Christians and the Republican Party, Continued Again

I came across this transcript of a talk radio program from November. It is by Steve Deace, from WHO Radio, the 50,000 watt blowtorch in Des Moines, Iowa. The great Ronald Reagan worked at that station as a young man, before moving on to bigger and better things. Steve Deace is a conservative Christian, and formerly hosted sports talk shows in that market, but was fired more than once for branching out into politics and religion on his sports shows. So, WHO gave him a political talk show. This is from November 14, 2006, one week after the Republican bloodbath on Election Day. It is Iowa-centric, as his show is local, but I like the principles involved. Steve Deace at WHO:

In a nutshell, I think the election was about the values voters again. This time the values voters were Democrats and Independents like Catholics on the South Side of Des Moines who were sick of getting lectured to about moral values and were sick of being called godless from the folks who hang out with Mark Foley, Rush Limbaugh, and Ted Haggard. This time the values voters were Republicans who stayed home rather than support the people who gave Jack Abramoff unfettered access to the process for the right price, and talked out of both sides of their mouth about family values. This time the values voters were Americans who couldn't understand why we should Stay the Course in Iraq when everyone with a brain could see we were really on a collision course there. This time the values voters were Americans who served their country in the military and were skeptical about our foreign policy, and they were tired of having their patriotism questioned for doing so by folks who never wore a uniform.

This time the values voters gave a swift, hard kick to the shins of the Republican Party. But they didn't do it so that Democrats could enact a leftist agenda from academia or Hollyweird. They did it because the Democrats were the only check and balance they had on the drunk with arrogance and rife with hypocrisy GOP. The Democrats were sadly the only option left.

But as values voters, particularly if our values come from our Christian faith, I think we're tired of being reactionaries. We're tired of the lesser of two evils. We want to go on the offensive, without being offensive. We're not wise as serpents and innocent as doves. We're really coming across as soothing as fire ants and as dumb as a box of rocks. We don't understand how the system really works. We don't understand why the people we vote for don't go and do what we tell them to.

So we think if we can take over a party and re-write its platform we've made a difference. We think if we scream louder people will hear us. We're so eager to be heard and to make a difference that any politicians that can quote a few Scripture verses and call Jesus his favorite philosopher makes us swoon like groupies.

It's not working. We're doing it wrong. We're not impacting the system. We're actually pawns of it. We're not Salt & Light. We're actually lambs led to slaughter. And our message is being corrupted and used as a partisan weapon, not healing. What values voters need to do is make their values common sense values, like they were a generation or two ago. And for them to be common sense, they must first become common again, just like they were a generation or two ago.

That's why I laid out a vision for values voters to become a cultural version of Farm Bureau. When we come back I'll explain again what we mean by that, and explain to you why I think it's the only approach that will work for the values voters. We're going to conduct a political science class from the school of hard knocks and street smarts.

Farm Bureau is a group that so believes in the value of agriculture to our state's economy and heritage that it focuses all of its energies implementing its vision. Given the candidates it has endorsed over the years, I'm guessing that most of the folks at Farm Bureau are right of center. But do you think that because Democrats are in power in the Statehouse now they're just going to stop advancing their agenda? Of course not. And guess what, even though Farm Bureau may have endorsed some of their Republican opponents the Democrats don't want them to, either.

What do you think the right of center hierarchy at Farm Bureau did the day after Republicans got slaughtered in the elections? They did what the hierarchy at any organization would've done a freakishly warm 70-degree day in November.

They went golfing at Glen Oaks.

Sure, there might have been some hand-wringing individually because beyond agriculture there are issues that some of the individuals there care about. And those issues are in jeopardy with a left of center majority. But Farm Bureau will get what it wants whether Jim Nussle or Chet Culver wins. It's going to get a piece of the pie no matter who is in power, it's just a matter of what flavor of pie it is.

While those Farm Bureau execs were golfing at Glen Oaks on Wednesday, their cell phones rang. It was somebody from Leonard Boswell's office, wanting to know what they wanted in the next Farm Bill. It was somebody from Tom Harkin's office wanting to know the same. It was somebody from Chet Culver's campaign wanting to know how they could work together. You know what, those phone calls might have been made by Boswell, Harkin, and Culver themselves!

Why would Democrats do that? Because politics is a racket and all rackets are a numbers game. Farm Bureau has the numbers, and any good politician will move where the food is.

Folks, this isn't cynical. It's the system. Too many value voters believe they can impact the system from the inside out. Instead, influence is exerted on the political process from the outside in. This is what the media and special interests groups get that values voters don't. We values voters think we can infiltrate the ranks of a political party's hierarchy and reform it. They think they can make it holy by the virtue of their being there. And in a small sense they can, but in the big picture they can't.

This is why Jesus didn't overthrow the Roman government. He saw the bigger picture. This is why he built a church upon a rock, not a political party.

A political party exists to attain worldly power through the means of raising money and winning elections. Values Voters are called to set aside earthly power and rewards for heavenly gain and eternal salvation. Do you see now why we values voters are consistently frustrated with the political parties?

Too many value voters are naively acting like they can actually make the Republican Party the Moral Majority. Too many value voters are naively acting like they can actually make the Democratic Party Feed the Children. You can't. How many more times must we beat our heads against the wall and how many more times must we attack windmills with toothbrushes before we figure this out?

The Parties aren't interested in saving America, let alone the world. That's the job of the Church. The Parties are interested in winning. Period. End of sentence. That's it. That's all they care about. For the Parties winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.

Why? Because winning gets you power and power gets you paid. It's all about the Benjamins. It's why guys like Bill Knapp and Jim Cownie will eventually get their way no matter who is in power. There aren't any stark differences between these two very successful and powerful men.

So all they did was split the pie in half, with Cownie getting the Republicans and Knapp getting the Democrats. But it's the same pot of gold going to both sides. And then everyone still toasts each other at the same cocktail parties at 801 Grand no matter who wins.

This isn't a corruption of the system, it is the system. It's the system our brilliant Founding Fathers gave us. These men varied in their religious fervor to some degree or another, but they all shared a common Judeo-Christian ethic. And the Judeo-Christian ethic says that human beings are not inherently good. The Judeo-Christian ethic says that human beings are selfish and sinful. The Judeo-Christian ethic says that human beings need saving, most of the time from themselves.

That's why they gave us a system of checks and balances. They gave us a triune government, each branch with its own characteristics. They gave us a system where the government was to be afraid of its people as opposed to the other way around.

They gave us a system that avoided oligarchy and monarchy. Where each branch has oversight of the other. And then they gave us the right to keep and bear arms because tyranny might think twice about trying to oppress a people that can shoot back.

Our system works, if we work it. But the system isn't perfect, heck nothing made by human beings is. Our Matrix has one fatal flaw. For power to the people to work it requires, as John Adams himself wrote, a moral and God-fearing people to make it work for the benefit of all the people.

Otherwise those who want to redefine right from wrong and aren't God-fearing would be able to utilize the system to implement all sorts of corruption and deviancy.

This is what is happening today. Let's discuss how to reverse that trend.

So, how do values voters make the system work for them?

Have you wondered why leftists in Hollywood, academia, the bench, the media, or at the ACLU are constantly accusing us of trying to institute a theocracy when the cultural tide seems to be in their favor? Have you ever wondered why they also accuse you of trying to impose your values on them when in reality their values seem to dominating our culture? That's because evil often accuses good of doing what it's doing. And you know what, evil is afraid good will figure out the scam and turn the tables on them.

We're not the theocrats, they are. We're not the ones demanding that the account of how human beings got here that lines up with our worldview can be the only one taught in the public schools. They are. We're not the ones remaking public institutions in our religious image, they are. Remember, secular humanism is classified as a religion by the Supreme Court.

But here's what they know and we haven't figured out yet. There's more of us than them! And that's what they're most afraid of. They're greatest nightmare is that one day we will figure out how to use the system just like they do.

These leftists make up a scant percentage of Americans, but they hold a drastically disproportionate amount of the political power in this country. 35% of Americans identify themselves in polls as evangelicals. 35%! That would represent the biggest voting block in America. The feminists can't deliver 35% of the voters. The gun owners can't deliver 35% of the voters. The NEA can't deliver 35% of the voters. The gay and bisexual lobby represents 3% of America according to the latest census data, but it's also one of the most powerful lobbyist groups in the country. Can you imagine what 35% could do?

On top of that, polls don't typically identify black Christians like my friend Jonathan Narcisse as an evangelical. But he's more conservative than I am. What about all those predominantly black ministries that preach the Word of God every Sunday?

On top of that, what about all those practicing Catholics who take the thousands of years old teachings and traditions of their ministry seriously in their daily lives? Do the math on this.

Orthodox Christianity has the numbers to be the biggest and most influential voting block in America. But it can't do that by selling out to one of the parties. Instead it must its numbers to leverage the parties and get the parties to sell out to them. I'm not talking about bullying or making a power play. I'm talking about working the system we have. We work it like wise serpents, but we do so with the right motives and for the right causes so we're innocent as doves.

Politics is all about math, and the numbers are on our side. The problem is we're divided, and too busy trying to get each other to buy 100% of each other's agendas. That's not the way the system works. The system works by taking what you can get. Now, some of you are saying, “but Steve that's what we've been trying to do the whole time before you turned your back on the GOP. You're contradicting yourself.”

No, I'm not.

Why take just what we can get from the Republicans, when we can also take what we can get from the Democrats, too?

This is what Farm Bureau does. Farm Bureau can get tax breaks for farmers from a Tom Harkin who never saw a tax he couldn't raise, and it can government handout subsidies from the fiscal conservative Chuck Grassley.

It other words, it gets French Silk Pie from the Democrats and Dutch Apple from the Republicans.

Orthodox Christianity, or values voters, can do the same thing because we've got more numbers than anyone else does. We can do it if we give up the searching for the fool's gold of the perfect candidate and party. It will never happen.

So, we can sit around trying to convince Cyrus and Darius to worship the one, true God, or we can use them to send us back to our homeland and give us the money to rebuild the temple. I can scream about how dark the room is, or I can just light a candle. I can hold a sign on a street corner about social injustice or abortion, or I can work the system to get rid of both.

You work the system by allowing your issues to be co-opted, not letting it happen. You don't let the Republicans become the party of family values, you let the Democrats do it because they'd love to be liked by the folks in the suburbs, too. You don't let the Democrats become the party of the poor, you let the Republicans do it because they'd love to be considered compassionate just once.

Are you following me on this?

This is how everyone else uses the system and gets ahead of us, even though we have more of them and keep beating them in elections. They have figured out how to use the system.

A church is positively impacted by great moral leadership from the top down and the vision comes from the inside out. But a political party has no vision and even its greatest visionaries can be negatively influenced. Reagan and FDR are the two greatest presidents of the 20th century, but one tried to illegally stack the Supreme Court and the other tried to illegally fund the Contras. Our politicians aren't pastors. They're more like CEOs. And we are the shareholders. The CEO makes the big salary, but the shareholders influence the CEO because they're the ones paying his salary. And any good CEO listens to his shareholders, even the ones that didn't vote for him to be CEO, because he likes earning that big salary.

Steve Sheffler and the Iowa Christian Alliance shouldn't have been with the Republican Party's gathering for election night losers at the Savory on Tuesday. He instead should've been at the Hotel Fort Des Moines with the winners, huddling with those precious few Democrats that voted for the marriage amendment and strategizing about how to influence a Culver administration.

For example, values voters in the Iowa Caucasus shouldn't worry about whether or not Sam Brownback or Mike Huckabee can be everything they're looking for. We're not running for pastor. We're running for president. They should instead be looking for the opportunist that can be the most easily influenced out of a lust for power. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. God can use John McCain just like he can use Mitt Romney. In fact, the more spineless and power-driven the politician the more easily he can be influenced.

If values voters went to the Iowa Democratic Party with a blank check and 25,000 names of folks who would switch party affiliation if they agreed to ban all abortions after the first trimester. Guess what, they would. If the gay rights lobby shows up at the Republican Party with more money and potential voters than the Christian Right, guess what? The Republican Party will suddenly become the party of tolerance. This is the way the game is played.

The Republican Party doesn't care about Christian Morality and never will. It cares about getting the votes of those that do. The Democratic Party doesn't care about Christian charity and never will, it cares about the votes of those that do.

So, values voters, stop treating politics like the Church. Instead, treat it like the whore of Babylon. We have the votes. We're the largest block of voters in the country. It's not a matter of which party will do what we tell them, it's really about which party gets the honor and privilege of doing what we tell them to do.

That's the way we need to roll.

Remember yesterday, when Ted Sporer of the Polk County Republican Party said over and over how the GOP is afraid of being called intolerant and being described as uncompassionate? Well, you know what, the Democrats hate being called godless and unpatriotic, too. The majority party has the most power politically, but that also makes it the most sensitive criticism because once in power they want to keep that power.

That's why Dubya gave us a Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit and Clinton gave us the Defense of Marriage Act. That's why Dubya didn't close the borders, but Clinton did welfare reform. Dubya and Clinton both looked for every possibility to co-opt their opposition's issues because they want to get re-elected. Now not all politicians are like, only about 75% of them. But the entire system is like that. Why do you think Indian Reservations are exempted from McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform? Could it be that Indian reservations in Arizona give McCain a lot of money?

We don't need to keep fighting for a political purity that is never forthcoming. We just need to understand how the system really works and work it. Politics is a business, and in any business the customer is always right. And values voters are the largest block of customers in politics.