I liked his writing. And I tend to read authors like that. If I find something I like, I look at the other things he's written. I read 20 Patrick O Brian novels in sequence one summer.
Their religious beliefs are definitely NOT going to create more democrats. But, somehow, such people earn, here at the premier conservative forum, not mercy. But contempt. So, what does this do? Whose interests are served as a wedge is so thoroughly driven between 'rational conservatives' and 'social conservatives', esp if the latter get demoralized ... by an 'ally'?
You argue as if the Dems winning is the only bad thing that could happen. It isn't. In a two party system, we choose between the lesser of two evils, and the relative evil can always change. A total theocratic takeover of the GOP might not make me vote Dem (I can't think offhand of anything that would do that), but it would certainly cause me to vote Libertarian.
Also, there are other values, like truth. I expect Dems to lie, so it doesn't bother me at all when they do. I don't like it when conservatives do it. I expect better from conservatives. (Though this was never any consolation to me when my Dad said it to me to explain why I wasn't allowed to do what the other kids all did)
And as for never learning, if someone would link to one mainstream conservative magazine which denounces I.D. as harmful for repbulicans, maybe that would make a difference.
I can link to columns by John Derbyshire and George Will that argue this. NR tends to present both sides of the issue (as long as they're both conservative), so they're not going to denounce ID monolithically.
4.4 weeks to go...