The problem is all the people who claim to be Christian are not Christian. The man who threatened me the most, who stalked me, who forced me to sell my home, introduced himself as, “I’m a good Christian man.” A true Christian is known by his works. If you have to tell me you’re Christian, then you aren’t.
There are a lot of good people on FR. But they’ll pick some litmus test, often based not on what the politician has done, but what the press reports and they say, “if he isn’t on my side on X then I’ll just stay home.” They don’t understand how politics works. The politician has a firm belief in X. But he’s offered, “if you vote against X on my bill, then I’ll support your bill on Y.” Now he has to do some calculations. If he votes against his firmly held position on X what is the probability that X will pass versus Y passing? He gambles. Also, this gives the opposition an opportunity to call him out on his vote for or against X, which the hardline FR person picks up on never realizing that the bill failed but Y passed. That is how the game is played. What we have to do is elect people who know how to work the odds and then stick with them rather than staying home because the press convinced us how bad he was.
The Chrisitan nonvoter gets to feel righteous about his litmus test without ever understanding how politics works.
That’s the very game that got us where we are today.