Why True Bipartisanship in America Is But a Memory

“President Trump,” wrote Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal, “may have been correct at his Monday rally when he said of Georgia Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler: ‘If they win I’ll get no credit, and if they lose they’re going to blame Trump.’ But Tuesday’s election and Wednesday’s mob assault on Congress were stark examples of the destructive reactions the president can generate.”

“One Trump effect was felt in Atlanta’s suburbs. In Clayton County in November, Democrat Jon Ossoff had a 71-point lead; on Tuesday it was 77. In DeKalb, Mr. Ossoff led by 64 points in November; on Tuesday he led by 67. In Gwinnett, he led by 16 points in November and 20 on Tuesday.

In Fulton, the state’s most populous county, Mr. Ossoff’s November lead was 41.6 points; on Tuesday, 43 points. These were enough to erase Mr. Perdue’s 88,000 vote lead in November and propel Mr. Ossoff to a narrow victory.”

The strategy of using Twitter and public rallies to bang the big drum to energize one’s constituency also energizes the opposition as well, proving it to be a double-edged sword.

President Trump showing up agitated in Georgia last Monday, before Tuesday’s runoff election, didn’t work out that well. On the other hand, to be fair to the president, being spied upon with impunity in 2016, being investigated for close to two whole years for purported Russian collusion and conspiracy and being impeached out of spite must have given him a sickening peek under the thin veneer of bipartisan politics.

The Capitol has been reduced to tribal politics—that is, being loyal to and placing one’s social group above everything else. There is very little, if any, collaboration across party lines in today’s environment because true bipartisanship is working together toward the common good.

We anticipated that one of two things would be conveyed on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020.

God is saying, “You’re breathing My air and drinking My water, and here’s how we’re going to run things,” and President Trump would be reelected. This writer believes that this is what happened on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016. God put Donald Trump in charge. There’s hardly any other explanation for Trump’s miraculous win.

The other scenario pictured a Trump loss because the Trump faith effort was made up mostly of speakers, rallies, conference calls, press conferences and press releases but little grassroots, precinct-level organizing. “Who’s knocking on low/mid-propensity evangelical doors in the battleground states?” we asked a Trump faith leader about one month ago. “Nobody,” he replied.

For the 2020 presidential cycle, this writer has been told that when the secretary of state’s report on the actual voting numbers will be released, it will show that overall evangelical voter turnout dropped from 25% in 2016 to 18% in 2020. Any way you slice it, evangelicals didn’t turn out anywhere near full force.

What is clear is that we evangelicals don’t need more buses running across states to get out the vote 30 days before an election when 50% of the vote is already in from early voting. Also what is equally clear is that we evangelicals don’t need more speakers, conferences or seminars. What we do need are more Christian and conservative political organizers and operators.

In short, God gave us a miracle the first time, but the second time He left it up to us.

In Georgia last week, rising left-wing evangelical forces were organized … recognizing that the two largest denominations of political currency are: a) How many votes can you bring to the table? or b) how much money can you generate that brings votes to the table?

Jesus’ adept perception in Luke 16:8b that “the sons of this world are wiser in their own generation than the sons of light” helps, accentuating that if speechifying is a denomination of political currency, it’s small change.

This brings us to the Christian folly of entrusting the intellectual and moral development of the last three to four generations of America’s youth to profane, impious secularists. They have indoctrinated them with a trendy, cool secularism that leads to the wide road of Babylonian captivity.

For ultimately, “If the culture’s liberal; if the schools are liberal; if the churches are liberal; if the hip, groovy business elite is liberal; if the guys who make the movies and the pop songs are liberal; then electing a guy with an ‘R’ after his name isn’t going to make a lot of difference.”

In light of the fact that “all culture is the expression of a people’s worship, in terms of which they cultivate society,” three things must happen for America to get back in the saddle:

— Prayer must be reestablished by senior pastors in America’s churches.

— American Christendom must return to Jesus’ kingdom assignment from Matthew 16:18: His ekklesia (read: every church in America) should have at least one pastor, ministry leader or congregant that holds a local elected office.

— Christians must develop and train Generation Z [those born after 1996] in the rough and tumble of the public square.

Dr. Joseph Boot, cultural theologian and leading Christian apologist, elucidates on the crisis in American Christendom: “Since the gospel effects such a transformation, we must conclude that the dreary condition of our culture today is in large measure due to the apostasy of the church and Christian family from their respective callings. Since the so-called Enlightenment, Christians have steadily surrendered the various organs of culture—education, law, arts, charity, medicine, government—almost entirely to the increasingly humanistic state. We have progressively retreated into a pietistic bubble, concerned largely with eternal verities and keeping souls from hell, and we have faithlessly limited Christ’s jurisdiction to the institutional church. The result has been the marginalization of the Christian church and a change of religion in the public sphere.”

As a consequence of the lack of Christian engagement in and impact on the culture, freedom in America is at risk.

Gideons and Rahabs are requested to please stand. {eoa}

David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.