Conservatism on the skids

The nonpartisan Pew Center has a new study out measuring American political attitudes, and it's bad news for conservatives. From the L.A. Times report:

Public allegiance to the Republican Party has plunged since the second year of George W. Bush's presidency, as attitudes have edged away from some of the conservative values that fueled GOP political dominance for more than a decade, a major new survey has found.

The survey, by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center for People and the Press, found a "dramatic shift" in political party identification since 2002, when Republicans and Democrats were at rough parity. Now, half of those surveyed identified with or leaned toward Democrats, while only 35% aligned with Republicans.

What's more, the survey found the public attitudes are drifting toward Democrats' values: Support for government aid to the disadvantaged has grown since the mid-1990s, skepticism about the use of military force has increased and support for traditional family values has edged down.

Those findings suggest that Republicans' political challenges reach beyond the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and Bush.

According to Pew's Andy Kohut, the percentage-point difference between Republicans and Democrats is greater than at any time in the last 20 years they've been doing the poll. But -- and this is key -- he also said that the shift mostly reflects the defection of independents from the party rather than a more favorable overall assessment of the Democratic Party. The independents are sick of the GOP, but they haven't fallen for the Dems. Point is, this is an opportunity for the Democrats to win the loyalty of all those independents who have fallen away from the GOP, but they could easily blow it. (And knowing them, they probably will.)

Still, you really should read the study overview, which is full of fascinating information, all of it bad for social conservatives like me. I mean, I like the rising support for a more populist economic worldview, but I'm more concerned about social issues and religion. Support for socially conservative policies is steadily falling off, as is religiosity. Interestingly, religiosity levels are holding steady among Republicans since the 1990s, but among Democrats, they're falling. (So much for the rise of the Religious Left).

Other tidbits:

+ Only 45 percent of white-collar Democrats like Wal-Mart, but two-thirds of blue-collar Dems do.
+ There is a striking rise among middle-class voters in the perception that the system is stacked in favor of the rich. And there is also lots of evidence that financial anxiety is starting to get to people.
+ Twenty percent of Generation Y (those born in or after 1977) identify with no religion, making them the most secular American generation living. The religiosity of each generation does not change over time, according to the poll, meaning that Americans are no more or no less secular as they age.
+ Americans are losing confidence in their government's ability to solve problems.
+ Americans are losing confidence in their own ability to solve problems.

Those last two points are really troubling. I'm reading books now about the fall of Rome. The weakening of society that helped lead to the collapse was an estrangement of the people from their government, and the inability of the Roman people to deal with the problems that beset them (that is, they could perceive what the problems were, but couldn't muster the strength and the focus to take care of them). Hmm.

Anyway, that's some legacy President Bush is leaving to the conservative movement (look at the graphs with the Pew report, and you can see that confidence in the GOP began to dive after the Iraq War began). Given the gloominess and leftward drift of the country, is there any doubt who the Democrats will nominate for president in 2008?

I'm kidding, of course, but I do think that the 2008 election will be a placeholder election, with the really decisive election either cementing Democratic gains in 2008, or signaling a GOP comeback (under socially liberal Giuliani Republicanism) in 2012. Either way, I don't see how religious and social conservatism, which reached its apogee of influence in the Bush Administration, is going to be nearly as dominant for decades to come. Alas.

Am I wrong here? What would conservatives have to do to win back the independents? As a purely political matter, it seems clear they'd need to nominate someone like Giuliani. But as a matter of principle, many traditionalist conservatives would rightly wonder what would be the point of calling a Giulianized GOP conservative in any meaningful sense (as distinct from, "not as liberal as the Democrats").

I'm starting to really see Claes Ryn's point that conservatives won the political battle of the last 40 years, but lost the cultural war ... and now, in the generations to come, will now lose the political battle too.

(HT: Andrew Sullivan)