Talk About Out of Touch!

I didn't see the most recent Republican debate. I won't have to. They answered all my questions just by being there. Now I have to confess. I'm one of those "fundamentalists," which of course, according to the news media, means I go to church on days that are not Christmas, Easter, or funerals. I guess that makes me part of the "religious right."

But I digress. This is not about the ongoing befuddlement the media has with the fact that most Americans actually believe in a God that closely resembles the one depicted in the Bible. This post is about how far the once-mighty Republican party has fallen.

I have tried to watch all these straw people climbing over each other, and it's hard to get excited about any of them. With the possible exception of Rudy Giuliani, who ought not to even be a Republican anyway, they all claim to want to win the evangelical Christian base that Ronald Reagan reached in the 1980's.

I have a hint to any future Republican candidate: that base is out there, and still reachable, but any idiot should know this one: You're not going to reach any of them debating on a Sunday morning!

If any one of these mentally numbing stuffed shirts had thought about it, he would have realized that he could have won the debate hands down by making a simple statement: "I will not be at the debate on Sunday morning; I will be in church."

Such a statement would have left all the others scrambling for damage control. I especially am perplexed that former Reverend Huckabee did not understand this -- he was once a Southern Baptist pastor.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not commenting on their church going habits. I'm talking about campaign strategy. Did none of them have even one person on their staff that could venture, "Uh, sir, a Sunday morning debate will not cement any support from the largest voting bloc you're trying to court right now."

Not only are these candidates completely out of touch with the electorate; they don't have any intelligent advisers either. Do I really want another president like Bush -- a decent, moral, upstanding type of guy who has absolutely nobody with any integrity (outside of his own wife) to guide him? I know when I voted for Bush, I did not vote for Karl Rove, and I really wished I could split my ticket and not vote for Cheney either, but he came with the package, kind of like MTV comes with my "family" package on cable TV. The only difference between Bush and these guys, though, is that, whatever you think of Bush, he towers over this anemic list of candidates. And none of them remember that over 50 million Americans go to church every Sunday morning. Fifty million votes would elect anyone president.

Is it just me? Was this possibly the stupidest move in the history of the Republican party? Well, it's there with Watergate, Teapot Dome, and all of 2006, to be sure. When I hear Hilary Clinton put on a southern drawl and start talkin' 'bout Jeee-sus in a Mississippi pulpit, I realize that she's only perfecting what her husband was an expert at: lying. When Barak Obama talks about his "faith," I know he's just looking for some of those undecided "church people" votes. Now, when a Republican candidate postures his own religious piety, I can answer him as well, in the ancient words of Saint James, "Faith without works is dead."