This morning, for the 12th time this week, I received an email link to the NPR headline: Christian Right Backs Giuliani on GOP Ticket.
According to the brief report: Rev. Pat Robertson has officially endorsed Rudolph Giuliani for president. After tiptoeing around the notion for a good three months, I guess we’re supposed to be surprised that Pat finally decided to dance with Rudy.
My thoughts on the matter: so what?
I “get it” that the conservative Christian movement influenced the 2004 elections by backing the Bush. If not for the “value voters’, Bush would have already been shipped back to Texas instead of pushing the country toward anticipated “end times” at the behest of a bunch of loony Armageddonists. And we’d have all been better off…. blah, blah, blah.
That was then. This is now.
I doubt the Religious Right is going to have similar influence in the 2008 elections. Bush has made people wary of mixing religion and politics. Furthermore, the former Bible-Totin’ kingmakers are stumbling around like the rest of us – uninspired, undecided, divided, fickle or flat-out fed-up with the options available.
For the first time ever: candidates on both sides leave voters feeling like they’ve just stumbled through the school lunch line. And we’re all busy thinking “No really, this is all we have to choose from? I find everything so distasteful.”
There’s not even a lesser of the two evils Bill Clinton-option this time (Sorry Pops – but yeah, I did. Bob Dole scares the bejesus out of me.)
Anyway, Bob Jones and Joel Osteen are making goo-goo eyes at Romney. Tim LaHaye and his wife are co-hosting hobnob with Huckabee events. James C. Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, claims he will sit-out the 2008 presidential election before he’ll vote for Rudy.
In a piece published on the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily, Dobson wrote:
“I cannot, and will not, vote for Rudy Giuliani in 2008. It is an irrevocable decision.”
Dobson also tossed out the notion of supporting Fred Thompson, which got Richard Land, the President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (which is part of the very influential Southern Baptist Convention) in a little snit.
(After all, Fred is like the Mrs. Jenkins of Tennessee. Better not nobody say nuttin’ bad about Misser Thompson. I loves me some Misser Thompson.)
Oh, and Falwell is dead.
Unless something changes, I’d say the religious right has lost it’s political muscle. Therefore, the next logical discussion would be – how many disgruntled Baptists will abandon the GOP.
However, considering the last “Can a Baptist be a Democrat” debate, to which I was a party, ended in a rather heated churchyard dispute after a deacon proclaimed “All Democrats were probably going to hell with the Mexicans and Twinkletoed Gays,” we should probably postpone the discussion until later.
I simply cannot afford to make bail right now.
