Is the Christian right the Republican Party's real political base or have conservative Christians taken over the GOP, forcing the party to meet their demands?
For former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, the answer became clear when the Republican-controlled Congress intervened in the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman who died after her husband won the right to remove her feeding tube.
"The effort to keep Terri Schiavo alive artificially became a religious crusade and Republicans in Washington responded to a core constituency, even though it meant abandoning traditional Republican philosophy," Danforth writes in his new book, "Faith and Politics: How the 'Moral Values' Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together."
Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest and a lifelong Republican who represented Missouri for 18 years in the Senate, argues that the religious right has focused its agenda on divisive issues that polarize Americans and create a stalemate in government.
I've always thought that history will remember the government intrusion into the Schiavo family's end of life decisions as an extremely low point in kiss-ass politics. The way Terri Schiavo ended her life is something that goes on almost every day, but the Schiavos won the heartache lottery and the party opposed to big government muscled its way into their lives.
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Tags: news politics republican religious right religion christian John Danforth
