He’s socially conservative, but believes in the government helping the poor and taking care of the environment. I like how he says, “I’m pro-life, but I believe that life also extends to those who have been born.”

It’s a catchy message, and I think that Christian Democracy would be incredibly popular throughout the United States. In the South, people would especially enjoy this. It’s essentially what the Southern Democrats preached for the better part of a century. And now that the South is primarily Republican, I think it’s time for the Republicans to go down the populist, Christian Democratic route. And it’s not going to repel a horde of Democrats… unless their libertarian small-government and civil libertarian Democrats. But keep in mind that almost a third of Democrats consider themselves to be conservatives. It would be a wise strategy.

Unfortunately, parties rarely adopt wise strategies. A few exceptions have been in 1994 and 1932. But I don’t see it happening any time soon.

I am not completely comfortable with Sager’s terms “evangelicals” and libertarians” to identify these constituencies- “fiscal” and “social” conservative, probably identify the same groups. The point is that regardless of what you call them, Republicans cannot win when these groups are not on the same page with a candidate. While Sager’s book is commenting on the state of the Republican fusionist alliance, he did not invent the meme. It has been pretty much dogma among Republican strategists for years, of which Karl Rove was the most recent proponent. Frank Meyer is usually credited with formulating and rationalizing the strategy:

“In his important 1962 book, In Defense of Freedom, Meyer writes that “the Christian understanding of the nature and destiny of man” is what conservatives are trying to preserve. Both traditionalists and individualists should therefore acknowledge the true heritage of the West: “reason operating within tradition.” This theory was later dubbed “fusionism,”

Perhaps Gerson’s views of the traditional “Christian Democrat” form of values voter can be a way to rebuild the social/fiscal fusion in the Republican party. Not sure whether any actual candidate out of the current crop of Republicans even comes close to this view – You really can’t do anything with this thesis unless there is a candidate that embodies it. Maybe Huckabee?

Thank God for true Catholics like Pinochet and D’Aubuisson that rooted this communist shit out of Latin America and out of the Church.

“Christian Democrat” is euphemism for just another socialist shitheel.

Gee, that sounds nice and all, yet you vote in the likes of Bush and Gulianni. We’ll know you by your fuits, not the worthless platitudes you spew forth as you happily spred war across the globe. Guess what…Jesus would puke at the thought of any of today’s republicans. I’m sorry, either leave the party or be held responsible for it’s biggoted, hate-filled, war mongering stands.

If Republicans truly want us to believe they care about anything other than themselves and their rich cronies they could try to do the following:

1. Stop trying at every turn to cut funding or cancel all programs that help the poor and sick.

2. Stop trying at every turn to give tax breaks to rich people and corporations while doing everything you can to make sure real wages for the middle and lower class remain stagnant or decline.

3. Stop trying at every turn to remove all governmental regulation of safety and environmental practices of corporations while simultaneously trying to increase the government’s knowledge of and control over people’s private lives.

4. Stop using ultimatums, threats, personal attacks, and brute force as your only negotiation tools for all circumstances. Start trying to use diplomacy and compromise to reach a reasonable middle ground with your opponents, whether they be Democrats or foreign nations.

I could keep going, but I think you get the drift. Fortunately, the world is finally catching on to the lies and the evil, and the swinging pendulum of public opinion is going to fling even more Republicans into the Rapture in 2008. My only hope is that Bush and Cheney, in their desperate attempts to incite World War 3, don’t take us sane people with them.

Dennis Sanders, I think you put that so eloquently. All I want is America to live up to its reputation. We are supposed to be the most powerful this and that, well if that is the case then why is it the most powerful nation on earth has so many of its own people without health care? I contend it is greed. There’s a reason why health care cost in this country are sky-rocketing, and it’s not because the services becoming more expensive to implement, it’s simply about greed.

I don’t care what you want to call a system that covers Americans when it comes to their health, call it socialized medicine, call it whatever the hell you want. We’ve tried the “free-market” system, it’s failing the American populace that cannot afford this artificially inflated care. The Republican party would contend for the next thousand years that “only a free-market system can work for America” all the while millions and millions continue to go without any sort of viable health care. If your idea of health care is going to the ER, then you are when uncompassionate individual.

Health care should not be a luxury for only the rich, we’ve tried that system in this country for over 200 years and it has failed millions upon millions of Americans since the very start. It’s time to start treating Americans like Americans, not like some third-world unwantedes.

How ironic it is that our government sees within itself to spend hundreds of billions of American taxpayer dollars in a country that we should have never been involved, yet we can’t afford to cover our own children because it is said that it sounds too much like “socialized” medicine. This country’s logic is just morbidly twisted. Spend money on bombs to kill but not medicine to save. Yeah, okay!

Preventing the strong from exploiting the weak is a reasonable task for the government to assume (even though imo it does the opposite).

But appropriating the assets of the strong to build up the weak (also the opposite of what we’ve seen lately imo) is the not the role of government. Such actions should be voluntary participation through private action.

Just my 2c.