The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

The Republicans in control nowadays are running the risk of isolating a good number of people in America. At the end of the day, they could run themselves right out of the majority.

The problem I'm perceiving is that the folks in charge today paint themselves as religious conservatives, which is in favor, but necessarily isolates a huge portion of folks. Let's assume that most people take their religion and their politics separately. Even if we don't account for all the different religions and just say that one is either religious or secular and if we don't account for the spectrum of political positions and say that one is either conservative or liberal, then that leaves us with four types of people in this country.

One can be either a religious conservative, secular conservative, religious liberal, or a secular liberal under the (clearly oversimplified) parameters we defined. This gross oversimplification has merit because these are the parameters the current leaders are trying to cram all of us into. In fact, the current leaders are trying to cram us into only two of these four groups.

Many Republicans today are going out of their ways to be "religious conservatives" and are also making a point to paint everyone else as "secular liberals". Republican leaders are actually using the words "secular liberals" in speeches and what not defending their somewhat arbitrary stances on issues.

I think that's dangerous for them because they're isolating both of those missing groups. I think it's safe to assume that a religious conservative and a secular liberal will rarely agree on much, but those two in between groups are sortof up for grabs.

I'm guessing (without real evidence) that there aren't very many secular conservatives, but who knows? Certainly there are Republicans who are not enormously happy with the new religious bent of the party. The ones easiest for me to name are from the NY/NJ area - Christie Whitman, who wrote a book about it, Pataki, and Giuliani. These people are vocal about their perceived isolation within the party.

The religious liberals, which is a huge group of people, must feel slighted at the Republicans co-opting religion for political gain. Since something like 90% of people in America claim to be religious to some extent, one could argue that every blue state and every battleground state is rife with this fourth group. If someone is genuinely struggling between voting with their religious convictions and another similarly rational set of criteria that doesn't jibe with religion, then it would seem that the Republicans are making it easier for them to go the liberal route.

What goes without saying is that the Republicans are also effectively pushing out any non-Christians out there.