OUR SIX-PARTY SYSTEM

This base is what I call the Party of Faith, the legions of Americans who believe in “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The fact that they practice religion is what defines them. Overwhelmingly Christian, they go to church, read Scripture, and organize their social lives around interactions with other believers. Faith in God and the attempt to obey His will is at the center of their lives.

The Party of Faith has its own subculture. Its most prominent political leaders are Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council, but there are numerous others, too, including Pat Robertson, Chuck Colson, and, increasingly, the dozen or so pastors of the new mega-churches, like Southern California’s Chuck Smith, Greg Laurie, and Rick Warren. When and if these leaders serve notice on the GOP’s elite that the Republican party no longer represents them, the threat will be real. If the base’s support for the GOP collapses, the Republicans’ ability to contend with the Democratic party will be gone overnight.

The main reason for this is that the Democrats’ base — the Party of Race — is solid. In fact, this group is more united and committed to political action than at any time in the past 20 years. The two race-related initiatives that dominated California’s election cycle in 1994 and 1996 — Proposition 187, aimed at controlling illegal immigration, and Proposition 209, eliminating race- and gender-based preferences — have mobilized the Party of Race as nothing has since the civil-rights movement of the early 1960s. Indeed, the ill-conceived Prop. 187 has all but guaranteed a new generation of solidly Democratic Latino activists.

But there’s another reason the Democrats would easily prevail if the GOP were separated from its base: In the middle tier of the party pyramids, the Democrats again have the advantage.

The Party of Wealth has traditionally made its home in the GOP From mutual- fund managers and some big-business types to small entrepreneurs and anti-tax activists, these folks believe in the bottom line. “If GDP increases, all is well,” is their credo. They write checks to campaign coffers, and they vacation out of state. Net worth is the key to their hearts and minds.

There have been substantial defections from this group to the Democrats in recent years, especially from the higher income brackets, where laissez-faire lifestyle politics holds sway. Unfamiliar with the redistributionist zealotry of the old Left (or so rich they don’t much care what slice the government takes), these newly wealthy technocrats tend to discount the importance of politics. Their discomfort with the Party of Faith propels them into the arms of their natural enemies.

The irony, of course, is that the Democratic party’s middle tier, the Party of Government, would love nothing more than to empty the pockets of its counterparts in the GOP. The Party of Government comprises the labor unions, especially the newly dominant public-employee unions like teachers; the environmentalists, both nonprofit and bureaucratic; the consumer advocates; and all others who need government to keep them employed and powerful. This is the most rapidly growing sector of American politics today, as the administrative state continues to expand, especially at the local level. This sector demands new tax revenues, without which it cannot grow.

Just below the national leadership of both parties are two further groupings — the Party of Patriotism and the Party of License. Both carry influence disproportionate to their numbers.

The patriots are nationalists, or American exceptionalists, and include professional foreign-policy wonks, the remnants of the anti-Communists, and nearly every member of the armed forces. They are secular defenders of the American ideal, and Reagan was their embodiment. As Thomas Ricks points out in Making the Corps, the military is increasingly Republican even though its own unique culture breeds contempt for the wealthy and it remains at arm’s length from the Party of Faith.

Across the divide is the Party of License — the academic Left, the feminist cadre, and the gay community. They are everything the patriotic party is not, and they will never cross over.

The elites of both parties thus see below them groupings whose defining qualities will not shift over the next few election cycles, but whose interest in politics will wax and wane. Because political energy now resides in the components of the Democratic pyramid, the near term looks rosy for Al Gore. And given the disgust of the Party of Faith with Republican leadership, the prospects for Democratic gains in 1998 and 2000 are high.

Since 1980 the GOP leadership has held captive the Party of Faith with a threat: Imagine if the Democrats won everything. For a long while, this worked. But a sea change has occurred. The leadership of the people for whom God matters most is now asking, How could things get worse? The culture is completely eroticized, drug-drenched, and crude. Religious practice is marginalized. And kids routinely kill other kids. The country, in the eyes of the faithful, may be irretrievably diseased.

So James Dobson served up a warning in March, much as Jesse Jackson did back in 1987. The Party of Faith will not be lectured to any longer on the need for tolerance and compromise. It will bolt if it has to in order to demonstrate what it means to be the party’s base. Gary Bauer may launch an explicitly faith-based protest campaign that could lead to an independent candidacy for president in 2000.

Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate majority leader Trent Lott, and a half-dozen presidential candidates need to stop trying to persuade the Party of Faith to pipe down for the good of the country. Rather, Republican leaders need to defend that group’s interests and proclaim its legitimacy over and over again. California’s Republican candidate for governor, attorney general Dan Lungren, has begun this process.

Lungren, a practicing Catholic, is firmly pro-life, pro-faith, and pro- church. It’s a powerful message, especially when combined with the promises Republican candidates must make to the Party of Wealth concerning taxes. Oklahoma governor Frank Keating is another politician who has managed to energize all the groupings within the Republican party. So it can be done. The question is whether anyone in Washington has sufficient credibility with the Party of Faith to give it assurances that won’t be dismissed as posturing.

Hugh Hewitt is the author of The Embarrassed Believer, to be published by Word in May.