And while I remember my own case of war fever well enough to judge not lest I be judged, it’s still the case that conservatives who more or less staked their reputation on championing the invasion of Iraq ought to take a long, hard look in the mirror before they start claiming that the Family Research Council or Richard John Neuhaus killed the GOP’s chances in ’06. ~Ross Douthat

Ross is entirely right that the piling on of certain rather self-interested parties, who are using the blame-the-theocon argument to explain the ills of the conservative movement and the Republican Party, is excessive and largely misguided.  I say these parties are self-interested because each one that discovers the imaginary nefarious plot of Christians to derail the GOP and conservatism into the ditch of religious extremism already loathed religious conservatives and everything they stood for.  When disaster struck, like a superstitious mob, they have turned on the people whom they already hated and pinned the blame on them regardless of the evidence that an entirely different group of people was really to blame.  Thus people from the “libertarian” wing find that religious conservatives are a mortal danger to the future of the party and the movement, which just happens to make their side look that much better and helps confirm their agenda as the only true agenda.   

To the extent that the war in Iraq is the reason for the GOP’s current misfortunes and the general distortions of conservatism in our time, religious conservatives generally bear little specific blame.  Like only too many conservatives, a lot of them went along with the war, most of them doing so in good faith, if you will, and in the mistaken view that they could trust the government, but they were by and large not the leading, public proponents of the war.  No one, except perhaps Andrew Sullivan, could confuse The Weekly Standard for an outpost of evangelical Christianity and religious “fundamentalism,” and no one would mistake The Wall Street Journal for Theocon Central.  Whatever role Christian Zionists may have played in bolstering the coalition supporting the war, their rhetorical and public contribution to the debate was admittedly minimal.  

The arguments for Iraq were made primarily by secular conservatives who were wedded to ideas of democratisation and military intervention as a means to project power and “values.”  These people included the neoconservatives and a broader base of nationalists who tended to emphasise the projection of power rather than talking about spreading American “values.”  For some, Iraq was a real threat, for others it was an easy target to demonstrate American resolve and power after 9/11 and for still others it was the world-historical tipping point that would change the Near East and the Islamic world.  The first two groups might be forgiven for making mistakes of fact and judgement, but the last group is almost impossible to take seriously or forgive for the delusions they brought into Iraq policy. 

To these would have to be added at least two people who are indeed “theocons” (to the extent that the term means anything) and are prominent theocons at that, namely George Weigel and Michael Novak.  It was Mr. Weigel who wrote the lengthy defense of pre-emption as consistent with just war theory in First Things in what I regard as that magazine’s lowest point, and it was Mr. Novak who went to the Vatican to present the government’s case for the invasion.  Fr. Neuhaus was nowhere nearly so blatant in his support for the war, but support it he did, and it could not have hurt the cause of rallying support for the invasion that three of the more prominent Catholic conservatives in America either openly advocated for it or tacitly endorsed it.  In this they were following the lead of others, but they did follow and they lent their names to the cause.  Now religious conservatives in general should not be blamed because a few prominent religious conservatives supported the invasion, and the label “theocon” is so maddeningly vague that I am still somewhat at a loss as to what people it does and does not include, so I would not be willing to pin much blame on “theocons” generally.  But there certainly were theocons, indeed some of the most recognisable theocons, who defended the invasion as a just and right cause and who were, it seems fairly clear to me, both terribly wrong and responsible for convincing a number of other religious conservatives who should have known better that the war really was just. 

As for the damage some religious conservative causes have done to the GOP, I will say this: they have not done very much damage, but what damage they have done has been memorable and highly public.  The Schiavo case was the best and really only example of something being done strictly out of deference to the religious conservative base, and it was on any number of grounds (constitutional, moral and, yes, religious) appalling and almost certain to alienate even pretty serious church-going, pro-life zealots, to say nothing of those less inclined to take pro-life arguments seriously.  It was also the most prominent example of where religious conservatives really did go rather wild and embarked on the most baffling campaign I think I have ever seen–well, at least since the Gonzales-mania on the right in 2000. 

As I have said in the past, it was my view that Congress’ intervention in this matter was a case of the GOP cynically throwing the religious voters a highly symbolic bone while otherwise starving them of any real concessions or policies that they would favour.  Then, when the religious conservatives complain (as they are now complaining) that the GOP has been ignoring them and neglecting their issues, the party will say, “What about Schiavo?  We went all the way for you people on that one!  Show some gratitude!”  This sort of symbolic gamesmanship is supposed to win support, but I think instead it showed to a lot of religious conservatives just how opportunistic and cynical the party could be. 

Thus religious conservatives received the opprobrium of much of the rest of the nation for this highly publicised stunt (which was what Congress’ intervention amounted to in the end) while reducing the pro-life case to the ridicule extremism always brings on a worthy cause.  They also ended up giving the impression that the GOP Congress took its marching orders from some mythical Religious Right HQ when nothing could be more untrue.  They made their enemies, of whom there are a great many, believe that they were a pernicious, all-powerful force driving the Republican Party, when they were in fact the stepchild of the GOP who occasionally gets the crumbs from the party table and, if he’s very, very good, a conservative Supreme Court justice who says that Roe is the established law of the land.  It is one thing to be feared and loathed for being powerful, and quite another to be much weaker and still be feared and loathed as a major player with tremendous influence.  This is why the religious conservatives can be vilified today with relative ease: because they do not really draw a lot of water in Washington or among a lot of pundits, and because they have never been very effective at punishing their political enemies.  There is almost no cost for a secular or “libertarian” conservative to belittle and blame religious conservatives for their troubles.  There is no disincentive to pinning all of the blame on these people, and it puts a lot of other people who are more responsible for the current debacle at ease.  When the city is on fire, it is much better to follow Nero’s example and blame the Christians than look to the actual causes.  Expect many more such “discoveries” of religious conservative influence after Nov. 7 when the need for a scapegoat will be even more acute.