I was going to go with this story last week, before it was hot, but I wanted to see if it floated or not. Silly me, it's an anti-GOP story, and this is the period before an election...

Politically, David Kuo and I are two entirely different creatures, as best as I can tell. From what I have read of his writings, Kuo is the kind of person who wants the government to carry out the job of the church. (I do not.) This kind of person typically ends up in the left-hand side of the curve, but there are inevitably a few like him also end up on the right.

For example, one of his main complaints is that the government didn't cough up new money to feed the poor. And that when he looked around the booths representing the interests of "Christian conservatives", he saw all kinds of issues represented (protecting marriage, abortion, etc.) but not any devoted to the poor.

News flash, David: We're not socialists.

My own involvement in politics, as one of those "Christian conservatives", is mostly defensive. I don't want to see new laws criminalizing what Steve and Bill do in private -- I just don't want them to start doing it in my daughter's textbooks, nor do I want to see the name of Foley, or someone else with similar proclivities, on a list of possible adoptees for a young boy.

Concerning the poor, aside from catastrophic situations like the recent Tsunami (where using the military was an entirely appropriate aid) and Darfur (where we need a military to protect the poor before we can feed them) the job of feeding the poor should generally be done through private charities and money, not a governmental welfare model. In fact, my desire for welfare was for a huge cut, which I got from Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich (thank you, both) which resulted in a huge reduction in poverty. (Yes, it's true.)

The reason religious conservative political involvement focuses on things like gay marriage, divorce, cloning is because (do I even have to explain this?) these are all defensive situations, where someone else is now using or once used the government to make a change, and we simply want the levers flipped back to the old position.

People who fall for this narrative do not understand true conservative Christian political principles. (And yes, that could include some on the right.) The government does not exist as our way of re-engineering society or forcing compliance to our desires. Let's leave that to the political/religious left, thank you. Our job politically is simply to stop the left from enacting whatever new hare-brained schemes they're going to be pushing, schemes which inevitably decrease our freedom to act, threaten people's safety, increase crime, and hurt the most vulnerable people in society -- in the name of "caring", of course.

Finally, concerning allegations that some of Bush's aides mocked certain "representatives" of the "religious right." My reaction: Who cares?

The old spin is that Bush is a "far-right extremist", who's dangerously beholden to an "radical" agenda. The new spin is that he IS NOT beholden those people, but in fact also works with people who cynically reject Christian beliefs while recognizing their political importance. Can't win either way, can he? I could easily spin it the oposite way, saying he was either taking his constituency seriously, or saying that it's nice that the worst allegations about his only listening to one side were wrong.

Like everyone else, I always slightly prefer a leader who shares my personal outlook, but the truth is that I believe large governmental programs are harmful, and generally do the opposite of what they promise. Thus, I'd be more inclined to vote for an atheist who was a genuine small-government conservative than a "Christian" who promised to use the government to solve all our of problems.

I'm not "ignoring" or "betraying" my Christian beliefs -- as the left would tell you. Instead, such views are the result of studying the bible, economics, and history, and which I hope to continually explain here.

Best to you.