Earlier
I mentioned that the Latino population in America is growing so fast, that the
Democratic party will gain millions of new voters even if no immigration reform
bill passes. I also mentioned that the Republicans have a second demographic
problem, in that their party trends very old, and that a lot of their core
believers will be dying off soon, to be replaced by younger, more liberal
voters. So the GOP is losing ground due to the Latino vote and the age issue.
But
there are other problems.
The
excesses of the American “Christian” movement are really rubbing people the
wrong way, with their mistreatment of gays, women, atheists, children who run
afoul of priests, attendees at military funerals, Boy Scouts, anybody they
don’t like. People are becoming turned off with the Christian faith, which in
turn is damaging the evangelical-conservative coalition. But how bad is the
damage, really?
Bad.
According
to a new poll undertaken by Gallup, America made the list of ten countries with
the biggest decrease in religious belief. In seven years, even as religion is
becoming more and more prominent in American life, the number of believers has
dropped thirteen percent in America, a stunning drop of forty million people.
That means five million people give up religion every year, or else religious
people die off and are replaced by new atheists. If the trend holds – and
that’s quite possible, given how irritated Americans are with evangelicals and
the Church – then in the next decade, another fifty million Americans will give
up their faith. Even if the trend tails off, it would probably be forty million
eventually leaving the pews, and it could actually increase in the next decade
as the baby boomers die off.
People are
seeing how little religion does for us. A hurricane heads toward the east
coast; science tells us where it’s going and saves lives and property; religion
blames the storm on gays and lesbians. How helpful. And the people who believe
in the power of prayer, are like the dog who believes that only his barking
stops the mailman from murdering his family.
And
since religious fervor correlates closely with conservative politics in
America, that’s millions of people who are less likely to vote for the
Republican party. With the GOP losing credibility on national security
issues after Iraq, and losing credibility on money issues after they dorked up
the economy, the GOP needs all those churches to get the faithful fired up
about gays and abortion so they can march them to the polls. But if there are
fewer people in the pews, there are fewer GOP voters.
The
Gallup poll also indicated that religion is found more among the uneducated and
the poor. And the poll strongly suggested that the happier countries are the
ones with less religious belief. The most atheistic countries are Australia,
Ireland (shock), France (more shock), Austria, Germany, the Netherlands,
Iceland, China, Japan, South Korea, the Czech Republic. The most religious
countries are Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Armenia,
Georgia, Macedonia, Romania, Peru, Fiji, Brazil. If you were doing a world
tour, which list of countries would you rather visit?
The
trend lines, by the way, look bad for religion not just in America, but
everywhere. Studies have proved that as wealth and education increase,
religious belief decreases. And the third world is getting wealthier and
smarter. Even in Tehran the turbaned ones are going home to their flats and
watching porn on satellite television. Which is what passes for progress in
Iran.
Anyway.
Just pretend you’re Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National
Committee, and you’re looking at the electoral maps. Priebus has already tried
to attract women, Latinos and the young to his party, and he has failed; an ABC
polls says that by a 52-37 margin, Republicans believe Priebus and the other
party leaders are taking their party in the wrong direction. And Priebus sees
that in ten years, the Latino population goes up about ten million, the current
population of elderly drops by about twenty million, and the number of
churchgoers drops by perhaps forty million and gets more liberal as well. That
is a gigantic, staggering swing away from the Republican party and toward the
Democrats.
And
Priebus can’t stop any of it. He can’t stop the Latinos from being born or
naturalizing, he can’t stop people walking away from the destructive lies and
hate peddled by the churches, he can’t stop liberal kids from turning eighteen
and voting, and he can’t stop old people from dying. He can’t stop party
zealots from chasing moderates and independents out of the party. He can’t stop
the state-level GOP legislators from launching their jihad on gays and abortion
and voter ID and unions, which is driving more people away. And he can’t stop
Obama from improving the economy, adding jobs, pumping up the Dow, pumping up
GDP. The downward slide of the GOP is entirely beyond Priebus’s control.
And
actually the party even has trouble among its core voters. Another poll shows
that even the people who still go to church are getting more and more liberal,
as the cranky old conservatives die off. And
a Greenberg poll shows that even the elderly are starting to warm up to
the Democrats again. Even among the religious and the elderly, there is
erosion.
Which
is why Priebus wants to hand the GOP job to someone else before the ship hits
the demographic iceberg.
The
sad thing here, is that if these demographic trends had kicked in just a bit
earlier, Bush would have lost both of his elections. The Democrats would have
gone 6-0 in all of the elections after 1988. We would have been spared Iraq,
the gigantic deficits, the recession, the ruined international reputation, the
wearied military, the endless series of crimes, the illegal prisons, the
waterboarding, the retaliations against political enemies. We would have had an
intelligent energy policy, a liberal Supreme Court, the public option for
health insurance, proper regulation of the banks, and possibly the original World
Trade Center. Now we’ll have to waste a few decades cleaning up the last
wreckage of the Reagan revolution.
