Holy War in the GOP
Fri Dec 14, 2007 at 01:10:38 PM PDT
Fascinating analysis of the current Holy War going on inside the GOP over at NewsMax today.
If conservative Christians have helped elect GOP presidents in recent years they may be the undoing of the party this time around for the small fissures developing between the various religious blocs in the GOP are developing into seismic fractures.
Mike Huckabee’s question to a New York Times reporter, "don’t the Mormons believe that Jesus and Satan are brothers," could have critical ramifications in a close general election.
If Romney wins the nomination it only further advertises his faith to evangelical voters who are leery of Mormonism. If Huckabee wins the nomination it could mean a loss of Nevada and maybe even Arizona, key pieces in the electoral map, where Democrats have made inroads in recent elections and an infuriated segment of the Mormon Church, crucial in those states, may sit on their hands on Election Day.
The Born Again Christians (42 percent of the American public this article claims) don't like Mormons. And they also don't like the Catholics.
Seems the Born Agains blame the Catholics for the rejection of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court.
Some prominent evangelical leaders are still fuming at the conservative Catholic wing of the coalition. While born again Christians represent 42 percent of the American public, they still can’t get one of their own on the Supreme Court.
In 2005, when President George W. Bush made the first evangelical nomination, Harriet Miers, conservative Catholic commentators raised a ruckus and the Catholic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Republican Sam Brownback, questioned her conservatism. The Miers nomination was pulled and another Catholic, Samuel Alito was the replacement.
There is also a rift growing between the Baptists and the Charismatic-Pentecostals.
Now, Baptist Sen. Grassley has targeted six televangelists, all Charismatic-Pentecostals, a coincidence he says, but no ordained Baptists, such as Pat Roberson and James Robison have been called, even though they share many of the same doctrines.
Grassley has demanded all credit card receipts since 2001, a move that guarantees a scandal. Cardinal Richelieu once said, "Give me four lines written by any man and I can have him tried as a criminal." Grassley should have no problem with mountains of receipts to pour through.
Conservative Baptists, dominated by the Southern Baptist convention number 25 million. Most estimates put the Charismatic-Pentecostal numbers at 20 million. It is almost an even split of the last remaining core of the GOP.
So what is the political upshot of all this infighting?
There is no way that any Republican candidate can win without the combined support of Mormons, conservative Catholics, Baptists and Pentecostals. It needs all of its diverse "traditional values" elements as its base to win elections. In this recent Huckabee-Romney exchange neither side wins, both lose.
Full story here.
Gosh, sure sounds like a gigantic mess for the party that wanted to put God in the public square.
The question such policies raise of course is, whose faith will be the official faith of the Republican Party?
Bet the folks running GOP campaigns wish they had never started down this Values Voter road in the first place.
Sounds a bit like the Sunni and Shia militias vying for power in Iraq.
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