It’s Values, Stupid?
American politics today appears to be vivified by more than the national security
and economic concerns that have classically explained democratic politics and elections.
To the equation of guns and butter, culture appears to have become an increasingly
salient variable. Thus we observed the heated debates
over Judge Roy Moore’s removal
from the bench for defying an order to remove a stone tablet of the Ten Commandments
from Alabama’s Judicial Building; the outcry over San Francisco Mayor Gavin
Newsom’s decision to issue marriage licenses to gay couples; Senator Arlen Specter’s
(R-PA) post-election assertion that it is “unlikely” that the Senate would approve
Supreme Court Justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade and the subsequent social-
conservative mobilization to challenge his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary
Committee.
And it would seem like the much-touted “culture war” finally took center stage in
the political battleground of 2004.
Voters in Montana, Colorado, and Oklahoma
approved taxes on cigarettes by $1, 64 cents, and 55 cents per pack. Arizonans backed a
measure that would require state and local officials to turn in illegal immigrants who
sought public services.
Voters in California, Michigan, and Nebraska voted to limit
casino expansion in their states. Alaska voters rejected a proposal that would have
decriminalized marijuana. Florida voters approved a measure that would allow the
legislature to require parental notice before an abortion could be performed on girls under
18 years old. South Carolinians voted to require bars and restaurants to serve liquor in by-
the-drink mini-bottles. And, of course, eleven states stretching from Georgia to Oregon
overwhelmingly approved bans on gay marriage.
Social conservatives did take a few
1
The phrase was probably first coined by James Hunter in James D. Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to
Define America (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
2
Convention