Are conservative Christians hurting the Republican Party in Woodbury County?

There are two letters in the Sioux City Journal that attempt the answer the questions, if conservative Christians hurting the Republican Party in Woodbury County? The first letter is about the former county chair, Steve Salem, who had some pointed words about the party right after the election that led to his resignation. The other letter is from current county chair Kevin Alons.

There are 2 things that stick out in Salem's letter. First, ...

Actually, the issue is not whether conservatives or Christians have caused difficulty for the Woodbury County Republican Party. By and large, Christian conservatives are the backbone of the Republican Party (and I count myself as a member of each group). The problem happens to be a rather small segment that has taken control of the party. These individuals demand that you follow every single tenet of theirs. If you fail to do that, they not only wish to defeat you but will do everything in their power to destroy you.

The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan set itself up as a big tent, open to any and all. It was the Party of ideas and welcomed open and honest debate. The party today, at least locally, wishes to exclude anyone who disagrees with any of its policies. Thus, if you are not pro-life, anti-embryonic stem cell research, or against gay marriage you are not welcome in today’s Woodbury County Republican Party. This exclusionary attitude hardly resembles the teachings of Christ’s love for all humanity.

And this about Nussle's messy divorce...

Along those lines, a “whisper” campaign was lodged against Jim Nussle urging people not to support him because he had been divorced. After getting pressured from these moral absolutists, support from the party statewide was pulled from other candidates because they were either divorced or going through a divorce. This despite the fact that many of these “leaders” are themselves divorced.

To go along with what Salem was saying, during the campaign, I heard a couple of Republicans refer to Culver as a slimeball simply because he was pro-choice.

Alons takes a look at the future of the Republican party by saying...

With the 2006 elections behind us, the question is now asked: what was the reason for the significant Republican losses, and what needs to be changed to see future success as a party? From my perspective, there are two fundamental viewpoints, which are markedly different and require very different responses.

One response is that the Republican Party needs to moderate its views, striving to widen its base through compromise and acceptance of alternative views on a wide range of issues. The issues most often targeted for this type of consideration are the conservative social issues that Christian “value” voters are most passionate about, such as the defense of life, traditional marriage and other pro-family issues. This view holds that these “social” issues are too divisive to be addressed and should be marginalized or dismissed in favor of those issues with only fiscal or secular impact.

The other response is to refocus the party on all of the grassroots values of our party, embodied in our platform, both the fiscal/secular and the thorny “social” issues. While there is room for some interpretation in the results across the country, it appears to me that some of these “social” conservative issues propelled more than a few conservative Democrat candidates to victory. Instead of viewing these issues as partisan and dividing, we need to recognize them as relevant to society and widely held across party lines.

I have never been to Woodbury County, so I don't know what their strategy during the last election was. I do know the divide, distract, and conquer strategy of Rove, DeLay, and Gingrich failed miserably in the last election. I agree with Alons about the need to refocus on the greassroots. However, if Republicans refocus on the grassroots then they might realize that the thorny "social" issues don't matter to people as much as health care, education, and the pocketbook issues.