Neo-liberalism: Rage of the Unempowered 4

Now it was the Christians’ turn to feel rage at their lack of empowerment. After all, they felt with some justification, Reagan could never have made it into the White House without them—and now they were being politely ignored in matters dearest to their hearts.
Tele-evangelist Pat Robertson made a major move shortly after Reagan’s re-election in 1984. No more, he decided, would Christian conservatives support secular conservatives! They would have a candidate of their own—himself. He would use his television audience of Pentecostal, Charismatic and evangelical Christians as a base.
He began by calling it an “educational” movement. I attended an early rally in Grand Rapids back in the mid-‘80s. The earnest young man who was introduced to us as the state leader of this “educational” campaign in Michigan, assured me over and over that Mr. Robertson “has no intention of running for president.” These meeting were strictly to inform voters.
We-e-ll, if it waddles like a duck, quacks like a duck and swims around in water like a duck, I tend to think of it as a duck. I’ve seen too many political rallies, fund raisers and smoke filled rooms in my life not to know an office seeking movement when I’m in the midst of one.
I smiled and stepped back—what’s the point of calling an eager young chap a blatant liar and getting mobbed for it when he may merely be naïve or stupid? I looked around and noticed that the young leaders were doing nothing to make nice to the handful of press who were there.
So I did them a small favor. As an old hand at government PR, I latched onto the bemused chap from the “Grand Rapids Press”, answered as many questions of his as I could and led him over to the severely non-alcoholic refreshment table. (No unfed reporter is EVER friendly.) No one else that I saw there even spoke to him. The media, remember, is the enemy.
A year or so later, Robertson took the gloves off and began publicly running for the Republican nomination in 1988. I almost felt sorry for some of my pathetically certain Christian friends. “I’M going to help nominate the President of the United States,” a devout and earnest middle aged business woman assured me as she went off to a Robertson state convention.
Of course when primary season rolled around, the (very secular) Bush people simply pounded the Christian eager beavers into the ground. Robertson had as much chance of getting elected as I had. By trying—and failing—to go it alone, the “Christian Right” had demonstrated their political impotence in broad daylight.
Their votes were still useful—crucial in some states—but their position in the conservative Republican Party was now similar to that of blacks in the Democratic Party. They were the margin of victory in several cities and states, but they could be taken for granted and all but ignored in serious policy making. After all, where else had they to go?
George H.W. Bush, an old fashioned eastern style Republican won the White House that year. Within two years he would violate the most sacred tenet in the conservative/classic liberal/neo-liberal Republican canon and would be savagely punished for it. More later.