By Mark Crutcher
It's often said that politics makes strange bedfellows. As a recent New York Times article suggests, perhaps none are stranger than the cozy relationship Donald Trump has with Christian conservatives. After all, there doesn't seem to be much that would attract either one of them to the other.
It could be that we've seen this act before.
The year is 1990, and the race is on to become the next governor of Texas. The Republican primary featured a large crowd of candidates, some with impressive political backgrounds and healthy followings. One had no political background and no following. He was a grinning West Texas buffoon named Clayton Williams.
As the primary began, the media and the state's political gurus were handicapping the race among the usual suspects and heavy hitters. The obvious favorites were a former U.S. congressman, a former secretary of state, a Dallas lawyer with close ties to the Republican Party and a sprinkling of other political insiders. In those rare moments when Williams was mentioned, he was generally dismissed as little more than a comical diversion who would soon be shuffling back to Midland. Early statewide polls seemed to bear this out as he checked in with less than 1 percent of the vote.
So the political pundits assigned "Claytie" a seat at the back of the bus, oblivious to the fact he had enough money to buy the bus and sit wherever he wanted. And that was the ace up Clayton Williams' sleeve. Simply put, he had somewhere north of a gazillion dollars and was willing to spend it on his campaign.
As the primary gathered steam, he began to move up in the polls and whistle past his opponents. But despite his successes, he had a problem. On social issues, especially abortion, Texas Republicans are a conservative bunch with Christian values, and this guy had no street cred on those issues. This meant they were not jumping on board, and the conventional wisdom was that this would ultimately be his undoing.
Williams, however, didn't consider this to be an insurmountable challenge, knowing that a careful application of enough money can solve most political problems. So a team of high-rolling consultants who specialized in capturing the "Christian right" vote were flown in from out of state. In no time, these hired guns had their boy saying the right things, visiting the right churches, attending the right pro-life/pro-family events, and using all the right code words. And it worked. Pretty soon, the Christian right was guzzling Claytie's Kool-Aid by the barrel, and his opponents who had always stood tall on these social issues were getting smaller and smaller in his rearview mirror.
When the dust settled on the Republican primary, Clayton Williams had received more votes than all of his rivals combined. A guy who had never run for political office and who, just a few months earlier, was seen as a laughingstock, had won without a runoff. And exit polls showed that he did so due to the support of the Christian right.
Meanwhile, the Democrats were sticking to their time-honored script. They reached into their cesspool of godless pro-abortion liberals and dredged up Ann Richards.
And with that, the stage was set. It was going to be big ears versus big hair.
Again, the oracles chimed in, this time predicting that Richards would not be able to hold up against the stranglehold Republicans and conservatives had on Texas politics. And again, the polling backed this up with Williams piling up a big lead while Richards gasped for air. But Texas politics is like Texas weather. One minute you're basking in clear blue skies, and an hour later you're dodging boxcars flying out of an F5 tornado.
Before the general election campaign began, Republican leaders knew that during the primary Williams had rubbed a lot of fur the wrong way and left behind a trail of bitter feelings. This caused them to worry that the people who had supported the traditional candidates in the primary would not vote for Williams in the general.
As it turned out, that would not be the problem. The problem was that the real Clayton Williams began to emerge once he got into the fight with Ann Richards. Suddenly, stories began to surface about his trips to visit prostitutes in Mexico while being a student at Texas A&M. On another occasion, Williams compared rape to bad weather, saying, "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it." Then after a debate covered on statewide television, he refused to shake Richards' hand. This sort of nonsense went on and on until, just days before the election, he even bragged about the number of times his company didn't pay any taxes.
Finally, his handlers tried to shut him up, but the damage was done, and his poll numbers were dropping like hanged men. Personality traits Republicans had once found so folksy and colorful were now just uncouth. At this point, Clayton Williams supporters were running away from him like their heads were on fire, and in some corners he was even being referred to as "Satan Williams."
What came next was totally predictable.
Because of low voter turnouts, the largest and most powerful bloc of voters in America is people who don't vote. More than any other single demographic group, these people determine who wins and who loses elections, and that's what happened in this case. By the time the general election rolled around, it had dawned on the Christian right that they had bet on the wrong horse in the primary. But by then it was too late; in effect, their own gullibility had left them without a candidate. That meant they had three options: Stick with Claytie, vote for a morally bankrupt leftist Democrat, or stay home. For many, the least nauseating of the three was staying home. The result was that Ann Richards became the governor of Texas, thus launching the most embarrassing four years in our state's otherwise proud history. Of course, it is only fair to point out that once the race came down to Clayton Williams against Ann Richards, the next four years were going to be humiliating for Texas no matter who won.
Now comes the 2016 presidential campaign, and it may be that we are seeing this same dog-and-pony show being performed on the national stage. Only time will tell, but there are breathtaking similarities between the Richards-Williams fiasco Texas was dragged through 26 years ago, and theClinton-Trump fiasco America has been dragged through for the last year, and will have to endure for another six months.
Stay tuned.
Mark Crutcher is the president of Life Dynamics in Denton, Texas.