Idaho Examiner: Mccain Rebuffing Evangelicals; Gop Headed For November Disaster "My Idaho...My Planet Rocks!"

Sen. John McCain has rebuffed an invitation to meet with Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, while at the same time California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is urging the Republican Party to rebrand itself and distance itself from the religious right.

What the San Francisco Chronicle calls “rebranding fever” was summarized by Schwarzenegger over the weekend when he said, “[W]e can’t go and get stuck with just the right wing. Let’s let the party come all the way to the center.” He added, “Let’s invade and let’s cross over that (political) center. The issues that they’re talking about? Let them be our issues, and let the party be known for that.”

For Schwarzenegger, one of those issues now is same-sex marriage, as he has pledged to honor the California Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay matrimony and pledged to oppose any effort to amend the state constitution to protect marriage. Well, now we know where the “center” is for Mr. Schwarzenegger.

The GOP cannot possibly win the presidency in November without the energetic participation of the evangelical faith community, which was responsible for George Bush’s win in 2004.

But alas, its party leadership is making it abundantly clear that the GOP’s “Big Tent” is not in fact big enough for social conservatives. As the party makes a disastrous and fatal move to the center, at the same time it is pushing social conservatives under the tent flap and to the outside of the tent altogether, into a political no-man’s land.

McCain in particular has staked out positions that are anathema to thinking evangelicals on embryonic stem cell research, illegal immigration, global warming and campaign-finance reform.

The leadership of the Republican Party has shown a staggering and mind-numbing tone deafness to the concerns of its socially conservative base, and the Party at the national level as a consequence is liable to suffer a November meltdown of historic proportions.

My guess is that most evangelicals who go to the polls in November will pull the lever for McCain. But the question remains: will they even show up to vote?