In the 21st century, conservatives should fight hard to defend that most important of American institutions: the family.
Married white Christians were the demographic core of the country when National Review was founded, and still are the demographic core of the conservative movement it midwifed. The difference in verb tenses between the two halves of that sentence is a problem for that movement, and points to one for the country.
The last 60 years have witnessed a “great sorting” of parties and voters in the United States, a sorting this magazine has promoted. Partisan divisions have come more closely to coincide with ideological ones.
Americans got “a choice, not an echo,” as conservatives promised during one of NR’s early campaigns. As part of this process, married white Christians have grown much more likely to vote Republican. A bit more than 40 percent of them backed Dwight Eisenhower’s party, according to political scientist Alan Abramowitz, while more than 60 percent backed George W. Bush’s.
They have also shrunk as a share of the electorate, going roughly from 80 to 40 percent over that period. Among voters under 30, they went from almost 80 to below 20 percent.
Conservatives will not succeed in the future unless they perform better among the nonwhite, the non-Christian, and the non-married. They will have to do better among non-Christians absent an upsurge in Christian belief.
Even if immigration were to stop, they would have to do better among people whose ancestors mostly came from outside Europe. Making inroads among non-Christians and nonwhites is a formidable challenge that conservatives have barely begun to tackle. But it is the decline of marriage — the decrease in the percentage of adults who are married, and in the percentage of children being raised by parents who are married to each other — that may prove the most problematic for conservatism.
