“You’re saying that you don’t want to be in the GOP if it’s not a Christian party?”
The GOP isn’t a Christian party to begin with, so the whole premise is a red herring. The real implication is that we need to distance ourselves from social issues of importance to Christians, in order to be more “welcoming” towards some elusive groups of voters who would never vote loyally for us anyway. I’m saying, you are going to alienate Christians with that approach and it will be doubly counterproductive. You won’t gain the votes you hope to gain, and you will lose votes you already have.
“Whenever a Gujarati or Sikh businessman comes to a Republican event, it begins with an appeal to Jesus Christ,” conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza recently told The New York Times Magazine. “While the Democrats are really good at making the outsider feel at home, the Republicans make little or no effort.”
My friend and colleague Ramesh Ponnuru, an Indian American and devout Catholic, says the GOP has a problem with seeming like a “club for Christians.”
That rings true to me. I’ve attended dozens of conservative events where, as the speaker, I was, in effect, the guest of honor, and yet the opening invocation made no account of the fact that the guest of honor wasn’t a Christian. I’ve never taken offense, but I can imagine how it might seem to someone who felt like he was even less a part of the club.
Would you like to respond to the actual article?