May 07, 2003

Let us pray

As much as I am offended and disturbed by Senator Rick Santorum's belief that there is no right to privacy and that the government should be able to regulate what goes on between consenting adults in private, if the GOP's decision not to rally behind his anti-gay comments leads to a large part of the Christian Right abandoning the Republican party, well, I may just have to send him a letter of thanks. That would simply be one of the best things that could happen to this country.

Leaders of the Christian right are thinking of bolting the Republican Party in 2004. Such a move would deal a severe blow to President Bush's re-election effort.

Though Christian voters played a pivotal role in electing Bush in his razor-thin victory over Al Gore, NewsMax has learned that major figures in the evangelical movement are talking about withholding support from the Republican Party.
The issue came recently to the fore because of comments made by Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, a Washington-based public advocacy organization founded by Dr. James Dobson and affiliated with Dobson's Focus on the Family.

Recently, Connor, as a guest on Dobson's national radio program as well as in a newsletter sent to Christian activists, openly questioned the Republican party's commitment to social issues Christians are concerned about.

"If Republican leaders cannot mount a vigorous defense of marriage, then pro-family voters perhaps should begin to reconsider their loyalty to the party," warned Connor.

Please, do reconsider!

While having the Christian Right break away from the mainstream of the Republican party could open the door for them to form a viable third party, by themselves, I don't believe they'd be nearly as powerful as they are combined with the Republicans - and without the Christian Right, the Republicans would be considerably weaker. This would be a very good thing. I'm not sure how likely it is, since someone is bound to realize that, separately, neither the Christian Right nor the Republicans are going to be as strong as they are together, but it's sure a nice fantasy!

Posted by thorswitch at May 7, 2003 05:03 PM | TrackBack


Comments

Oh my, I do believe I will have to go to church and pray for this to happen!! Wonder how many rosaries it would take?

Posted by: Rayne at May 7, 2003 05:33 PM

What? The Republicans woke up and realized who'd they'd been screwing?

Posted by: Joel at May 7, 2003 11:06 PM

I think it's too good to be true. If the right-wingers should abandon the Republicans, they would hand the presidency to the democrats. They are not blind to this fact, so most likely, they'd vote for the Republicans as the lesser evil. They know very well that Nader effectively handed the presidency to Bush.

Posted by: Jan at May 8, 2003 12:43 AM

If the psycho-conservatives split from the Republicans it would hurt them far more than Nader hurt the Democratics. Let's hope this is a real possibility and not just a ploy to get Govenor Bush's attention.

Posted by: eric at May 8, 2003 08:31 PM

Think of how much that PLUS Nader could get this country away from a 2-party system and toward a FOUR or even MORE party system! The Green party trying to go it alone only hurts the Democrats, but think of how many more Dems might vote Green if they knew that there was likely to be a corresponding number of GOPs voting for the BIble party....

Posted by: Catnmus at May 9, 2003 02:19 PM

catnmus: This would work well if the English-speaking democracies (US, UK, Canada, Australia) joined the rest of Western democracies and introduced proportional representation and second-choice balloting. The result is always government by coalition, which avoids extreme swings in government policy as a result of small swings in voter choice. But I'm not holding my breath.

In the meantime I'm trying to talk someone into printing up thousands of bumper stickers saying "Christian Republicans Stay Home in '04", so that Dems can use them to encourage this self-defeating manoever.

Posted by: Dave Pollard at May 9, 2003 06:56 PM