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>>>>I’ve been reading your posts and I don’t get your point. What’s your point?<<<<<

Hmmm.... lemme spell it out for you:

1) Parker thinks the “gorilla in the pulpit” for the GOP (a play on “elephant in the living room”) is the grossly disproportionate influence of the religious right.

2) Parker thinks that this influence creates a political ideology which is increasingly out of touch with the beliefs and desires of otherwise-conservative voters.

3) I personally believe it creates a GOP that is increasingly out of touch with its longstanding principles, and perverts the meaning of the word “conservatism”.

4) So here’s the point: I largely agree with Parker. Not every word, but the general thrust of her comments.

Hmm, that wasn’t your point. That was what you agreed with this woman about.

So, are you saying that you believe that taking into account the opinions of religious conservatives is a thing that should be stopped? The Republican party, conservative branch, should ridicule evangelicals in that branch, marginalize their importance and otherwise eliminate them from the conservative Republican branch in order to make a larger tent that will be filled with gay people and...who? I didn’t know that gays have been staying away from the conserv Repub because of evangelicals. I thought they might stay away if they were of the radical branch of gays who want to step on the so-called ‘Religionists’. Otherwise I can’t see any reason, if they truly believe in conservatism, why they’d stay away. You’re either for less government, lower taxes and the free market or you’re not. How does your sexual preference change that?

Seems to me that you and KP are suggesting that evangelicals be thrown out because they have religious beliefs and values. Make a wider tent, but make space in it by getting rid of evangelicals? What if those evangelicals are also conservatives? They like less government, lower taxes, the free market? Too bad? Or should they just shut up about their ‘oogledy boogeldy’ beliefs? Then they’ll be okay?

I think KP’s thinking is skewed. She wants to be all inclusive by excluding. Keep the evangelicals as long as they shut up and don’t be religious. Will she accept Muslims? Will they shut up and not be ‘religionists’? I doubt it.

MY point is that this is a free country and evangelicals are a part of that. (At least right now.) It wasn’t religion that lost the election, how ridiculous. It was a weak candidate, that no one in the party really wanted as the nominee, who refused to get the message out on his opponent, and who reached across the isle to the non-religionists at every turn.

I think KP suffers from Evangelical Derangement Syndrome. Total nonsense and playing the blame game. Evangelicals being her scapegoat.

So here’s the point: I largely agree with Parker. Not every word, but the general thrust of her comments.

Well, I certainly think that she ends her screed with a valid point. Her closing statement perhaps falls into the category of even a blind pig (sorry Kathleen) finding an acorn now and then:

Given those facts, the future of the GOP looks dim and dimmer if it stays the present course. Either the Republican Party needs a new base -- or the nation may need a new party...

Bingo, Kate! We may be approaching the time when a Christian Republican Party and a Fiscal Conservatives' Party could engage in some worthwhile deal making to at least hold the line against the Left in Congress. I am mindful of Germany's fate as a result of mischievous manipulation among splinter parties in the 1930's. But tensions within the GOP, IMHO, are becoming toxic.