compromise. You know: checks and balances and all that. Hell, even within a single branch things are tough. Passing a bill through both houses of Congress is not easy. In fact it’s really hard. Getting the Constitution amended? That has happened all of seventeen times since 1790. And of those seventeen, only eleven dealt with the kinds of momentous social policies we often think of, such as the abolition of slavery or granting women the right to vote. In other words, once a generation on average, and nothing of that nature since we gave 18 year olds the right to vote in 1971.
In other words, Congress isn’t going to pass a bill overturning Roe v. Wade. Nor will there be a constitutional amendment defining marriage one way or another. Christ, it’s been over a decade now, and the federal government can’t even come up with a coherent revision to the nation’s immigration policy. It just doesn’t work that way, and the leaders of the religious right understand that.
But state and local governments? That’s another story entirely. They have their own constitutions and charters. They have their small time legislators who get elected running campaigns that cost a mere fraction of what it takes to get to Congress. And those local governments, and even state governments on occasion, get things done. Things that really do affect our day-to-day lives, much more so than the federal government for the most part.
It’s about the boards of education attacking evolution. It’s about the state-wide restrictions on abortion and even birth control. That’s how people’s lives are really shaped for the most part. Not by this or that rock-star president. It’s the local and statewide rhythm sections that lay down most of the grooves we tap our feet to.
If a Republican wins the White House, particularly an earnest member of the religious right such as Rick Santorum, as opposed to a pretender like Mitt Romney or New Gingrich, will it affect society? Of course it will. But for many Americans, it won’t have nearly the impact of living in a county or state where politics are already dominated by Christian conservatives.
You want to experience, in a very practical sense, the the religious right’s political policies? Try getting an abortion in Mississippi. Try being a high school biology teacher in 
Kansas a few years ago. Try pursuing public service as an atheist or LGBT person in South Carolina.
The story of Christian conservatives changing the face of the Republican Party isn’t about what this or that president does, which typically isn’t much. It’s about the grassroots, which have grown up from the local level, and are now threatening to engulf the entire party at a national level, and in the process pull the country further and further to the right.