{"id":474,"date":"2008-12-05T07:06:28","date_gmt":"2008-12-05T15:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=474"},"modified":"2008-12-05T18:30:08","modified_gmt":"2008-12-06T02:30:08","slug":"perception-or-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/perception-or-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Perception or Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What does the secular right want? If you read Kathleen Parker&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/12\/04\/AR2008120403096.html\" target=\"_blank\">latest<\/a> &#8211; and I know she doesn&#8217;t speak for all right secularists &#8211; you get the strange sense that she wants the way the GOP is <em>perceived<\/em> to change but not for the GOP to be substantively different.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As long as the religious right is <em>seen<\/em> as controlling the Republican Party, the GOP will continue to lose some percentage of voters, and that percentage likely will increase over time as younger voters shift away from traditional to more progressive values. <em>(emphasis added).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Perception is not really a persuasive reason for the GOP to be less theocentric. What if the GOP could remain religious, even become more religious, while merely pretending to be secular? I think in many ways that&#8217;s what people like Huckabee and Palin represent. I mean, I&#8217;ve seen Huckabee on the Tyra Banks show, for God&#8217;s sake, and Sarah Palin definitely shops like the East Coast secularists Kathleen Parker identifies with. Such a rope-a-dope may be inauthentic to some degree but then again its politics.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, I predict that Kathleen&#8217;s exhortations are going to have absolutely no effect. She&#8217;s arguing for a new packaging. Not for a new message. And that, really, is what people on this website have to ask. If you can get a more pro-secular packaging out of the GOP, would you have any other gripes with it.<\/p>\n<p>If so, what.<\/p>\n<p>And just as a follow up: are your policy differences, if any, dependent on your secularity or on something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What does the secular right want? If you read Kathleen Parker&#8217;s latest &#8211; and I know she doesn&#8217;t speak for all right secularists &#8211; you get the strange sense that she wants the way the GOP is perceived to change &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/perception-or-power\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,52],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":579,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions\/579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}