Grace in business would be a return to real integrity and ethics in business (including environmental and social ethics). That would give the GOP something the stand for, something to be proud of once again. And it might give all those 20-somethings, who’ve no reason to ever vote Republican, who’ve been sold to all their lives, some consideration in the voting booth for the GOP.

Else, they’re a dead party walking. Because they stand too much for central authority, god and big business, not enough for everyday people. I would mourn that, my great-great-great uncle was Hannibal Hamlin’s secretary. But not too much, I’ve voted Dem all my life, for since Reagan, the party’s lost it’s way.

Peace.

Now you are quite correct that there’s another very dangerous mode of thinking that is popular in the party, you call it “Caesarism”, but we could more accurately say it’s the authoritarian neocon “commander-in-chief” mentality. Again, the idea is to find someone whose judgment is unquestionable, who can be relied on to preserve the party’s principles the way a Pope would be expected to preserve the catechism, or the Nicene Creed, etc. This is not really a political approach, it’s a religious one, which is why it probably isn’t proving very successful. It hamstrings the GOP, and makes their primaries a form of “holier-than-thou” contest – not alway just for religiousity, but for “who is most like Reagan”. One could summarize in one word: emotionalism. This may always succeed in arousing the faithful, but as with Palin, it often puts of the majority.

Which is why GOP political campaigns seem more like tent revival meetings aimed at conversion, rather than political appeals aimed at persuasion. I might remind you that the GOP didn’t always used to be that way. One simply can’t characterize EIsenhower, Nixon, or Ford or their parties in this manner. Rather, the GOP always used to be the sensibly-minded business party. As I’ve mentioned before, we can trace this development directly to Roe v Wade, and the way that cause has energized and motivated religious conservatives to become active in politics. There are real consequences to pursuing causes so deeply rooted in religious doctrine and belief. The problem is, the cause is so deep there are no conservatives of any stripe who would suggest it has been a mistake, much less one that needs to be corrected. And therein lies the tragic nature of the fall from Grace.

But I’ll leave you to parse out the causality, necessity, and so forth.

I’m not so certain as to plant myself on either side of this argument, but you raised an interesting hypothetical here that I hadn’t considered.

If African-Americans made up 36% – 38% of the Democratic Electorate, and the Democrats pandered to them by nominating unqualified hacks based on the color of their skin and making Affirmative Action a central plank of their party platform (aka abortion and gay marriage). Imagine then, after a disastrous two-term administration, that the African-American electorate comes out even more vociferously in the next election for a similar or worse candidate. The Democrats would be ridden out of Washington on a rail, and African Americans would rightfully get the brunt of the blame.

That is, because Evangelicals too often decide to vote based on who gives the superficial impression of the one who goes to church more regularly, they have enabled terrible governments.

Beyond this making Evangelicals the enablers of our abusers, this behavior indeed makes democracy a farce. I can go to church 7 days a week and be utterly Machiavellian. There are many potentially great presidents in this country, I’m sure, who don’t go to Christian church at all, and who are therefore completely precluded from high levels of government.

This is a very large part of our country’s problems. We should elect the best leaders to take us into the future, not the person who decides to spend time sitting in a pew (potentially plotting their self-serving plots therein).

Discrimination of all kinds is rot, as it keeps qualified people down and lifts the unqualified up. We need the best person as president. That’s it. We cannot afford anyone else. Discriminating against those the right can paint as not sufficiently religious, and basing votes superficial issues, brings downfall to everyone.

Yes, I understand that they never get as much as they want. But that’s more because of the constrains imposed by law and process and Constitution than because Bush or future friendly politician doesn’t try.

But his zeal to make amends by finding an even bigger monster to slay is a little off-putting. Having realized that he erred in railing against “Islamo-fascism” he has now decided that the fight against fundamentalism, very broadly and idiosyncratically defined, is the new defining struggle of our generation. His impulse to see every public policy issue as a manichean death-match isn’t a particularly helpful point of view.

Civil libertarians don’t have much pull over specific policies, and in that sense are parallel to evangelicals / fundamentalists. I agree on that much.

The massive difference, though, is that Republican politicians feel the need to pretend that they care very much what evangelicals say. They pander to them, they work very hard for their votes. John McCain was informed that he *had* to choose Sarah Palin, in order to shore up his cred with that side of the party.

Can you even imagine Obama, or any other Democratic nominee, being forced — forced!! — by the party to nominate a VP candidate to curry favor with the black community, or the civil liberties community?

“I’m sorry, Barack, but this Joe Biden guy just isn’t strong enough on civil liberties. You have to pick Russ Feingold or Dennis Kucinich to placate the base.”

Laugh out loud crazy, right?

And that’s the difference. The crazy right-wing Christian types (a la Ms. Parker) have huge pull over Republican politics, even though they don’t have much sway over policy. The crazy left-wing types (if we can thus designate people concerned for civil liberties in an age of unending war) has no similar clout.

And that is the sense in which Ms. Parker is correct.

On the whole, I would guess that they don’t, in part because they tend not to agree that there are that many things for which the GOP should be blamed. That is the original, huge blind spot. Part of this is a lack of self-criticism, but another part of it is a defensive reaction, which wild accusations that they are to blame for everything wrong with the GOP/America/the universe provoke. This defensiveness would then dovetail with an existing siege mentality.

…except, as we’ve seen during the Bush years, that isn’t enough.

And so what I want to know is this: Do conservative evangelicals, on the whole, accept any blame for what’s unfolded during the Bush years? Or are they – like the Angry White Male portion of the GOP base – entirely blameless, victims?

Can people whose lives are defined by faith ever get to a point where they are willing to admit that faith alone is not enough? Or is that quite impossible?