Mitt Romney is a slick political operator who changes his political stripes with ease to suit the constituent's demands of the time. There is nothing really wrong with that, representatives are supposed to barter their electorate's demands in the legislative or executive under the boundaries of constitutionally limited government. It does cause voters to shy away though is it gives the impression of the politician being a phony. Not to mention the concern they are as morally and ethically malleable as they are politically. American evangelical voters need to take a hard look at themselves and what their pursuit of political power is achieving and doing.
David Kuo in Tempting Faith, summarises the issues quite succintly:
Since the mid-1970s an with ever increasing passion, Christians like me have looked to politics to save America. We though that the right president, the right congress, and the right judge or justice would stop abortions, strengthen marriage, create a safer country for children, and ensure that religious faith was respected.Politics and governance often uses the tool of coercion. Especially when a minority is in governance and seeks to establish its agenda through legislation and executive force. The purpose of republicanism is to protect the rights of individuals from such legislative and executive intrusion by making rights inalienable. Evangelicals have sought to create a political monopoly through the US Republican Party in the Executive, Legislative and Judicial to enact their agenda. Despite their political success they have ultimately failed. The policies they sought to be enacted have not changed the underlying social system one iota. Kuo continues:
Our motivations were good ones. We wanted to save lives, homes, and our country. We saw ourselves as heirs to the Christian political tradition that fought against slavery and for women's right to vote. We had every right to be in the political fight.Unfortunately the evangelical view of a utopian society is a myopic one that is often hostile to competing lifestyles. Liberty is a miasma and ends in maximum heterogeniety, not legislatively informed homogeniety. Like any larger political movement it will come up against the wall of people doing what they want to do.
Now, however, it is time to take stock both politically and spiritually. Has our political focus produced the desired results? By 2008, we will have had a good conservative Republican in the Oval Office for twenty of the past twenty-eight years. Republicans have had outright control of both houses of Congress for most of the last twelve years. Republican Presidents have appointed the vast majority of American judges and seven of the nine Supreme Court justices. In short, we've had almost everything we wanted politically. But things are hardly better. Social statistics are largely unchanged. Divorces are rampant and more and more children are growing up in a home with one parent. Nearly a million and a half abortions are performed every year. There are more children in poverty today than there were twenty years ago. A great percentage of Americans lack health care than ever before. Educational achievement is hardly soaring. Millions of Americans live in what seems like utterly intractable poverty. We have had great political success and marginal political success.I would argue one of the problems with evangelical voting patterns is its lack of liberalism. Evangelicals, and especially their leaders, choose or back candidates based on the candidates confessional purity - not merit. Evangelicals helped elect one of the most incompetent Presidents in American history, not once, but twice. They also helped elect one of the most incompetent Congress' in American history as well. If they chose, supported and backed candidates based on merit they might have more chance of having some of their social policies enacted competently. Kuo continues:
There there is the spiritual side of things. As one prominent pastor has written, "What we've done is turn a mission field into a battlefield." What he means is that by so passionately pursuing politics, Christians have alienated everyone on the other side, many of them good people with genuine policy differences. People of goodwill of all faiths can disagree about tax cuts, health care policies, or the ware in Iraq. Yet the disagreements can prevent relationships, fellowship, and the chance to share Jesus. In countless discussions I have had with people across the country and around the neighbourhood, the name 'Jesus' doesn't bring to mind the things he said he wanted associated with his followers - love for one another; love for the poor, sick and imprisoned; self-denial and devotion to God. It is associated with antiabortion activities, opposition to gay rights, the Republican Party, and tax cuts.It isn't just the politics, the evangelicals and US Republican Party have pursued politics in a Schmittian manner redefining liberal debate, deliberation and consensus into friend enemy relationships where political disagreements become treason; where disagreement with the executive's authority makes one an enemy of the state; where politically weak minorities becomes foes of the nation. The repugnance for that type of politics in a liberal democracy cannot be understated.
