I predicted this would happen. Erstwhile conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is saying that the Republican defeat and its continuing hopeless prospects are due to religious voters. From Giving Up on God - washingtonpost.com:

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit. . . .

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that. . . .

But they need those votes!

So it has been for the Grand Old Party since the 1980s or so, as it has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners. . . .

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows. In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle. . . .

It isn’t that culture doesn’t matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party — and conservatism with it — eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one’s heart where it belongs.

Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they’ve had something to do with the GOP’s erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University’s Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs.

Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can’t have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting. . . .

Meanwhile, it isn’t necessary to evict the Creator from the public square, surrender Judeo-Christian values or diminish the value of faith in America. Belief in something greater than oneself has much to recommend it, including most of the world’s architectural treasures, our universities and even our founding documents.

But, like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian. The change Barack Obama promised has already occurred, which is why he won. . . .

The young will get older, of course. Most eventually will marry, and some will become their parents. But nonwhites won’t get whiter. And the nonreligious won’t get religion through external conversion. It doesn’t work that way.

Given those facts, the future of the GOP looks dim and dimmer if it stays the present course. Either the Republican Party needs a new base — or the nation may need a new party.

Non-religious people don’t get converted? Only religious people get converted? Then what are they converting from? Of course, what oozes through this column is “classism”; that is, snobbery and contempt for people perceived to be from a lower class that oneself. Note all that “lowbrow” talk, as if Christians are Neanderthals and don’t think, unlike Kathleen Parker.

Still, does she have a point? America has drifted far from its Christian moorings, as all of us lowbrow critics are always complaining. So how can Christians expect to wield political influence?

Terry Mattingly criticizes the Washington Post story posted below. He denies that any pro-lifers are opposing helping women so that they keep their babies. Approving E. J. Dionne’s column that we blogged about recently, Mattingly points to another issue:

Now something huge is missing [from the Washington Post story] and it can be summed up with one date — July 17, 2007. That’s the day when candidate Obama told leaders at Planned Parenthood: “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing that I’d do.” The president-elect is a co-sponsor of this bill, which would, in the words of the National Organization for Women, “sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws [and] policies.”

In other words, the real tensions inside the right to life movement are not about whether to back legislative efforts — such as the Democrats For Life “95-10” package — to support women and their children (although there are some debates about issues linked to birth control). The tensions are about FOCA and efforts to erase restrictions on abortion that are supported by many or most Americans, including conservative, moderate and even some liberal Democrats. . . .FOCA is a dagger at the heart of the pro-life left and hopes for compromise and common-ground initiatives.

From Some Abortion Foes Shifting Focus From Ban to Reduction - washingtonpost.com:

Frustrated by the failure to overturn Roe v. Wade, a growing number of antiabortion pastors, conservative academics and activists are setting aside efforts to outlaw abortion and instead are focusing on building social programs and developing other assistance for pregnant women to reduce the number of abortions.

Some of the activists are actually working with abortion rights advocates to push for legislation in Congress that would provide pregnant women with health care, child care and money for education — services that could encourage them to continue their pregnancies.

Their efforts, they said, reflect the political reality that legal challenges to abortion rights will not be successful, especially after Barack Obama’s victory this month in the presidential election and the defeat of several ballot measures that would have restricted access to abortions. Although the activists insist that they are not retreating from their belief that abortion is immoral and should be outlawed, they argue that a more practical alternative is to try to reduce abortions through other means.

Any ideas for how the pro-life movement should conduct itself, given Obama’s election and the failure of every attempt to ban abortion?