The race for a seat in the U.S. Senate representing the State of Illinois may likely be the campaign that ultimately paints the national GOP as it should be painted.
First a little history ... There was the GOP candidate Jack Ryan who had to drop out of the race because he was alledged to have taken his wife to sex clubs and tried to pressure her to perform sex acts in front of people. Here is a link to the story from MSNBC:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5296208. The GOP leadership in Illinois then selected Alan Keys as Ryan's replacement.
The democrat candidate is Barack Obama. AT 41 years of age, he is a relatively young guy who grew up in Hawaii, got an undergraduate degree from Columbia and a law degree from Harvard.
Keys and Obama differ in many respects. A fundamental difference is how they treat religion and hot button issues such as abortion. Keys takes the traditional GOP conservative view. Obama takes a more inclusive view.
Consider how each of their campaigns treat two groups of people: (1) regular church goers and (2) people who don't go to church regularly. I suspect it is how these two groups of people are treated that will determine the outcome of not only this election but may signal the end of the GOP as we know it and perhaps the end of GWB.
Those who attend church regularly are much more likely to vote GOP than those who go to church but don't attend services regularly. Obana and the modern democratic party are seeking to reclaim those GOP members through tolerance and progressive thinking.
Obana gave a great interview on ABC's "This Week" program today. He said that it is a mistake for the democratic party to accept the view that only secularism can express tolerance. He states in plain simple terms that the discussion involving religion has to consider the role of faith in a pluralistic society. Obana admits that he attends church regularly but he states that the nature of his faith is such that it has to admit some doubt. Obana says that he may not always be right and that God doesn't speak to him alone and that the only way he can live with people of differing faiths is if we have a civil society that is in fact civil.
Obana points out that this is a central difference between him and Keys. Keys speaks with the certainty of a prophet as if he has a direct line to God. Obana states that he has to admit a little more human fallibility. Obana states that he has to assert that he does not have unyielding confidence such that he always knows the truth.
The problem with the GOP is they think that the have a direct line to God. They think their views, from abortion to gay rights or to free people smoking pot, have no room for compromise. They think God wants it their way and that any other way is simply not acceptable and impossible to tolerate.
It is this problem with the GOP that will likely destroy it as we know it. When the party of intolerance is destroyed, the party may return to the party of Reagan, the party with a "big tent". In a civil society, only a party where differing views are accepted should be rewarded with survival.
I am still registered as a member of the GOP but I will not support any candidate, with my mouth, money or with my vote, that is intolerant of other views. The central issue is the role of government. The role of the government should not be to wage a war on drugs or to worry about whether my neighbor's teenage daughter is having premarital sex or restricting stem cell research. This GOP party doesn't get it. They want to cater to the religious right and impose their morality on others.
I pray the voters of this country understand this fundamental difference.
