Rick Perry’s rightward shuffle on abortion was noted in yesterday’s news, and now today we have this:
[N]ew, more pointed religious references reflect how campaigns are scrambling for support among evangelicals who are still divided over whom to support as the caucuses near.“At this point in the game, the candidates in the G.O.P. primary don’t have the time or the money for subtlety,” said Mark McKinnon, a Republican media strategist. “They will light a fire and stand by a burning bush in order to send a signal to evangelicals, ‘I’m one of you, vote for me.’ ”
….what is different this year, media strategists and analysts said, is the extent to which the candidates are distributing such unambiguously religious messages so widely.
Your blogger for today lives in Iowa – in Sioux City, in fact, site of the most recent and final GOP debate prior to caucusing – where electoral gamesmanship is pervasive, overt, and, it’s fair to say, already very ugly. But you have to wonder how the appropriation of such an in-your-face hard line on religion will play outside the Midwest. Then again, you also might wonder for how many of the present slate of candidates it will even matter.





Good speakers have frequently used Biblical allusions though in this present scripturally illiterate age I’m not sure they have the effectiveness they once did.
What bothers me are those who wear their Christianity on their sleeve and yet advocate denying people food, shelter and medical care because, it is implied, they are too lazy to work for it, or who appeal to bigotry against women, gays, non-whites, and non-Christians or who want to allow pollution of our air and water, aka, deregulating industry.
Perhaps that’s what being a Republican means, but if that’s being a Christian, I want no part of it nor them.