When it comes to the Republican presidential campaign, some conservative Christian voters say they ain’t seen nothing yet.
That is, none of the top-tier GOP candidates is addressing the issues that these Iowans care passionately about, and few exhibit the moral values they want to see in the leader of the free world.
“Morality is the No. 1 issue with me,” said Ken Rogers, 62, of Altoona, a member of Central Assembly of God Church in Des Moines. “If a person can’t live by the Ten Commandments, how can he lead the nation?”
Evangelical Christians have traditionally been a strong factor in Iowa Republican politics. They were credited with helping to push President Bush to victory in Iowa in 2004.
As the Aug. 11 Republican straw poll approaches – the candidates’ first test in the nation’s leadoff caucus state – it’s unclear whether conservative Christians will be able to find a candidate to rally around. Republicans Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Tom Tancredo and Tommy Thompson have all worked to appeal to conservative Christians.
As predicted. But Romney it will ultimately be.
http://new.kendallharmon.net/wp-content/uploads/index.php/t19/article/4684/#86861
yep. Romney has every characteristic religous consevatives are looking for. were he not Mormon this would all be but over.
No mention of staunchly pro-life, monogamous, and minarchist Ron Paul.
Huckabee, Thompson and Tancredo have trouble generating any buzz. Giuliani’s train wreck of a personal life and willingness to be photographed in drag betrays a lack of judgment. Mormonism is bizarro world so Romney is dead in much of the Bible Belt.
Ron Paul is the thinking man’s candidate in every sense. Unless the Republicans nominate Ron Paul, it will be President Hillary Clinton in 2008.
Why would an Evangelical’s candidate of choice necessarily be a Republican at all? Although I prefer the Republican platform on abortion and gay marriage, there are many more issues (immigration, gun control, the environment, education) where I think the Democrats reflect my views — which are a product of my faith — much better. One of the things I look for in a candidate is someone who respects, instead of villifies, the people he or she disagrees with. That’s why George “I’m a uniter, not a divider” Bush has been such a disappointment.
At this point I’m much closer to voting for Obama or Richardson than any of the Republicans.
I don’t know about anybody else, but this is about the sorriest slate of candidates (and I mean both parties) I have ever seen. I mean, from the nation that produced Jefferson and Roosevelt, the best we can now do is Hillabama, Rudy, and that Mormon Guy. Sounds like a sitcom…
Can we get a Paul/Richardson ticket?
I have harped on this before on this forum, but I think Christians should be skeptical of any politician who puts forward their religion or their “family values” as a reason to vote for them. I still remember how dismayed I was to hear on the radio Dobson still tacitly endorsing Newt Gingrich while interviewing him, simultaneously while Gingrich was going through the little two-step dance on disclosing his latest adultery but how he was now right with God (yet again). Sorry, that don’t cut it with me. That dog don’t hunt.
To me, it looks like Romney is the only one who has any track record of having walked the walk. (I continue to marvel how many Mormons put most mainstream Christians to shame, but a lot of Mormons do walk the walk, not just talk the talk.) The only other politician I would consider voting for because of religious views would be Lieberman, because as an Orthodox Jew I would hope he has a values system similar to mine. And yet his public stands on many things are diametically opposed to what I think is right.
What to do, what to do.
The only thing I can think of is to vote for the person who will be the best candidate on the ISSUES rather then their personal life. I know it sounds like a compromise, but as I recall, the presidents who were elected for their moral values in the past turned out to be almost totally useless in times of national crisis.
So it’s a case of who can we elect that will do the least amount of harm to our society and preserve our freedoms while protecting the country from threats both from within and from without?
So far, no one on the Democratic Party platform does that for me. And I’m not too impressed with the Republican Candidates, either!
Someone suggested we have a “None of the Above” on the ballot, and if that got the majority, no one running on that ballot could run again for this election, we’d have a whole new slate of candidates. Has some merit, eh?
libraryjim, I think you’re right. The hard part, though, is discerning whether someone actually will take a stand based on the issues they say they support, or whether they are just saying what they think people want to hear. Sadly, I think virtually all the candidates are governed by what their spinners and consultants tell them to say.
For me, the last politician that actually spoke what he believed was Ronald Reagan.
It’s so shameful how the mainstream media continues to ignore Congressman Ron Paul. He is a Christian and he is conservative, a real conservative. . Ron Paul is a TOP TIER CANDIDATE; in fact he really is the Republican front runner.
What the people in the article expressed is exactly Ron Paul!!!! He is the only candidate that can beat Hillary Clinton. Every poll that factors in Ron Paul, he come sin first or second place. The debate in Iowa that he was shut out of only had 200 or so people that attended. Ron Paul staged a protest outside and 800+ attended!
The problem with Ron Paul is that he is a real conservative. The Republican Party is a party of globalism, open-borders, amnesty for illegals, openly anti-gay but closeted themselves, anti- constitution, pro tyranny, big government pushers. The powers that be don’t intend for the Republicans to win. It’s going to be Hillary Clinton in 2008. If you examine the Republican candidates, all of them except for Ron Paul are head horses. With all the baggage they have, there is no way they can win.
-Vincent
I’ve heard Ron Paul on several occasions and in the debates. I can’t say I’m much impressed by him at all. He falls far short of even Mike Huckabee, who makes a lot of sense but doesn’t stand a chance.
What about old what’s-his-name who hasn’t officially thrown his hat in the ring, former senator, actor, with a “trophy wife?”
Yeah, I think next year might be a good year to vote for Snoopy. 🙁
You mean “Fred Thompson”. He calls himself “her trophy husband”. 😉
Time to bring back the “Pat Paulson for President” campaign. (yes I can remember that, but just barely.)
Which Roosevelt, Archer?
We’re just not going to get perfect candidates, folks, either party. I voted and campaigned for Bush twice in the full knowledge that he was/is not a program conservative. He was closer than the other guys. (Which is why I have been bewildered throughout by his treatment in the press as an Evil Conservative Devil.)
This time around, once again, I’ll vote for the one who comes nearest to my policy preferences. This is likely to be Romney. I’ve had theological disagreements with lots of Presidents and candidates. (Any conservative Anglicans running?) This is more so with Romney, of course, but he has a reliable commitment to the American system of law and justice, so his theological oddities become just that — personal oddities.
It should be remembered that Jefferson wasn’t Christian. Were there other deists among the early Presidents? We survived.
Ron Paul may be a gentleman with conservative inclinations in his private beliefs, but he is thoroughly a liberal, as the term is understood in the rest of the world outside the USA, in his public positions. By that, I mean that he believes that individuals should form societies, not the other way around. So much more would be clearer to us in our national life if we did not insist on perveting the terms liberal and conservative in ways that leave the rest of the world confused.
Can you imagine the volume of complaints if any bishop endorsed a candidate outside the Democratic party? Shall we hear it of the leftists in ECUSA/TEC over this:
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/08/02/post_7.html ?
Somehow I doubt it. But look at the bright side, now no one else’s campaign can have this distinction!
libraryjim wrote: [blockquote] You mean “Fred Thompsonâ€. He calls himself “her trophy husbandâ€. Time to bring back the “Pat Paulson for President†campaign. (yes I can remember that, but just barely.) [/blockquote]
Exactly! And I was trying to think of Pat Paulson’s name earlier. Thanks for filling in both blanks, libraryjim. When I was a “puppy” at home I sometimes got Pat Paulson’s name in response when I asked my mom who she was going to vote for. 😉
As for candidates I personally find appealing, I can’t make up my mind between
Christopher Walken http://www.walken2008.com/
and
Chuck Norris http://www.chucknorrisforpresident.com/index2.html
Yeah, I know . . . .
But it could happen.
o for the good old days when presidents had only one wife, and usually not more than one girl friend ( at a time, at least)
Let me know when Ron Paul has a position on Islamic terror other than let’s get out of Iraq and we asked for it anyway.
And there’s always Cthulhu 2008: Why Choose the Lesser Evil?
Ron Paul’s position on terrorists is the Constitutional one: letters of marque and reprisal.
[blockquote]Ron Paul may be a gentleman with conservative inclinations in his private beliefs, but he is thoroughly a liberal, as the term is understood in the rest of the world outside the USA, in his public positions. By that, I mean that he believes that individuals should form societies, not the other way around.[/blockquote]
This is a new one for me. I had no idea that social engineering was a conservative process. We will need a whole new pantheon of conservative thinkers: Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, John Dewey, the Fabian Society, etc.
Reactionary,
Got a source for that? It’s not on his web site.
It’s consistent with his other views, except for the fact that it is astonishingly stupid. Really, amazingly, stupid.
It’s a dead or alive bounty. What’s stupid about that? The USG has one on bin Laden.
Letters of marque and reprisal are how nation-states battle non-state actors. If you think the Constitutional remedy is astonishingly, amazingly stupid, change the Constitution.
Reactionary,
Letters of Marque? How are things back there in the 18th Century? At least you comply with modern truth in labelling laws.
Seriously, Europe and most of the rest of the world understand liberals to be people who support a secular state and take their economic cues from free market theorists. They are definitely not to be confused with social democrats, as our “liberals” are, but are not as extreme as those whom we label libertarians.
Conservatives are those who value a relationship between church and state (or throne and altar) and see society as an organic, cooperative whole in which social classes are natural. They also support the military and its values. And, yes, they are social engineers along the lines of Disraeli, Bismarck, and Bush the Younger.
Both groups are regarded as right of center.
And how are things in the Prussian anthill, with its public schools and social security schemes? I suggest you mail those ideas back to the dying, dystopic societies that gave them birth.
I have merely tried to provide some classifications that I think are increasingly useful in understanding the new polarizations in American politics. Endorsement of the ideology of any political group is a separate matter.
I believe American Exceptionalism is becoming a thing of the past. Many of our current difficulties on the domestic front in both religion and politics stem from our desire to go our own way without regard to what the rest of the world thinks. That can only last so long without sad consequences.
By the way, I am likely to cast my primary vote for Ron Paul.
The US is an inorganic society. It has only survived as long as it has because the majority of its people have been Anglo-Saxons with a largely libertarian, traditionalist outlook. Hence, the classifications you propose do not strike me as very apt on this side of the pond, which is probably why we have been talking past each other to this point.
The organic societies of Europe were destroyed in various fratricidal conflicts and have been replaced by social democracies operating under the illusion that they are still organic nation-states. It will be a long time before the peoples of the world return to monarchy and organic social order. (And return we will, but that’s for another essay.) One step towards that end is decentralization of the kind that Ron Paul proposes. This, in my opinion, suffices to make him conservative in the sense you are describing.
[blockquote] It will be a long time before the peoples of the world return to monarchy and organic social order. (And return we will, but that’s for another essay.) One step towards that end is decentralization of the kind that Ron Paul proposes. [/blockquote]
Reactionary, are you proposing a Libertarian approach as a step toward a return to monarchy? That would be ironic indeed.
The strains of libertarian thought run from minarchy, with government limiting its functions solely to the protection of natural rights, to anarcho-capitalism. I find the latter utopian and so tend towards the former. The goal is liberty in accordance with man’s natural rights. Whether the government is democratic or monarchical is irrelevant to the goal.
With few exceptions, government by democratic majority is bigger, more intrusive, and more expensive than monarchy.
To answer your query further, the decentralization of government enabled by a libertarian regime would foster organic society, the form of government for which is generally patriarchy, as with the credal and ethnic Amish, or monarchy, as with the ethnic nation-states of Europe.
Reactionary,
Thank you for throwing the meat on the fire of your opinions. I think I see most of where you are coming from and where you are going, but I have reservations about how much of it still applies. At least in the Northeast, industrial Midwest, California, and some other areas, the America you describe has been under assault for three or four generations.
Anglo-Saxons were never that much of a majority, and I doubt that my Anglo-Norman, Huguenot/Walloon, and Scottish ancestors would have appreciated having that designation applied to them. I strongly believe that we need to maintain our Northwestern European heritage, but it is obvious that we will never again be the society we once were, or imagined we were.
Our system of individual liberty and representative government had most of the same origins as European liberalism. (see Francois Guizot on the topic) As Alexis De Tocqueville pointed out, the genius of American democracy lay in decentralization, while the peril of the same phenomenon in Europe lay in central state control. In fact, decentralization was the only thing that kept democracy from becoming tyranny.
Equal protection under the Constitution should apply everywhere in the country, but centralization is the single greatest problem we face on the domestic front. We had a Civil War once, and nearly had another a hundred years later over “States’ Rights,” really the right of states to oppress people on the basis of race, but we resolved that. Now, we are in danger of losing the very concept of Union, that people live one way in Maine, another in Mississippi, and yet another way in Wyoming or New Jersey. The whole country is being herded into three camps: California, New York, and Texas. They are developing a Florida camp for those who want to think like Texas and party like California 🙂 I am only barely being hyperbolic when I say that the American Way is about to be destroyed by Federal Mandate.
I think I understand now how you fit under the conservative rubric, Reactionary. You seem almost like a reverse Marxist. I hope it is clear that I stand in the liberal tradition as it was understood here and in Europe in the 19th Century. I am still not sure about Ron Paul as a conservative, except, as I first said, in terms of his personal life and faith. I do think that if he were suddenly to be taken seriously a new political coalition would form.
Thanks for the elaboration, Dale. I look forward to exchanging ideas w/ you in the future. You mention Marxism, and that brings to mind my other objection to anarcho-capitalism. The anarcho-capitalists imagine a strictly voluntary society for all individuals. In application, the result is classical anarchy, and anarcho-capitalism has indeed failed every field test its undergone, from inner city Detroit to Baghdad to Somalia, unless that’s the sort of life to which one aspires. To be faithful to this strictly voluntarist creed, the anarchist, like the Marxist, must devote himself to the permanent levelling of organic society, hence my objections to both.
Reactionary:
Personally, I tend to agree with Churchill (I think it was), that democracy is the worst possible form of government except for all the others.
I think the reason to prefer democracy, with all it’s faults, over monarchy or any other form is that democracy is not that it governs better or more efficiently or makes the best decisions; but rather that it has the least terrible failure modes. Consider this: I think it’s fair to say that a substantial majority of the U.S. has really hated at least one of the last two Presidents. Fortunately, nobody has had to resort to armed insurrection to get rid of them; at worst, we have to wait eight years and they’re out. Even the worst President can only do so much damage in eight years. If you get a bad monarch, you can be stuck for decades.
Also, I am familiar with and sympathetic to classical liberalism, though I think it is a time-limited experiment. Hope that clarifies things.
Ross,
The problem with democracy is it enshrines a process over the traditional Anglo-Saxon (broadly speaking) goal of governance: a stable social order and protection of rights. Thus, when the democratic majority votes for strip searches and surveillance cameras, there are no rights to debate. The majority rules and dissent is to criticize the very people themselves.
The only check on government is for its actors to fear armed uprising. That check disappears when the government is empowered by a democratic majority.
Representative institutions continue to provide a few checks on democracy in our system. The Courts are still there, too. Dare I say that we need an Electoral College rather than a popular vote for President to keep the Legislative and Judicial branches from being overrun? We need to take this nicely balanced system of Law, Liberty, and Representative Democracy seriously and hold it fast to our bosoms.
Churchill, and by extension, Phil are right. In the modern world, democracies run the risk of armed rebellion. All other governements face the certainty of it.
I would feel better about democracy if the franchise were restricted, but that violates our own liberal charters. So, the ratchet only moves one way …
[blockquote] The only check on government is for its actors to fear armed uprising. That check disappears when the government is empowered by a democratic majority.[/blockquote]
Actually it happens when the people are disarmed and protected only by the government. This happens very often in monarchies and other authoritarian regimes that want to ensure their power.
I think you have the order backwards. You seem to be advocating libertarianism to get back to monarchy for some of its side benefits. Machiavelli advocated a strong monarchy to get back to a moral society capable of living free. So you should skip the libertarianism and work for the enlightened dictatorship that will force the people to start being good enough to deserve their freedom.
Don’t you think we’re closer to that with Bush than with Ron Paul?
I do not judge a candidate by their religion or lack of it. I am more interested in their good political record or the lack of it. I always back off and become wary of any one who promises me the “..world with a string tied around..” Anyone remember the punch line about the “oompah” joke
Christopher,
Bush is a social democrat who, like all social democrats, strengthens the role of the state in providing what people should provide for themselves, from self-defense to prescription drugs. Consequences are what force people to grow up and strengthen non-state institutions like Church and Family. Government safety nets and subsidies remove consequences to individuals from their actions, and it follows that that is what fallen men will vote for.
A clever, hyperbolic comparison a friend once made between monarchy and democracy is monarchy subjects you to the whims of a single moron. Democracy subjects you to the whims of every moron in society. As a tool for limiting government power, democracy has failed and failed utterly.
Not so. The so-called “Fairness doctrine” failed again. Definately a triumph for the people through democracy, although it shouldn’t have even been brought up in that it curtails free speech rights.