McKay Coppins reads through the Republican Party's reboot plan and finds its silence to speak volumes:
When the great Republican resurrection comes to pass, will conservative Christians be left behind?
Some leaders of the religious right are openly worried this week after a sprawling 98-page report released by the Republican National Committee on how the party can rebuild after its 2012 implosion made no mention of the GOP's historic alliance with grassroots Christian "value voters."
Specifically, the word "Christian" does not appear once in the party's 50,000-word blueprint for renewed electoral success. Nor does the word "church." Abortion and marriage, the two issues that most animate social conservatives, are nowhere to be found. There is nothing about the need to protect religious liberty, or promote Judeo-Christian values in society. And the few fleeting suggestions that the party coordinate with "faith-based communities" — mostly in the context of minority outreach — receive roughly as much space as the need to become more "inclusive" of gays.
To many religious conservatives, the report was interpreted as a slight against their agenda and the hard work they have done for the party. ...
Still, the perceived snub is the latest evidence of the extent to which the the increasingly unfashionable politics of the religious right have grown isolated within its party — an embarrassment to the Republican Establishment and to its "consultant class," focused on winning above all; and the sworn foe of its rising libertarian strain.
