Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Jewel · 06-06-2003, 09:36 AM

Quote:

In November of 1992, shortly after Bill Clinton was elected president, a telling controversy arose at a meeting of the Republican Governors Association. When a reporter asked the governors how their party could both satisfy the demands of Christian conservatives and also maintain a broad political coalition, Mississippi's Kirk Fordice took the opportunity to pronounce America a "Christian nation." "The less we emphasize the Christian religion," Fordice declared, "the further we fall into the abyss of poor character and chaos in the United States of America." Jewish groups immediately protested Fordice's remarks; on CNN's Crossfire, Michael Kinsley asked whether Fordice would also call America a "white nation" because whites, like Christians, enjoy a popular majority. The incident was widely seen as exposing a rift between the divisive Pat Robertson wing of the GOP and the more moderate camp represented by then-President George Herbert Walker Bush.

Fast-forward a decade. Republicans have solved their internal problems, and the party is united under our most prayerful of presidents, the born-again believer George W. Bush. Though not originally the favored candidate of the religious right -- John Ashcroft was -- Bush has played the part well. Virtually his first presidential act was to proclaim a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving; soon he appointed Ashcroft to serve as attorney general. Since then the stream of religiosity from the White House has been continuous. With the help of evangelical speechwriter Michael Gerson, Bush lards his speeches with code words directed at Christian conservatives. In this year's State of the Union address, Bush mentioned the "wonder-working power" of the American people, an allusion to an evangelical Christian song whose lyrics cite the "power, wonder-working power, in the blood of the Lamb" -- i.e., Jesus.

SLD · 06-07-2003, 08:49 AM

Ahh, but will it backfire in the '04 elections?

Pat Robertson could never garner enough support to make a serious bid for the Republican Nomination. In the 1992 election, the drumbeat of the religious right was so strong, that the Republicans lost the election. At the democratic convention several Republican women spoke urging the election of Bill Clinton. They claimed that they had not abandoned the Republican party, but that the Repblican Party had abandoned them. The public simply didn't react well to the extreme catering to the religious right - Bill Clinton swept in.

Don't get me wrong, the economy was important in that election as well, but the heavy emphasis on religion gave the impression that the Bush administration didn't care about the economy as long as everybody became a fundamentalist christian. It was around this time that I too abandoned the Republican party. I realized that they had been taken over by the Christian Coalition. I say that the Republicans risk being marginalized as a "Fundamentalist Christian" party in a nation that is slowly, but surely, becoming less fundamentalist and even less Christian.

SLD

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06-07-2003, 08:49 AM	#2
SLD Veteran Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Birmingham, Alabama Posts: 4,109	Ahh, but will it backfire in the '04 elections? Pat Robertson could never garner enough support to make a serious bid for the Republican Nomination. In the 1992 election, the drumbeat of the religious right was so strong, that the Republicans lost the election. At the democratic convention several Republican women spoke urging the election of Bill Clinton. They claimed that they had not abandoned the Republican party, but that the Repblican Party had abandoned them. The public simply didn't react well to the extreme catering to the religious right - Bill Clinton swept in. Don't get me wrong, the economy was important in that election as well, but the heavy emphasis on religion gave the impression that the Bush administration didn't care about the economy as long as everybody became a fundamentalist christian. It was around this time that I too abandoned the Republican party. I realized that they had been taken over by the Christian Coalition. I say that the Republicans risk being marginalized as a "Fundamentalist Christian" party in a nation that is slowly, but surely, becoming less fundamentalist and even less Christian. SLD

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