Yellow Jacket had an excellent post on the trouble Kathleen Parker is stirring up on the right with her inane articles in the Washington Post. Well bs at Redstate has had enough and so have I. My thoughts from an elevated comment:

Wow . . . I wanted reach into my monitor and strangle her when I read this bit:

“Here’s the deal, ‘pubbies: Howard Dean was right.”

She can think Howard Dean is right about something all she wants, but “‘pubbies”? Seriously? I can get that sort of pejorative crap at DU or Daily Kos and it drives me crazy to see a “conservative” write that crap. What next? Is she going to start refering to “repugs”, “wingnuts”, “religiodt” or “bushitlernazis!!1!”? STFU if that is all you have to offer. Personally I think she is enjoying her notoriety a bit too much and is intentionally saying inflammatory &%$* now just to be annoying.

Of course I just saw Jonah thinks the same thing:

“Moreover, as a matter of political analysis it’s beyond absurd to think the GOP can become a majority party by adopting a rhetorical tone toward religious conservatives usually found at the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos. I’m sure Bill Maher agrees with Kathleen. But normally, at least for people who call themselves conservatives, when Bill Maher agrees with you it’s a sign that you took a wrong turn somewhere.”

Yeah, what he just said.

This is what it boils down to for me and why her whole argument is specious:

“Even Sarah Palin has blamed Bush policies for the GOP loss. She’s not entirely wrong, but she’s also part of the problem. Her recent conjecture about whether to run for president in 2012 (does anyone really doubt she will?) speaks for itself:

“I’m like, okay, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is…. And if there is an open door in (20)12 or four years later, and if it’s something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door.”

Let’s do pray that God shows Alaska’s governor the door.”

So Sarah Palin is part of the over-the-top “God rhetoric” that is dragging down the party because she she mentions that her faith in God leads her to ask that she be able to see an opportunity when it is available? Palin’s statement was the softest, friendliest, most “Reader’s Digest” type Christianity that is out there. No preaching, no condescension, no talk of gays or abortion or “my Lord and personal savior Jesus Christ”, just the casual (and very common) sentiment that she hopes God helps show her the way forward for her family and her career. Personally I think this ticks of Kathleen Parker more than the God reference: “I’m like, okay,”. This sounds like some woman being catty to another woman who she thinks speaks too poorly to be head of the local PTA.

Many millions of Americans share Palin’s sentiments and this isn’t a case of an evangelical bashing her religion over our heads and Kathleen Parker knows this.

She really reveals herself with this statement:

“Meanwhile, it isn’t necessary to evict the Creator from the public square, surrender Judeo-Christian values or diminish the value of faith in America. Belief in something greater than oneself has much to recommend it, including most of the world’s architectural treasures, our universities and even our founding documents.”

Let me paraphrase: Yeah Christianity has done some nice things for us, we got some pretty buildings and Notre Dame, Rice, Wake Forest out of the mix and I guess our Founders were Christians so it’s not all bad.

What about Christianity for Christianity’s sake? What about the actual moral and spiritual benefits conferred to the practitioner? What about the ennobling belief in God? How about the power that the faith that God loves you can give you to persevere through life’s struggles? Kathleen Parker mentions none of that, if religion to her is the Hagia Sophia, Boston College and the Constitution then that ain’t religion at all, it is a cultural appreciation of history’s offerings, nothing more.

And that is fine if that is what she wants to believe, but let’s not lump all of the reasonable, private, God-fearing Christians out there into “the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP” because those people are a minority of a minority. They make headlines because they are so wild, but that isn’t representative of even the social conservative wing of the GOP, let alone American Christianity in general.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Parker would find C.S. Lewis too pushy and would think of the Pope as a hardcore “Christianist” if he weren’t a Catholic.

Seriously, STFU until you have something more intelligent to say.

Is that too harsh? Well she deserves some harsh comments, if she was just another damn fool liberal I would ignore this, but Kathleen is nominally one of us and she is burning a lot of bridges.

UPDATE: Jason Pye isn’t as pissed about this article as some of the rest of us on the economic right, but his main point is religion and politics don’t mix. I think that is what Kathleen is trying to get at, she just says it more ineptly than Sarah Palin doing a Katie Couric interview.