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James Dobson, who was once the Religious Right’s most potent pillar and a pivotal figure for politicians declaring their faith, passed away on Thursday, his family confirmed. The 89-year-old transformed a segment of the conservative movement into a formidable political power, influencing national discussions and evolving into the de facto bedrock of the contemporary Republican Party, which began to consider overt displays of piety essential for political viability.
During his prime, Dobson influenced political candidates, partly via two influential organizations he helped establish: Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. For individuals concerned about unrestricted secularism, Dobson was a potent champion for his interpretation of moral conviction and fundamentalist beliefs. His criteria for candidates involved numerous “pro-family” policy stances, including opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage, and the instruction of evolution in public schools. As the clear successor to the political influence once held by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, he was a media magnate who headed a para-church network that propelled the Evangelical voting bloc into a distinctly more political role, aiding figures like George W. Bush in securing swing states such as Ohio and Florida by implying that abstaining from a vote was a transgression. He later endorsed the thrice-married Donald Trump, whom few would mistake for a regular churchgoer. The integration of politics into Sunday services fulfilled Dobson’s objectives but expanded far beyond his initial scope.
“Opinion polls do not ascertain right and wrong; casting a vote based on the likelihood of victory or defeat can directly result in the erosion of one’s principles,” Dobson stated in 2007 during his peak public recognition. A decade subsequent, he would perceive divine intervention in Trump’s nomination, justifying his backing of the irreverent businessman by asserting that Trump was merely “a baby Christian.” He reasoned that even an imperfect candidate who offered conservatives superficial assurances—and provided them with sympathetic judges—remained superior to an openly liberal individual who would safeguard the entitlements of religious and racial minorities.
Dobson’s demise coincides with the contemporary Republican Party’s pivot from its religiously rooted conservative tenets to one engaged in culture conflicts driven more by resentment than by scripture. The era in which a figure such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, who only affiliated with a church subsequent to his presidential election, could secure the GOP nomination has concluded. Presently, Republican hopefuls are eager to exhibit public displays of faith to placate the ardent base, which perceives such performances as substitutes for genuine content. Dobson’s impassioned campaigns against pornography, gambling, divorce, and even SpongeBob SquarePants now appear almost antiquated within a party that has thoroughly adopted Trumpism.
Dobson’s influence in facilitating that transformation from the era of Ike to The Apprentice is challenging to overstate. The organization he directed was categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an attribution dismissed as trivial accounting. Dobson stood as one of the nation’s foremost adversaries of same-sex marriage, a significant factor that prompted his endorsement of Bush’s re-election in 2004 and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s campaign in 2008. Dobson was among the religious figures who pledged to withdraw their backing if either party put forward a candidate who supported abortion rights in 2008; he only became engaged after John McCain selected Sarah Palin as his running mate. “Securing the presidential election is critically important, but not at the cost of what we cherish most,” he declared.
Several months subsequent, his organization composed a communication that to this day holds its position among the most exceedingly alarmist in political discourse: imagining, in the concluding days of the 2008 campaign, what society would resemble following a few years of Barack Obama’s presidency, it detailed special incentives for LGBTQ service members, pornography dominating broadcast television, the cessation of talk radio as it was known, the forced relocation of home-schooling families to New Zealand, and conservatives incarcerated for their convictions. “The Boy Scouts decided to disband rather than be coerced into adhering to a Supreme Court ruling that would mandate them to employ homosexual Scoutmasters and permit them to share sleeping quarters with young boys,” the letter cautioned in a speculative dispatch from the future.
Despite not being an ordained minister, Dobson demonstrated clear proficiency in Evangelical lexicon and was unreceptive to ambiguity. He perpetually suggested that the Apocalypse was merely a single election tally away. His pronouncements against “The Other” ignited apprehension and indignation, cultivating fertile territory for Trump’s political methodology and ample material for detractors who labeled both as bigots. Typically speaking in definitive terms, Dobson’s approach precluded subtlety and instead framed matters in terms of absolute moral rectitude or error. Even in partial retirement, he sustained his advocacy for preferred causes, including endorsing Trump’s discredited endeavor to invalidate the 2020 election outcomes and opposing Kamala Harris’s pursuit of the White House four years thereafter.
For a substantial segment of the voting populace, Dobson’s perception of the world constituted undeniable truth and enlightenment. Regardless of how much the Left endeavored to depict those viewpoints as archaic and preposterous, they remained foundational beliefs for millions of Americans. In a nation where every elector possesses influence, this implies they cannot be overlooked, even with Dobson’s passing. Much like the concept of democracy itself, the ideology he espoused extends beyond any individual messenger.
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