Time for Christians to get out the vote

Daily media stories are full of doom and gloom for Republicans. If we are to believe these election accounts, the GOP is in an out-of-control downward spiral that cannot be fixed before the Nov. 7 elections.

I don't claim to be an election authority, but I've been around a long time, and I have learned that the polls and the pundits aren't always right I think the pollsters may be off target in terms of this election.

My primary reason for believing this is based in my relationship with the so-called "religious right," or the old Moral Majority.

I don't believe the polls accurately depict the preparedness of the conservative Christian community to vote. Sure, I think the recent Foley scandal and other government indignities have discouraged some, but when you get down to brass tacks, these controversies don't alter our core values.

Christians continue to want to elect those candidates that best reflect their biblical values and support the issues that have defined our movement since we swept Ronald Reagan into the Oval Office in 1980. Our values have not changed.

As Gary Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, says, "The right to life and traditional marriage are not wedge issues, they are winning issues. Values issues are not distractions from the business of governing. They are central to the survival of our republic."

If Christians were a little complacent about the approaching elections, I believe this week's New Jersey Supreme Court ruling, that the state must tender rights of marriage to homosexual couples, has rejuvenated our constituency.

This ruling is a striking reminder that many of our nation's jurists have jumped on the politically correct bandwagon and are attempting to force their will on the people. We simply must elect lawmakers – whether Democrat or Republican – who seek to protect traditional marriage and the unborn.

I read with interest this week that Sen. Hillary Clinton said that her outlook on homosexual marriage "has certainly evolved."

This gives Mrs. Clinton, who has previously said that she does not support same-sex marriage, a political out. She can simply "evolve" into what she needs to be to recruit the voters she thinks she needs.

When one's core values are swinging in the wind, they're certainly not worth a whole lot.

I don't believe the conservative Christian community – whose core values are deeply rooted in the Bible – are ready to allow fickle politicians to determine that traditional marriage is suddenly obsolete.

So that brings us to the November elections and the key question of the day: Will the "values voters" show up at the polls?

I am urging Christians across this nation to study the candidates and the issues and then go to the polls to vote for those men and women that best reflect our values.

This election is far from over, even though many pundits want us to believe it is.

Let's get out and vote. In the seven states where there are marriage protection amendments on the ballots – Arizona, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin – I urge Christians to make their voices heard.

Pastors, this Sunday, encourage all of your parishioners to be at the polls on Nov. 7 to accomplish their Christian responsibility. Let's prove that the "religious right" continues to be a very significant voting bloc.

"Pastors, this Sunday, encourage all of your parishioners to be at the polls on Nov. 7 to accomplish their Christian responsibility. Let's prove that the "religious right" continues to be a very significant voting bloc."

I agree completely, and before they go to the polls, they should read Peggy Noonan's latest column. The centrist parties have both proved themselves incapable of resisting the temptation to pursue power with other people's money once they get into office. It is remotely possible that one of them might be nudged back to the principles for which it supposedly stands, but not by rewarding it for thumbing its nose at its own base.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110009154

Is There Progress Through Loss?
A national election, a national decision.

Friday, October 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

A year ago I wrote a column called "A Separate Peace," in which I said America's leaders in all areas--government, business, journalism--were in some deep way checking out. They saw bad things coming in the world and for our country, didn't think they could do anything about it, and were instead building a new pool or buying good memories for their kids. Soon after I was invited to address a group of Capitol Hill staffers to talk about the piece. When the meeting was over a woman walked up to me. She spoke of what was going wrong in Washington--the preoccupation with money, a lack of focus on the essentials, and the relentless dynamic of politics: first thing you do when you get power is move to keep power. And after a while you don't have any move but that move.

I said I thought the Republicans would take it on the chin in 2006, and that would force the beginning of wisdom. She surprised me. She was after all a significant staffer giving all her energy to helping advance conservative ideas within the Congress. "Yes," she said, in a quiet, deadly way. As in: I can't wait. As in: We'll get progress only through loss.

That's a year ago, from the Hill.

This is two weeks ago, from a Bush appointee: "I hope they lose the House." And one week ago, from a veteran of two GOP White Houses: "I hope they lose Congress." Republicans this year don't say "we" so much.

What is behind this? A lot of things, but here's a central one: They want to fire Congress because they can't fire President Bush.

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There remains a broad, reflexive, and very Republican kind of loyalty to George Bush. He is a war president with troops in the field. You can see his heart. He led us in a very human way through 9/11, from the early missteps to the later surefootedness. He was literally surefooted on the rubble that day he threw his arm around the retired fireman and said the people who did this will hear from all of us soon.

Images like that fix themselves in the heart. They're why Mr. Bush's popularity is at 38%. Without them it wouldn't be so high.

But there's unease in the base too, again for many reasons. One is that it's clear now to everyone in the Republican Party that Mr. Bush has changed the modern governing definition of "conservative."

He did this without asking. He did it even without explaining. He didn't go to the people whose loyalty and support raised him high and say, "This is what I'm doing, this is why I'm changing things, here's my thinking, here are the implications." The cynics around him likely thought this a good thing. To explain is to make things clearer, or at least to try, and they probably didn't want it clear. They had the best of both worlds, a conservative reputation and a liberal reality.

And Republicans, most of whom are conservative in at least general ways, and who endure the disadvantages of being conservative because they actually believe in ideas, in philosophy, in an understanding of the relation of man and the state, are still somewhat concussed. The conservative tradition on foreign affairs is prudent realism; the conservative position on borders is that they must be governed; the conservative position on high spending is that it is obnoxious and generationally irresponsible. Etc.

This is not how Mr. Bush has governed. And so in the base today personal loyalty, and affection, bumps up against intellectual unease.

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Read the orginal for the rest.

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