Is God bad for the GOP?

Yes writes Kathleen Parker:

the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

No writes Daniel Larison:

Certainly there is an argument to be made that dead-end partisans qua dead-end partisans who cannot speak to anyone outside their party are a problem, and you can make the case that the holdouts who still think Bush has done a good job are complicit to some degree in all of his errors and crimes. Maybe there is some significant overlap with the so-called “oogedy-boogedy” set, but then the problem with them wouldn’t be their religiosity or their social conservatism or any of the cultural markers that freaked out every pundit east of the Appalachians when Mike Huckabee would start to speak. Instead, the problem is that they were too wedded to the Bush administration and its failed record, and they were too dependent on reciting the trite slogans they heard on the radio and read in syndicated conservative columns.

Your thoughts?

Posted by Jim Naughton on November 20, 2008 6:44 AM | |
Comments (5)

I suspect the basic problem is that those on the extreme right religiously and politically (those on the extreme left as well) must maintain such selective filters on their minds that they cannot recognize reality if it hits them in the face. Thinking that George Bush has done a good job as president is prima facie evidence of this.

Posted by Bill Ghrist [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 20, 2008 9:31 AM

I know so many people who would be republicans but for the conservative religion part. I've suggested elsewhere in the blogosphere that gen-x and younger leaders may be poised to take the libertarian party into the mainstream, and that thought has been getting a bit of traction.

Posted by Helen Mosher [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 20, 2008 10:06 AM

As I have been reading reading Gary Wills' Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America, a recurring set of facts emerges. Beginning well back in the nineteenth century, Wills chronicles over and over the support of evangelical right-wing religious personalities and movements by the robber barons and their successors, the wealthy captains of industry.

The emphasis of evangelicals on personal, not social religion, suits well the aims of the wealthy who do not want religious leaders inveighing against their exploitative practices. This pattern has not changed since the days of J.P. Morgan; it can be found in those supporting Billy Sunday, Billy Graham (in the earlier days), and especially the socially conservative leaders and movements of this day.

A graphic depiction of this can be found in Liston Pope's Millhands and Preachers. And the pattern can be seen still at work when attention is given to those who support Focus on the Family and the IRD.

Wealthy people, especially Republicans wealthy people, have been underwriting social conservatives for a very long time, especially evangelical conservatives.

Posted by Phillip Cato [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 20, 2008 10:12 AM

The political arm of the Religious Right constantly trips my hypocrisy detectors. When it's clear that their main text of authority is the culture war handbook rather than the Scriptures it's pretty clear that they're irrelevant even to those who might otherwise listen if not fully agree...

Posted by Derek Olsen [TypeKey Profile Page] | November 20, 2008 11:19 AM

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