Something Political
Doug Phillips has some gracious comments and good advice regarding the results of this election. His words sum up my position so well, that I’m going to quote him extensively here. Also, in case you are avoiding visiting Blogs for Peroutka, I’d like to announce that the bloggers there are going to continue with our mission of promoting biblical thinking in the realm of politics and culture, as well as educating folks about the principles outlined in the Constitution Party’s platform. Our new blog will be called The Backwater Report. It should be up and running within a week.
From Doug Phillips:
The Next Four Years
We must learn from history and experience. Republicans are significantly more conservative when they are out of office. With Republican control over the Senate, House and Executive Branch, key checks and balances are absent. Christians must rise above partisan loyalties, must remain informed on the issues, and must hold our friends accountable to an objective and transcendent standard. If we love the President, we can do nothing less.
Paralyzed by the fear of a Kerry victory, Christians have largely failed to speak truth to our President and to one another. We have made the issue John Kerry, rather than the objective standards of God to which all leaders are held to account. The present Administration has embraced civil unions and legal rights for sodomites, sending women into combat, the highest tax payer subsidies for Planned Parenthood in American history, and massive federal involvement in education, and he has denied the essence of the Christianity on national television by claiming that Islam can lead people to Heavan. By and large, Christians have refused to believe the truth, have refused to act on the truth, or have actively covered the truth because they have made their goal partisan outcomes rather than the righteousness of God which exalteth a nation.
We can not continue down this path for four more years. We should fear the impact on our nation of Christian compromise more than the spread of humanism. Because Christians are Gods chosen people, we have a special duty to rise above partisan interests and factionalism so that we can be the Lords representatives in this nation. We must be the first to praise a leader for righteous conduct and the first to hold leaders accountable for advocating policies which are an offense to the moral law of God. We must eschew the hypocritical and idolatrous tendency often found in our camp to berate Democrats for sins, but to cover, deny and even facilitate the sins of Republicans. We must be the one group that is known as truly independent of partisan factionalism. We must be the one group that always raises the righteous standard in the land.
November 3rd, 2004 at 3:29 pm
Matthew 13:43 " He who has ears, let him hear"
November 3rd, 2004 at 5:23 pm
Dear Carmon,
I notice that Mr. Peroutka did very well in Florida and California. I can’t seem to find his total numbers. Do you have a link that shows his total vote count?
Good idea to keep the information coming! I like your new blog name.
Thanks,
Donna
November 3rd, 2004 at 6:44 pm
Check back at Blogs For Peroutka sometime tomorrow afternoon, Donna, and I’ll have the information up.
November 3rd, 2004 at 8:05 pm
Thanks Pieter!
November 4th, 2004 at 1:52 am
Donna,
In Florida, he rec’d .0008% of the vote.
In California and Ohio, about .002% of the vote.
November 4th, 2004 at 7:08 am
A whole .08 percent of the votes in NJ went to Peroutka. That’s 2,904 votes. A Jeff came to my site and said he tallied up 130,000 votes nationwide.
I can’t wait to see a full detailed analysis.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:12 pm
Hi y’all!
I mixed up the figures a bit when I gave them to the Duchess. It’s actually .08% in Florida, and .2% in Ohio. My major was history, not mathematics. . .
Yep, with numbers like these, I’m sure the Constitution Party is causing Rove and Co a lot of sleepless nights.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:14 pm
Just teasing. Some of the nicest people I know are Constitution Partiers. Misguided, of course, but nice.
November 4th, 2004 at 1:51 pm
Welcome, John. I can always take a little good-natured teasing. I’m a thick-skinned Prairie Muffin.
Believe it or not, CP supporters are much more realists than you might suppose. While victory would be nice, just fighting the battles is worth a lot, too. I can think of a lot of "lost causes," both in the Bible and history, that were vindicated in the end. I agree that Karl Rove is sleeping peacefully. I doubt we will cause him any insomnia, but I bet God will someday give him a wake-up call. Especially after he so cravenly used the evangelical right to get his man elected in a touch-and-go race, thinking they were supporting "traditional marriage," then just as calculatedly paraded lesbian Mary Cheney and her partner onto the stage as the president gave his acceptance speech (scroll down for the video).
There are some other numbers we might mention. With a very small budget, Jim Clymer ran as the CP candidate in Pennsylvania against Bush’s friend, Arlen Specter, the most pro-abortion Republican senator in history. Clymer got 200,000 votes from folks who couldn’t just "hold their nose and vote" for Specter, who supports murdering babies. In the primary, Specter ran against a very electable prolife candidate, but the president campaigned for the pro-abortion Specter, who won. Now he’s expected to be made head of the Senate judiciary committee, and he’s already warned Bush that he won’t allow any pro-life nominees past the committee.
So we may be tilting at windmills, but we do it because we can’t just sit back and be complacent about the status quo. Any prolife Republicans need to at least be the buzzing gnats who let this administration know that they expect it to use this term to make some substantive gains in the prolife battle. There’s no excuse now for that not to happen with majorities in both houses of Congress and a Republican president. He could at the least refuse to sign any bill with abortion funding. We’ll see.
November 4th, 2004 at 2:06 pm
Hi Carmon.. .
Actually, I think not backing Toomey was one of Bush’s biggest political miscals. Overall he’s been absolutely brilliant in his downballot campaigning, and we have some dynamic conservatives like Coburn thanks in large part to him. Toomey was a big mistake, though given the closeness of the margin, I can understand why they did it at the time.
The Clymer sitch was GREAT. I’m glad they did that.
I wrote about something similar on my blog awhile back:
"A Practical Role for the Constitution Party
If I were Terry McAuliffe, I would bankroll the Constitution Party. What better way to weaken an opponent? It’s like buying an electoral desert island and encouraging many of the brightest, most articulate people in the opposing camp to go into self-exile there. The Party expends itself on symbolic gestures, and marginalizes conservatives in day-to-day politics by removing them from the centers of power.
But there is a way the Connies could have a positive impact — by organizing at the state and local level as the Conservative Party in NY has. The Conservatives are a genuine force there (they’re one of the few 3rd parties to elect a US senator), and candidates eagerly seek their endorsement. In States with open primaries, such an organization would allow Connies to remain outside of the Republican Party (as some believe their conscience dictates), and still allow them to pull the Republican Party to the right. They could endorse and vote for Rs that they liked, and run independent candidates when the Rs put up a Rockefeller-Winger.
Such an organization would be wooed by the Republican establishment, and help keep conservatives from being taken for granted."
Anyway, it’s late here, but it’s been nice talking with you a bit. We cross paths here in the blogosphere, but have rarely interacted. God bless.
November 4th, 2004 at 2:07 pm
So Clymer got more votes in Pennsylvania than Peroutka got in the entire nation?
Yes, Bush made a mistake on Specter, but that should not keep you from writing your Republican senators (if you have them) and Sen. Frist stating that you want them to block Specter’s post. There is nothing that says he *has* to be given the position. If evangelicals overwhelm them with emails, letters and calls in the aftermath of an election in which evangelicals are credited with handing them the elections, then they may just listen.
November 4th, 2004 at 2:47 pm
John, Bush also supported Arnold over the very electable prolife Tom McClintock in California, and he helped his proabortion, prohomosexual friend Gerald Parsky (his CA campaign manager) to highjack the party from the true conservatives. Now we have a proabortion, prohomosexual Republican governor who is drooled over by all the Republicans and who may be the reason our Constitution gets changed to allow non-naturalized citizens to become president. Arnold just gifted our state with more debt in the form of a bond measure he went out of his way to support, which gives millions to fund "stem-cell" research on aborted babies.
Actually, the CP is involved with politics at all levels. There’s no reason they shouldn’t be the conscience at the national level as well.
Jeff, yes, the evangelicals voted in droves for the status quo, led by Dobson, WND, World Magazine and others, being told that if they didn’t they would be supporting gay rights and abortion. My comments above tell what I think of that argument.
Do you know anything about who is supposed to be on the Senate Judiciary Committee in the next session? If you do, please let me know, and I’ll get contact information for each one so that we can write those letters. That’s a really good idea.
November 4th, 2004 at 3:48 pm
Carmon, here are the current members of the Judiciary Committee (sigh).
Perhaps the Constitution Party can learn from Clymer’s showing and continue to build the party at local and state levels.
With all of the media attention on the role of evangelicals in Bush’s victory, and given that Bush does not need to worry about a future re-election, do you think that he will move right in the next term?….or will he "reach across the aisle" in an attempt to bring "unity" to the country ala his acceptance speech?
November 4th, 2004 at 3:54 pm
P.S. Glad to hear that Blogs for Peroutka will continue to discuss these issues under a new banner. Any chance you would consider adding a comment option?
November 4th, 2004 at 4:38 pm
Carmon-
National election campaigns are nice gestures that suck money, manpower and focus from local organizing efforts. They give one a warm feeling, but there isn’t anything left at the end.
You and I disagree over the Constitution Party. This is an inevitable sort of discussion for Christians to have. Given the imperfect world we live in, there are always such decisions to be made — stay at Princeton and fight or leave; start a new denomination or stay and fight. . . I think both sides should recognize that the other has valid points.
I think the right decision at this point is to stay and fight. Especially as the Constitution Party was the mouse that didn’t roar, and I can’t imagine a world in which that will change. But I respect the people who see things differently.
Anyway, it’s late, so I’ll say good night. Take care.
November 4th, 2004 at 5:26 pm
Jeff, according to the American Family Association, the chairman is chosen by the Republican Caucus in a secret vote. They urge everyone to call their Republican senators (we don’t have any) to urge them to not vote for Specter as chairman. They say:
"You can reach your Republican Senator by calling the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121. Ask for your Senator by name, or give the operator your zip code. It does no good to call a Democrat senator."
Ok, I want to hear from all of you who have Republican senators for your state. Let me know if you make the call. There are a lot of lurkers here (several hundred) and that is a lot of voices!! I’ll be posting this at the other blog, too.
November 4th, 2004 at 5:53 pm
Thanks Carmon. And remember that those that do not have Republican Senators call call Sen. Frist as he will be influential in the process. Just say that you are a concerned evangelical.
November 5th, 2004 at 12:01 pm
Yes, I too was wondering if The Backwater Report will have a comments section.
November 5th, 2004 at 4:35 pm
"Yes, I too was wondering if The Backwater Report will have a comments section."
No. I don’t see that there’s a need for one. Additionally, the large number of Constitution Party opponents would make keeping up with the potentially large number of antagonistic commenters a chore.
November 5th, 2004 at 4:47 pm
Yes, I can definitely understand the headaches that would cause! I was thinking in terms of being able to ask questions, because as I have a lot to learn about the CP, I know I’ll probably have one now and then. However, I can always email questions to y’all privately. Thanks, Pieter. Looking forward to the new blog!
November 5th, 2004 at 6:49 pm
Emailed questions are always welcome, and if they’re of common interest they might even get posted and replied to on the Backwater Report.