If the mission of the Grand ol’ Party, the Republican Party; party of Honest Abe Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower was to ensure Barrack Obama gets elected to a second term, they seem to be well on the way to hanging up the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner and heading off into the wilderness for another four years.
Aside from what appears an increasingly obvious fact that there does not yet seem to be a clear front running candidate or at least one that is capable of capturing the imagination of the undecided voters they are going to need to retake the White House. There is a new wrench thrown in the works, the issue of Mormonism, or more specifically comments made recently by a pastor stating that Mormonism is a cult. Now this would not normally be a big deal but for the inconvenient fact that on again, off again front runner former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is himself a Mormon.
This is not the first time the issue of an individual’s faith has been brought up by some in or around the Republican Party. After the election of President Obama and before the issue of his birth certificate became a bone of contention, a few in the GOP looked upon Obama’s middle name ‘Hussein’, as well as the time he spent in predominantly Muslim Indonesia and questioned whether their President was really a Christian or was he in fact a Muslim in Christian clothing.
Former Bush Secretary of State, General Colin Powell (ret) answered this concern best by stating “and so what if he is”.
And that my friend is the point, so what if he is? Now full disclosure here, I myself am Anglican/Episcopalian however for much of my adult life have attended Catholic Churches, I married a Catholic and am raising my two children Catholic, so I can hardly be considered to have an ‘anti Christian bias’.
Republicans must remember (as Tea Partiers are so fond of claiming to do) the roots of their Republic’s history, and its constitution. From the time of the Mayflower Pilgrims who fled England and religious persecution, to the drafting of the constitution, America was to be a place where men (and eventually women) could worship freely as they pleased the deity that they pleased, or if they so chose not worship at all. That freedom of worship or not to worship is an essential part of the liberty that Americans love so dearly, and made the nation such a shining light in its formative years.
The problem for Republican Party insiders is that the challenges facing any new candidate are twofold: Firstly a large core of Republican support comes from Americans who consider themselves Evangelical Christians, any candidate they choose to run against Obama in 2012 has to prove their Evangelical ‘street cred’ in order not to lose a major part of the party’s base of support. The issue is though, that these supporters may not be enough to carry whichever candidate is chosen all the way to the White House. The eventual GOP candidate has to be able to not only appeal to the Evangelical base but reach out and be considered mainstream enough to win over undecided voters and soft Democrats to whom which religious service (if any) a nominee attends on Sunday or any other day is not their primary concern.
That in a nutshell is the issue facing the party. How to choose a candidate that will appeal to a broad section of American voters without alienating a large segment of the party’s evangelical base of support. The need to appeal to this Evangelical base is what results in the unseemly sight of Republican candidates tripping over each other to express out devoutly faithful a Christian they are before they can even string together a few coherent sentences on health care or foreign policy.
The founding fathers when writing the Constitution very specifically did not want their new Republic to have a state religion as was the case in nearly every nation in the old world at the time. Surely they would not have made an issue of or wanted an issue to be made of an individual’s faith, it was considered a private matter and runs contrary to the very founding principles of personal liberty they fought for.
The problem is this type of religious libertarianism puts the Republican Party in a bind. It has to find wedge issues to separate itself from the Democrats in the minds of voters. It could do this previously by being the party that was tough on security and asserting the U.S.’s place in the world. However it’s hard to claim now that the man who ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the world’s most wanted terrorist is soft on terrorism. So the other wedge issue is values, specifically Christian values and which party best represents the values they believe most Americans hold dear.
My advice to the current crop of Republican Candidates would be; if you’re running for public office, focus your debate on public policy not on what are personal matters of faith. While whomever eventually does become President maybe be guided by their faith in how they conduct themselves in office, they will know enough that they have to govern for all Americans of every faith.
Perhaps though a little food for thought from a higher source: “when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew, 6: 5- 6)
So dear Republican candidates, if you want to gain broad enough appeal to gain control of the White House in 2012, then keep private matters private and please remember that Public Office is about public policy.
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