Peggy Noonan misses the point

From The Opinion Journal:

Ms. Noonan discusses Mike Huckabee's rise in the polls and speculates about the importance of religious faith in this campaign season:

The Republican race looks--at the moment--to be determined primarily by one thing, the question of religious faith. In my lifetime faith has been a significant issue in presidential politics, but not the sole determinative one. Is that changing? If it is, it is not progress.

[. . .]

I wonder if our old friend Ronald Reagan could rise in this party, this environment. Not a regular churchgoer, said he experienced God riding his horse at the ranch, divorced, relaxed about the faiths of his friends and aides, or about its absence. He was a believing Christian, but he spent his adulthood in relativist Hollywood, and had a father who belonged to what some saw, and even see, as the Catholic cult. I'm just not sure he'd be pure enough to make it in this party. I'm not sure he'd be considered good enough.

What Peggy fails to take into account is that there are two factors which have catapulted religious faith into the forefront of this race in a way that has never happened before.

One is the fact that the former front runner is a pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage social liberal with the personal morality of Bill Clinton. The other fact is that Mitt Romney is a member of what is not just a "non-Christian religion" but an actual pseudo-Christian cult.

If Rudolph Giuliani is the Republican nominee it will signal that the GOP is no longer the pro-life party. It will simply be the pro-choice party with the most tolerance for pro-life positions. A Giuliani nomination will also mean that the Republican Party has accepted the agenda of the radical homosexual activists in pushing issues like gay "marriage". It will also invite those, like myself, who said that Bill Clinton's moral failings disqualified him from holding the office the President to either confess that they are hypocrites or walk away from the party.

Make no mistake about it. Many Evangelical Christians already feel that the Republican Party treats them the way that the Democrat Party treats blacks. But while most blacks seem content with crumbs from the table Evangelicals will not be. For most of the history of this nation Evangelicals have not been politically involved to any great degree.

It was Ronald Reagan, whose libertarian tendencies stopped with his economic philosophy, who brought Evangelicals off the sidelines not by his tax of national defense policies but by the way he made the pro-life cause his own. Ronald Reagan almost single handedly transformed the pro-life cause from a fringe movement dominated by Roman Catholics into a mainstream political movement which has made incredible progress in winning the hearts and minds of the American public.

Reagan held out hope that the rising tide of secularism that was engulfing our society and turning it into a New World copy of Old Europe could be turned back. Now over twenty years later many Evangelicals are wondering just how much they got for all the time and money they invested in the GOP. The choice of Giuliani by the Party will be seen by millions as one backstab too many and they will wash their hands of it for good.

The other factor bringing religion to the forefront of this primary campaign is that Mitt Romney, the one guy who might knock off Giuliani in the minds of many, is a member of a cult which preaches a false gospel. St. Paul had this to say about those who preach "another gospel":

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. [Galatians 1:8-9 NKJV]

Many Christians have difficulty with the fact that the Bible instructs them to maintain their friendships and associations with non-Christians but to have no fellowship whatsoever with false Christians. This is so that non believers will not be confused by Christians seeming acceptance of false teachings. This is an issue that those who believe the Bible have to take seriously because the mainstream culture already thinks that Mormonism is just another denomination of Christianity.

Personally I am willing to vote for Romney because I believe that God is using this controversy to give His people a teaching opportunity. If Romney is elected and stands by his stated positions he will probably be a good president and his Mormonism will give Christians the occasion to teach the difference between the true gospel and the false versions for years to come. But many Christians do not agree with me and I will not attempt to change their minds because it is a dangerous thing for a person to violate their conscience.

But back to exactly how Peggy Noonan misses the point. All of this would not be happening if Mitt Romney were a Jew. It is not that Giuliani and Romney are NON Christians it is that they are ANTI Christians. Giuliani through his personal conduct and public policy positions and Romney through his theology. It is not that Christians demand a good Christian to vote for it is that they have two people who are the sworn enemies of Christianity to vote against.

Like the child of an abusive alcoholic who grows up to become an opponent of not only drunkenness but all drinking many Evangelicals are being driven into the "comfort zone" of support for an actual Baptist preacher. But as the alternate media, including the blogs, spread the world about what Huckabee really stands for his support will slip. Let Fred Thompson make a good showing in Iowa and South Carolina and Huckabee will collapse and Thompson will surge.