Why Evangelicals and Republicans Need Each Other
Written by Paul Zannucci on 5:56 PMIn politics, there is no such thing as divide and conquer.
As evangelicals look on in righteous horror as the new Obama administration brings American taxpayer supported abortions to many parts of the developing world, one can only laugh at the over-sensitive evangelicals who bolted from McCain, maybe the strongest anti-abortion Senator in all of Congress, just because he talked about adding Tom Ridge to his ticket.
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See, I want to make something clear right here at the beginning. I don't give a rat's ass what the RNC or the Southern Baptist Convention says, and I'm sick of my fellow Republicans and Christians who think they got it all worked out and that everyone else isn't a true Republican or is a fake Christian. If you are one of "those" people and are already foaming at the mouth as your cheeks redden with righteous indignation, then congratulations on being a part of the reason that both conservatism and Christianity are dying fast deaths. Republicans and Christians must stay together, and I'll tell you why.
First of all, let's reemphasize that Republicans and Christians belong on the same team, as do neo-cons, fiscal conservatives, libertarians, etc. You should not, nor should anyone, find that any particular political party suits you perfectly. After all, you do have a mind of your own, right? Political parties are loose coalitions of diverse people who share enough interests to make the common sense decision to work together and strengthen their political power. If Christian conservatives, neo-cons and and individual rights conservatives all split up to make their own parties, how happy would that make the Democrats? Do you think that African-Americans and the LBGT community are hand-in-hand on most issues? Not even close. No, you don't get all that you want in your party. If you do, you'll never win an election because there won't be enough of you.
The heart of Republican philosophy is smaller government, fiscal and personal responsibility, religious rights, individual rights and American sovereignty. It is an attempt to interpret in modern government the original intent of our founding fathers. In fact, it was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson's political party. And while it was founded principally to oppose states' rights to hold slaves, the Republican Party quickly moved to favor decentralized government after the Civil War.
Social conservatives have long been a part of the Republican Party for a variety of reasons. For one thing, Republicans encourage personal responsibility as a means to success, which naturally fits with social conservative ideas like supporting strong families and making moral decisions. Republicans also guard religious freedom and tend to extend individual rights to the point of conception, which has always been a major issue for social conservatives.
While Republicans have much to offer social conservatives, Democrats have much in the way of threats. Lost somewhere in the quest to gather constituencies under a phony banner of diversity is the idea that the Democratic Party seeks, as a part of its very nature, a sort of secular homogeneity. Nowhere in the world where liberal government is practiced do minorities, either by race or by any other definition, tend to fair well.
Forget not that by American standards conservatism is marked by freedom, and liberalism is marked by government and control (be reminded that the definitions of conservative and liberal depend upon where you have been). At the far end of the liberal spectrum, by our standards, are nations that offer almost no freedom or personal liberty. Iran, for instance, has a socialized economy and government, which works to support the citizens of Iran and to control private behaviors. The Soviet Union and communist China both strictly control(ed) both the economy and the private lives of their citizens. In fact, there is no example of a true socialist state that does not, or did not, tightly control the behaviors of its populace. Liberty, or American conservatism, is an anathema to true socialism and its opposite.
It is no surprise, then, that in issues regarding religious practice, Republicans almost always favor the practitioner while Democrats favor the state.
But it all just depends upon what the goal is. If evangelicals want the federal government to play Jesus, to wash our personal failures away, to feed and clothe the masses, and set itself up as the ultimate authority on earth, then they should run angrily away from the Republicans, take their ball and go home to play alone. And if Republicans want to see themselves become an inconsequential, permanent minority that attracts only the smallest of the small government crowd, then they can drift away into history as yet another failed political party like the Whigs and hand a sort of long-term control to the socialist left that will forever change our country and diminish our liberty.
Is that what everyone wants? In politics, there is no such thing as divide and conquer.
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