Scott Lively dropped in on "Focal Point" today, mostly to discuss developments in Uganda, but also to provide some insights on his plan to run for Governor of Massachusetts, which he apparently thinks he can win by creating a third party coalition by merging anti-gay Religious Right activists with "the grassroots of the progressive movement":
On his blog, Lively has posted a manifesto explaining how this new coalition would work as Religious Right activists leave the corporate GOP and set about "plundering the 'Progressive' base" by winning over Blacks, Hispanics, libertarians, environmentalists, and labor unions:
Why will ethnic minorities join us in the first place, before we’ve been able to prove ourselves champions of true social justice? We will make a simple appeal to the thing we most share in common. “Our Bond Is Family!” There’s our pitch and strategy in bumper-sticker simplicity. The typical African American or Hispanic person is generally more Christian and pro-family than the average American (as are the Russian, Eastern European, East Indian, African and Asian immigrants). RINO Republicans could never build a bridge to these minorities because they don’t share these values. But we can and should.
The illegal immigration issue has unfortunately distracted both conservatives and Hispanics from the interests we hold in common, but from my experience I think most Hispanics who are legal citizens would gravitate naturally to the Republican Party and not the Democrats if our agenda were centered on family rather than fiscal matters (especially if we had our own social justice platform). Frankly, I’d happily trade any number of pro-abortion, hate-America White liberal suburbanites for the equivalent number of pro-life, pro-family working class Hispanic citizens. We’d be a much stronger country for it.
...
We should reach out to moderate and conservative-leaning environmentalists as well. Environmentalism is another movement we should rescue from the Marxists and rebuild on a Christian foundation. Our responsibility to be good stewards of the earth is a central tenet of Christianity, and we are certainly much more capable of fulfilling this duty in a balanced manner than the Marxists are. (Not to mention that we would do the world a great service to steer at least some portion of this powerful movement away from power-grabbing globalist goals such as Agenda 21 and “global warming” and toward authentic environmental needs.)
One key point in this arena that deserves immediate, urgent advocacy is opposition to genetically-modified foods. RINOs would never take this position for fear of alienating agri-business and mega-corporations like Monsanto, but we conservatives should.
Environmentalists might at first seem to be an impossible constituency to recruit, but Christians share an important common ground with them: an embrace of the natural and rejection of the unnatural. The most important concepts in environmentalism — bio-diversity, eco-systems, and the inter-dependence of species — rest on the clear “natural law” presupposition (central to Christianity as well) that there is an existing order in nature that should be protected by human beings. We also share a distrust of the corporate giants whose myopic pursuit of ever greater profits represents the greatest threat to the environment.
If we craft an appeal based on our common preference for the “natural” over the “artificial,” and frame this as a logical basis for deciding social policy in every area, we suddenly have a powerful unifying theme for our entire slate that could win every intellectually honest environmentalist to our side: the natural value of life vs the unnatural termination of unborn babies, natural marriage vs. un-natural homosexual unions, God-given liberty vs. man-made Statism, commerce among real persons vs. that with artificial corporate “persons,” natural foods vs. genetic experiments, a return to family farms and rejection of agri-business, a return to natural remedies and rejection of Big Pharma, etc..
While we’re plundering the “Progressive” base, lets not forget the labor unions. There’s nothing inherently evil or unbiblical about labor unions. The evil comes from the Marxist ideologues and organized crime elements who control them. Union members were the heart and soul of the so-called “Reagan Democrats” who crossed party lines in droves for Reagan because he sincerely espoused Christian values. This is a natural constituency for a newly Bible-centered GOP. The only reason we don’t have them now in any significant numbers is that the corporate giants don’t like them (for obvious reasons) and continually foster hostility against them among the Republican rank and file.
