The Moral Majority is Getting Smaller

A dozen years ago, another Texas governor launched a campaign for president in which religion was also a major theme. George W. Bush stressed his own Christian commitment and spoke in terms borrowed from the evangelical lexicon.

At the same time, Bush took care to avoid offense to non-evangelicals. Excluding Catholics from a state-wide day of prayer? Precipitating a debate over whether Mormons are Christians? Speaking at a Values Voters Summit scheduled on Yom Kippur--and then slyly insulting those voters who happen not to be present?

You know, so many of you have come – so many have come to this gathering of value voters, you know, and it really strikes me as – as interesting. There is no voter in America who is not a value voter. It’s just a question of whose values that they share. (Laughter.)

Very probably, Gov. Perry intended none of these slights. Perry is hardly a religious warrior personally. He's been an all-too-normal Texas governor, focused on government-led economic development. Intentional or not, he has stumbled into them.

These mistakes reflect badly on Gov. Perry himself. But there's a larger problem: they reflect badly on the Christian conservative movement that Gov. Perry aspires to lead. In the late 1970s, Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority invited participation by Catholics, Mormons and Orthodox Jews. Falwell sought to broaden his coalition. Today, whether it's Values Voters or the Tea Party movement, the impulse among conservatives seems to be to intensify their following by narrowing it.

George W. Bush perceived that risk and acted to counter-act it. Rick Perry seems either blind to the risk or helpless before it. The first failing is a flaw in a candidate. The second would be a lethal defect in a president.