Back in February, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough was one of the first to throw down the gauntlet regarding the possibility of Rudy Giuliani winning the Republican nomination and raise the specter of a bolting the party all together should that happen:
The fact that Rudy Giuliani is polling at above 35% should awaken Values Voters to the reality that America desperately needs revival. Christians should be no more inclined to vote for a pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-gun candidate than homosexual activists are inclined to vote for Jerry Falwell or D. James Kennedy.
We must pray and work toward securing a candidate that we can not only vote for, but get excited about when we go to the polls.
And we should be ready to go outside the Republican Party if it refuses to give us such a candidate. Christians must always remember that we are followers of Christ, not pawns of a party which often wants to dance with us before the election but then ditches us right after the final vote count.
But then, when other right-wing leaders recently echoed Scarborough’s call and made exactly the same point, Scarborough suddenly backtracked:
To all of that I say emphatically, “Grow UP!!!” When I hear my friends, and people I admire, saying that they will either stay home or go to a third party, I lose my patience. Five years ago I stepped out of a good pastorate to devote my full attention to educating pastors and congregations on what Christian citizenship truly means and teach them why Christians, of all people, should and must stay engaged. Now some of the men who most inspired me to get involved are acting like our movement is dead and the cause is lost.
…
I for one do not intend to sit idly by and allow evil to triumph because good men choose to do nothing--or worse, do the wrong thing. I have often said in speeches to churches, “the only thing worse than not voting, is voting without a clue as to what you are voting for.” When it comes time for the ‘08 elections, we must be armed with truth and determined to vote our values. If enough of us do that, we will get a president who will make the right choice when it comes to nominating judges. In ’08, it’s all about the judges! … We may have to hold our nose as we vote in ‘08, but we must and we will vote.
And now it appears as if Scarborough has changed his mind once again:
Rick Scarborough, president of Vision America, a Texas-based group that has a network of 5,000 pastors willing to mobilize their churches to vote, was at the recent meeting of those who threatened to back a third-party candidate, and he said they were not just bluffing.
“I am not going to cast a sacred vote granted to me by the blood of millions of God-fearing Americans who died on the fields of battle for freedom, for a candidate who says it’s O.K. to kill the unborn,” he said. “I just can’t.”
“It’s not about winning elections. It’s about honoring Christ.”
So, according to Scarborough the 2008 election either seems to require that the Right “hold our noses” and support the Republican nominee because it’s “all about the judges” or abandon the GOP because it’s all “about honoring Christ” … or preferably some combination of the two that will allow them do the former while pretending there are upholding the latter.
