A New England Congregational Church

Partisan political change tends to move glacially. The South was ruled by Democrats pretty much forever until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Richard Nixon discovered the “Southern Strategy.” Even then it took another 20 years for Republicans to make the South their center.

Likewise New England was rock-ribbed Republican from the Civil War until cracks began to show in the sixties. Only in the last decade has New Hampshire lost much of its GOP sheen and Maine still has two Republican Senators.

The turning point was the same — civil rights — but the signals that change was complete have come at different times and in different ways. From 1980 to 2009 seventeen Congressmen switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party. In those same 29 years just 2 Republicans went the other way. Most of the Democratic defectors were in the South — the Republican switchers were from Pennsylvania and New York. 

In the South 1996 marked the end for Democrats when a popular Southern President (Clinton) lost all the states of the Deep South other than his home (Arkansas) and Louisiana (which until Katrina, was a reliably “interesting” Presidential election state). The South became winnable almost exclusively only by candidates with conservative social — read religious — values. Statewide candidates who believed in abortion rights need not apply.

The end for Republicans in New England may be now as Maine’s Governor signed into law same-sex marriage Wednesday. That means all the states of New England save Rhode Island either allow same-sex marriage or have a bill on the governor’s desk (New Hampshire) to make it the law. In November New England lost it’s last Republican House member (Connecticut’s Chris Shays) and with Arlen Specter’s defection to the Dems notable conservative voices (Rush) called on two of the three Republican Senators from New England to join him (Maine’s Snowe and Collins). Seems like the GOP would prefer to be done with the birthplace of the nation.

It seems kind of funny that traditional New Englanders would be the ones to make same-sex marriage happen in a big way but it also makes a lot of sense. New England states have a long history of independence and a strong libertarian streak. That’s why they used to be Republicans because those used to be Republican values. New Hampshire’s license plates famously read “Live Free or Die”. So while there’s a lot of conservative tradition in those handsome towns with their pretty white-spired Congregational Churches, that tradition is the small ‘c’ conservatism that our country’s founders believed in and brought with them from England.

The irony is that same-sex marriage is nearing a tipping point just as those most opposed to it reach their nadir. Surely same-sex marriage will not be made legal in many states any time soon but in choosing the issue as one to run on (see: Iowa, see: Rudy Giuliani) conservatives are battling a demographic and regional tide. Polls in most New England states have shown a majority of residents support same-sex marriage (when not offered a third choice of civil unions) and national polls (even of self-identified evangelical Christians) show younger voters far more supportive of same-sex marriage than their elders.

Plain and simple — this is a bad issue for Republicans. And just as Barack Obama made a concerted effort to win votes in the South and try to begin reversing the Republican domination there (he won North Carolina and Virginia), Republicans need to figure out how to bring naturally conservative (small ‘c’) New England voters back into the fold. This may be bottom for the GOP in the region but banking on social issues like same-sex marriage to turn things around here could keep them sinking.

For now New England, once solidly red, is not only deep blue, but sort of pink too. Who’d a thunk it?