Note: This article was first posted on the front Politics page of the<\/em> Huffington Post<\/a><\/p>\n It\u2019s not poor Mitt\u2019s fault.\u00a0Jesus could be the Republican candidate this year with Lincoln as his running mate and the Republicans would still lose. That\u2019s because the American people don\u2019t have a death wish. You see we may all wallow in our own delusional fantasy lands but we want sane leaders.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll explain. You might be a Christian like me who says he believes in the power of God to heal. But if I get a brain tumor I\u2019d much prefer an atheist with an MD\/PhD in neurosurgery if it comes to surgery than my pastor. The same goes for political parties. Members of the religious right, libertarians, conservative Roman Catholics, papal groupies, Mormons<\/a>, you name it \u2014 from soccer moms to the the rest of us \u2014 love our particular mythologies. Notwithstanding our\u00a0addiction\u00a0to wishful thinking when it comes to presidential leadership we want someone who takes our idiosyncrasies seriously but that\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0govern according to them.<\/p>\n The difference between the Republican Party as it once was say pre-Roe v Wade<\/em>\u00a0and as it is now is illustrated by the fact that when I was a Republican Party\/antiabortion activist in the 1970s to late 1980s, we of the \u201cpro-life\u201d right were outside agitators. We were knocking on the doors of insiders like Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp and George Bush senior. (I describe my family\u2019s odd \u201ccontribution\u201d to the Republican Party in my \u201cGod Trilogy\u201d Crazy for God<\/em><\/a>, Patience With God<\/em><\/a> and Sex, Mom and God<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n But today it\u2019s as if us outside agitators had been running for congress or for president. That would have been laughable back then. Come to think of it, it was laughable when Pat Robertson tried it in 1988.<\/p>\n No one\u2019s laughing now.<\/p>\n Encountering the Republican Party today is like going to the hospital only to find that your faith healing pastor has replaced your doctor. When you\u2019re offered Bible study instead of the surgery you were scheduled for your reaction is \u201cOh shit!\u201d even if you\u2019re a believer. I mean, most people know the\u00a0difference\u00a0between belief and fact when their lives are on the line.<\/p>\n See, we Americans want our beliefs (religious or otherwise) respected but not taken too seriously. For instance lots of us say we believe in guardian angels but most of us still wear a\u00a0seat belt. In other words we want leaders to be nice to us and say pleasant things about our beliefs but not base \u00a0policy on the Bible or health insurance \u00a0on the Tea Party\u2019s fear of \u201cDeath Panels,\u201d or concoct a \u201cmilitary policy\u201d based on what some xenophobic Christian Zionists say let alone the latest bomb-them-all neoconservative wet dreams concocted by the same people who talked Bush into Iraq.<\/p>\n The problem with today\u2019s Republican Party is that it\u2019s gone way past paying polite lip service to our\u00a0weirdest beliefs and \u00a0has become way to much like us. It\u2019s as dysfunctional as we are.<\/p>\n Speaking of freaking the rest of us out, the Republican Party has allowed its Middle East policy to more or less be written for it by the buffoonish Prime Minister of Israel, the one who showed up at the UN with a Wile E.\u00a0Coyote cartoon bomb and drew a red line on it. Part of that \u201cpro-Israel\u201d stance is manifested by the Republicans trying to use the murder of our\u00a0ambassador in Libya \u00a0as a political weapon to \u201cprove\u201d the President is \u201cpro-Muslim\u201d and \u201cweak on terrorism.\u201d (Never mind the 3000 Americans who were killed on 9\/11 on W\u2019s \u201cwatch\u201d after he ignored repeated\u00a0warnings\u00a0from the CIA, but that\u2019s another story.)<\/p>\n Pandering to the Israel lobby goes way past political genuflecting to the Christian Zionists waiting for Jesus to \u201creturn\u201d and\/or\u00a0reassuring\u00a0understandably the jumpy West Bank settlers. Rather Republican faith-based \u201cpolicy\u201d cuts to the heart of where our military personnel \u2014 people like my Marine son John<\/a> who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and who thank God! survived \u2014 will die, be maimed and scarred next. Again\u2013\u00a0No one\u2019s laughing now.<\/p>\n The same general lack of good\u00a0humor\u00a0by most Americans\u00a0towards\u00a0the Republican Party goes for political \u201cstrategies\u201d too. It is one thing to coddle bigots and reinforce their bigotry with obscure race-based flyers \u00a0placed on windscreens in southern church parking lots, as happened when W Bush used his religious right surrogate Jerry Falwell and went after John McCain in 2000, by accusing him of having an illegitimate black child. It\u2019s another thing to base actual anti-immigrant legislation on an ignorant \u201cTea Party\u201d subgroup\u2019s dumbest fears of the \u201cother.\u201d And it\u2019s one thing for some know-nothing individuals to hate the black man in the White House just because he\u2019s black, but it\u2019s another thing for the Republican Party to openly work in 30-plus states to resurrect old voter suppression tactics most Americans are ashamed of.<\/p>\n And Paul\u00a0Ryan has done enormous damage to the ticket. Everyone more or less knows that Romney only pretends to be a wild eyed far right nut in order to get the far right nut vote. But\u00a0Ryan\u00a0is the real Ayn Rand\/libertarian-dismantle-the-government article and a true believer.<\/p>\n Romney has become the lightning rod for Republican pundit discontent because he has all too successfully pandered to the heart of his own party. Also, the Republican talking heads need someone other than themselves to blame for unleashing a lot of crazy ideas that aren\u2019t flying, say like the need to bomb Iran right now, deprive women of contraceptives in the name of religious freedom no less, and ban gays from marrying. But how can you fault a candidate for trying to be loyal to his base?<\/p>\n Still, being\u00a0loyal\u00a0to one\u2019s base as a Democrat brings very\u00a0different\u00a0results than\u00a0trying\u00a0to pander to\u00a0Republicanism\u00a0these days because most Democrats in that base aren\u2019t touring the Creation\u00a0Museum\u00a0while denying global warming, evolution, the need for comprehensive sex education or\u00a0worrying\u00a0about frozen\u00a0embryos\u2019 \u201ccivil rights.\u201d\u00a0 So when President Obama is loyal to his base he enacts legislation to give health care to all Americans, stops a war, tries to prevent Israel from lashing out at Iran, kills bin Laden, tries to calm the Middle East, shores up the American economy, defends and expands the civil rights of gay Americans and women and actually governs\u2013 in spite of being obstructed by a Republican Party dominated by extremists.<\/p>\n Romney will lose and then become the fall guy for the Republican pundits, as in \u201che was a bad candidate.\u201d But Romney\u2019s problems are a symptom of the disease afflicting Republicans, not the cause of that disease. He\u2019s wacky because they are. He\u00a0panders\u00a0to the super rich because that is all his party actually does care about when not trying to stop blacks from voting or women from using contraception or gays from loving whomever they want to love.<\/p>\n When the Republicans bring back actual \u201cdoctors\u201d (to overuse my metaphor) and send the \u201cfaith healers\u201d back to where they belong, we Americans just might trust them again.\u00a0Meanwhile we\u2019ll reelect our sane president. I mean it\u2019s pretty basic: President Obama believes in science, that global warming is real, that the solution to the problems in the world can\u2019t be found in the book of Revelation, that the way to reduce abortions is through helping poor women and providing comprehensive sex education in schools, that Americans need Social Security and Medicare, and that most\u00a0Americans\u00a0like women, paved roads, our gay neighbors, our Hispanic friends and a working post office.<\/p>\n In other words our president is a smart compassionate decent grownup governing from the\u00a0common\u00a0sense center, something that used to be a prerequisite for Republican leaders too.<\/p>\n Not anymore.<\/p>\n Frank Schaeffer<\/a> is a writer and author of the <\/em>New York Times bestseller <\/em>Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and the United States Marine Corps<\/a> and\u00a0<\/em>Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back .<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Note: This article was first posted on the front Politics page of the Huffington Post It\u2019s not poor Mitt\u2019s fault.\u00a0Jesus could be the Republican candidate this year with Lincoln as his running mate and the Republicans would still lose. That\u2019s because the American people don\u2019t have a death wish. You see we may all wallow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[75,77,20,76,5,29,1794,74,1793,13,73,78],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1012-election","tag-culture-wars","tag-evangelicals","tag-extremists","tag-jesus","tag-mitt-romney","tag-politics","tag-president-obama","tag-religion","tag-religious-right","tag-republican-party","tag-roe-v-wade"],"yoast_head":"\n