Lisa's blog

Breaking news from CNN that Barack Obama has officially resigned his membership at Trinity United. This is unsurprising, as the church has caused nothing but trouble for Obama for the last several months.

But the underlying story here is the extent to which faith shapes our political opinions. There was, for example, widespread speculation that Romney's faith would hurt him in his presidential campaign. And indeed, many polls indicated that it was costing him Republican support at least to some extent. Obama, on the Democratic side, first had to fend off rumors that he was a closet Muslim. Subsequently he's been taken to task for his long-term involvement with a Christian church whose rhetoric is at times questionable at best. And this has in turn led to counteraccusations regarding the religious leadership associated with the Clintons and the McCains.

Ostensibly, most Americans agree that there is and should be a separation of church and state...that there should be no official American religion, and that a candidate should not be disqualified from seeking office on the basis of his faith (or, in some cases, his lack thereof). Yet faith is at the very core of who we are as a people -- Harris reported in 2003 that 90% of Americans believe in God and 36% attend church at least monthly. For many Americans, our values stem from our churches and our faith. So we can't help but assume that our candidates identify with the values espoused by their own churches. And thus we judge a candidate's moral and character fitness for office in part by the church s/he attends and its teaching.

Is this fair? I don't know. And I don't know if it matters whether it's fair. It just is. It's ingrained in who we are as a people, in how we think about our nation, and in how we think about ourselves as individuals. If we look back at the campaigns of Lieberman and Kennedy, it's clear religion has been an aspect of presidential politics for a long time. And yet I can't help but feel that in this election religion has played a larger role than it has in decades and decades. The question is whether the increased focus this year is merely an aberration, or rather a new precedent and indicator for the future of American politics.

Today the DNC rules and bylaws committee (streaming live at CNN and the Washington Post) meets to determine how and even if to seat delegations from Florida and Michigan. What's the significance for GOP supporters?

Well, there's no possible seating of the delegation that could result in a lead in the state delegates for Hillary. But she is petitioning today to have the tally from the two states included in the national popular vote tally. If she is successful in doing so - with Barack receiving zero votes in Michigan - then she will indeed overtake the popular vote lead nationally. This will give her a stronger argument that she should be the party's nominee, and there's an outside chance that she could eventually sway enough superdelegates to win the nomination.

Obviously, if Clinton is the nominee instead of Obama, the face of the entire general election is changed.  While the Clinton name inspires almost irrational levels of antipathy in certain states,  she is a more competitive opponent than Obama in Florida, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

But assuming that the committee meeting today does not result in Hillary overtaking the nomination, its ruling still impacts the general election. The complications of the primaries have hurt the Democratic Party's standing in both states. The DNC has the difficult task of coming up with a solution that satisfies voters in the two states involved without further widening the growing gulf between Hillary and Obama supporters. If the DNC fails to do the former, they effectively forfeit the two states' combined 44 electoral votes to McCain. If the DNC fails to do the latter - i.e., if the DNC approves a plan in which either Obama or Clinton appears robbed of their rightful votes, it will only further the animosity between the Obama and Clinton camps. The end result will be that many Democratic voters will be even more adamant in their refusal to vote for any other than their own preferred candidate in November. A reduced Democratic turnout in November would help Republican candidates across the board.

And finally, even if, somehow, the DNC finds a solution today which satisfies the states of Florida and Michigan and the campaigns and supporters of both Clinton and Obama, the DNC still faces the difficult prospect of reconciling the members of the two candidates' camps - so deeply divided in what has been a long, difficult, and emotional battle over the voting rights of the two states.

So while the GOP and its candidate is not ostensibly affected by the outcome of today's hearings, there are both short-term and long-term ramifications for this election, and many Republican voters, myself included, will be curious to see the committee's rulings today.

So why do we need a "next right"? What's wrong with the one we have now?

Well, simply put, the Right is wrong.

The Right is wrong and the Republican Party is in the midst of an identity crisis.

If you know the history of the Republican Party, you know that the party is, first and foremost, one of fiscal responsibility and limited federal reach. These two pillars represent the very essence of conservative politics. Yet the political forces that call themselves the Right no longer represent conservative interests, except perhaps in the social/religious sense. These forces operate under the Republican name but defend none of the values central to the GOP.

Consider:

Republicans have traditionally been the party of fiscal responsibility, but no more. The only options anymore seem to be "tax and spend" with the Democrats or "spend and spend" with the Republicans. These new Republicans like to pretend that the party promotes tax cuts. But with a true tax cut comes a requisite cut in spending. The current Republicans simply ramp up spending while offering us a tax deferral - the opportunity to transfer the tax burden to our kids - and then they advertise the deal as a tax cut.

This new incarnation of the GOP is no longer in any sense conservative on foreign policy. The approach is to bomb now, ask questions later. A true conservative approach is to maintain a capable defense, but reserve its use only for matters of the most urgent national interest, after all other options are exhausted.

The Republicans - once the guardians of civil liberties and personal privacy - no longer even respect the rights of the individual to be free from government encroachment. The party justifies wiretapping, email interception, seizure of library/phone/credit records and any matter of other indiscretions all in the name of homeland security. And worse, these Republicans, the so-called "compassionate conservatives," condone torture and enhanced interrogation - outright violations of both civil liberty and international law.

And so the Right is wrong. It is wrong in advertising itself as a conservative force. It is wrong in operating under the guise of the Republican Party while supporting policies that run counter to the very essence of the party's principles.

Yet there is hope. There are those of us who still believe in the heart and soul of the traditional GOP: that government should be limited at the federal level, that it bears the burden of fiscally responsible decision making, that it must respect the rights of the common man, that it does not become unnecessarily involved overseas. There are those of us who remain hopeful that the party will return to its roots, and will free itself from the clutches of the neocon movement. And there are those of us commited to joining forces with likeminded souls to take back our party.

I believe we can do it.  I believe we must do it. Because I fear that if this status quo remains much longer, that this new incarnation of the Republican Party will no longer be simply a perversion of the party, it will have become the party. And if that were to happen, it would be to the detriment of not only our party, but also of our nation as a whole.