| | Conservative columnist: Why the GOP should be 'giving up on God'
 (Update at bottom: Stop calling Palin people 'low brows and beasts,' says fellow conservative)
Nationally syndicated conservative columnist Kathleen Parker believes that the Republican Party's recent election woes can be summarized as "Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D."
In her latest column, "Giving Up on God", Parker cautions Republicans not to "overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit."
Writes Parker, "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."
After Obama's election, "like it or not, we are a diverse nation, no longer predominantly white and Christian," she continues.
"Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely comprised of white, married Christians," observes Parker. "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."
Continues Parker, "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."
After calling for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin to quit the race in a September 29 column entitled "How Palin can save McCain," Parker revealed that she received hate mail from angry right-wingers.
"Only Palin can save McCain, her party and the country she loves," Parker had written. "She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country."
Two days later, Parker wrote, "Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a Dumpster, but since she didn't, I should 'off' myself. Those are just a few nuggets randomly selected from thousands of e-mails written in response to my column suggesting that Sarah Palin is out of her league and should step down. Who says public discourse hasn't deteriorated?"
Undoubtedly, Parker's e-mail box will fill up with angry invectives, threats, and, perhaps, prayers for her soul. And the same right-wing bloggers that claimed to have never heard of her before her infamous Palin column will most probably again blog ignorance.
Stop calling Palin people 'low brows and beasts,' says fellow conservative
In a column for The Corner at National Review, Jonah Goldberg fires back to his "friend Kathleen Parker," whose "act is getting really old."
"I don't know what's more grating, the quasi-bigotry that has you calling religious Christians low brows, gorillas and oogedy-boogedy types or the bravery-on-the-cheap as you salute — in that winsome way — your own courage for saying what (according to you) needs to be said," Goldberg writes.
Goldberg tells her to "stop bragging about how courageous you are for weathering a storm of nasty email you invite on yourself by dancing to a liberal tune. You aren't special for getting nasty email, from the right or the left. You aren't a martyr smoking your last cigarette. You're just another columnist, talented and charming to be sure, but just another columnist. You are not Joan of the Op-Ed Page."
"For the record, I have no problem with arguments about how the GOP has become too religious. I ended my book with pretty much that argument," Goldberg continues. "I opposed Mike Huckabee vociferously because he seemed the quintessential rightwing progressive imbued with a rightwing social gospel. These are all good arguments to make and they have good responses to them. But please drop the nonsense about how the G-O-D people or the Palin people are low brows and beasts. There are low brows and beasts everywhere, on every side of the ideological spectrum."
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