The new, focus–group tested GOP logo.

It’s remarkable that the political party allegedly joined at the hip with Big Business has such an incredible problem with a basic operational task like marketing. Somehow when it came time to divvy up the commercial sector, the Republicans got all the boring accountants, while the Democrats scooped up all the cool art directors.

Confining Republican outreach efforts to shareholder annual meetings and Daughters of the American Revolution gatherings is obviously not working. We’re going to have to get a “twitter” and compose some “twits” er, “tweets” if the GOP intends to become the happenin’ party.

Fortunately, great minds are at work on this project and they have arrived at a solution. Over the next few years the GOP will be including up a storm. According to Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, the party will be establishing “swearing–in citizenship teams” to approach the newly naturalized with the new, improved GOP message.

I have this mental picture of first contact that’s a combination of ‘The Andromeda Strain’ and ‘Alien’ but I’m sure that’s too harsh. No doubt the teams will be so earnest they squeak when they walk and they will have memorized an “elevator speech” for new citizens who get within range. Assuming Organizing for America and the SNAP people have not hogged all the good tables at the accompanying trade show.

But that’s not all, this “not your grumpy old man’s GOP” will also reach out to minorities who didn’t get here by crossing a river. Priebus says, “We will talk regularly and openly with groups with which we’ve had minimal contact in the past: LULAC, the Urban League, the NAACP, NALEO, La Raza. And we will take our message to college campuses, with an especially strong focus on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.” And I suppose if the communists were still around, Republicans would have coffee with the KGB.

What he expects to accomplish by reaching out to the already convinced remains to be seen. I don’t recall being approached by a Honda salesman as I drove off the lot in my new Infiniti. A more useful approach to me would be contacting minority homeowners in suburban neighborhoods that are mixed racially and politically. Your chances of finding an open mind are vastly greater there than at the NAACP or Urban League.

Still, even if you find an open mind, there is the problem of party beliefs that are still a source of embarrassment to many in GOP leadership.

Which is why Priebus’ handpicked committee has come up with a solution. All national Republicans have to do to achieve presidential success is become Democrats, or more specifically Southern Democrats, since we won’t agree to spend as much money as the Yankee Dems.

And current or holdover members of the GOP base will be permitted to retain some conservative social views, but we are urged to avoid discussing our feelings in polite company or any gathering that includes representatives of the news media.

It’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” applied to an entirely different demographic group.

Specifically, the Priebus group claims it is “not a policy committee” and then recommends “comprehensive immigration reform,” which is code terminology for amnesty; and a change in “issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays,” which is code for quit criticizing Adam and Steve if they want to get “married.”

This is beyond strange. NRC big thinkers want the party to work hard to accommodate the views of two demographic groups that have no interest in voting for us so we will what? Get kinder treatment on MSNBC? Meanwhile the people composing the base of the party are alienated by their betters.

Undocumented Democrats are not going to vote Republican after receiving amnesty. You can get the details here. And homosexuals are not going to give up the best tables at trendy restaurants so they can break bread with Ralph Reed at CPAC. And speaking of Ralph, who is the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, he takes a dim view of the report, “If the Republican party tries to retreat from being a pro-marriage, pro-family party, the big tent is going to become a pup tent very fast.” And he adds, “I am concerned that some in the party are going wobbly on this issue,” which is putting it mildly.

As for amnesty, a Washington Post/ABC poll found that Republican party members opposed amnesty by a margin of 60 to 35 percent, with 5 percent refusing to answer since the question was not in Spanish.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, proposes to hit the GOP where it hurts when he says, “”I would not give my money to the national party, to the national Republican Party. I would not give it to the RNC, I would not give it to the Republican Senatorial Committee nor to the Republican Congressional Committee,” which pretty much covers all the bases.

Good advice, particularly when you consider the recent lawsuit filed over entertainment problems in connection with last summer’s Republican National Convention.

Now I’m not referring to the run–of–the–mill lawsuit involving some rookie advance man who plays an unauthorized version of In–A–Gadda–Da–Vida at a rally to get the crowd fired up. (Usually the 17–minute album version, since even the most ancient, establishment Republican officeholder can shuffle up to the stage in that length of time.)

When Tom Petty or Heart or John Mellencamp demands a GOP candidate stop using their song, it’s not necessarily due to a disagreement on the issues. (Buying weed has taught them all about the free market and specifically the theory of supply & demand.) It’s because they know if the public starts associating their music with the accountant party, instead of the art directors, any hope of a revival tour will dry up.

No, I’m referring to the lawsuit that reveals the people in charge of entertainment at the convention offered Lady Gaga $1 million to perform.

For those readers who still miss Anita Bryant and may not be up to speed on Gaga, here is a brief rundown of her background. She’s a homosexual activist who supports homosexual marriage, the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” enjoys performing in her underwear before large crowds and appears in blasphemous music videos.

And if that wasn’t enough, she thinks the rich don’t pay enough taxes!

There is no tactful way to say this. These people are idiots and have no idea what they are doing. Money given to them is by definition wasted. Even if by some stroke of misfortune Gaga had agreed to appear, there is no telling what she would have done once she was on stage.

That would have been a real two–fer: national laughingstock and object of scorn by the delegates. Besides convention delegates don’t go to hear Lawrence Welk or Wendy O. Williams. They go for the privilege of waiting in security lines, sitting on uncomfortable chairs, wearing silly hats, listening to obscure arguments and being bored by long–winded speakers.

Besides the panic currently being experienced by national GOP leadership is misplaced. As Michael Medved has helpfully pointed out the Republican vote among 18 to 29 year olds increased to 37 percent, a significant boost from 2008’s 32 percent. Voters under 30 of the white persuasion went for Romney over Obama by a strong 7 percentage points. It was minority Obama generating sympathy and solidarity among minority youth that won him that demographic’s vote. A situation unlikely to be repeated when the white brothers: Hillary or Joe, run in 2016.

Finally, if simple outreach and individual contact is the root of the problem, why don’t we try marketing the existing recipe before we start tinkering with the product?

Meanwhile, if Chairman Priebus wants to generate excitement and attract more and trendier youth to GOP conventions, do what they do in Trinidad: Serve rum backed with plenty of drums.

The Obama Inauguration Committee features a new “Heretics Only” water fountain policy.

Christ was no doubt on to something when He limited His public ministry to three years. Any longer and a mere human may forget what he said before or, even worse, lose enthusiasm for an earlier message as the culture changes.

Which is evidently what happened to the Rev. Louie Giglio. Until recently he was scheduled to give the benediction at Obama’s second inauguration. Giglio — founder of the “Passion Conferences” that are marketed to college–age Christians — had lately been in the news for his work against human trafficking and had said grace, so to speak, over the Easter Prayer Breakfast in the White House.

But then an aggressively homosexual lobbying group dug up a sermon Giglio delivered in the mid–90’s and accused him of being an orthodox Christian that believes in the Bible. Well, that was that and Giglio lost no time beating a hasty retreat from the inauguration.

Giglio might have made a better decision if he’d listened to his own sermon before deciding to run up the white flag.

In it the reverend is addressing the homosexual onslaught that traditional culture was just beginning to experience. Giglio wisely pointed out, “We must lovingly but firmly respond to the aggressive agenda of not all, but many in the homosexual community. Underneath this issue is a very powerful and aggressive movement. That movement is not a benevolent movement, it is a movement to seize by any means necessary the feeling and the mood of the day, to the point where the homosexual lifestyle becomes accepted as unknown warm in our society and is given full standing as any other lifestyle, as it relates to the family.”

That was not only wise, it was prophetic. Then Giglio mentions what both the Old and New Testament have to say regarding homosexual practices and concludes, “…homosexuality is not an alternative lifestyle…homosexuality is not just a sexual preference, homosexuality is not gay, but homosexuality is sin. It is sin in the eyes of God, and it is sin according to the world of God…That’s God’s voice. If you want to hear God’s voice, that is his voice to the issue of homosexuality. It is not ambiguous and unclear. It is very clear.”

Again, there is nothing that a plain reading of Scripture does not tell one. Giglio was not embellishing and he was certainly not personally condemning homosexuals. He just stated the obvious at it applies to the Bible and observant Christians.

Homosexual practices are not a lifestyle. The practice is a rebellion against God at the most fundamental level. God created woman for man and blessed the union. Any other arrangement is a perversion of God’s plan and God’s intent. And it remains a perversion in spite of the fact the only perversions elite culture recognizes today are smoking, obesity and magazines with a capacity larger than 10 rounds.

Giglio also said, “We must not sit quietly by and stick our heads in the sand and let whatever happens happen in our country. We’ve got to respond to the world we live in. That is the mandate that comes to us as people of God. And this issue is coming more and more to the forefront every day.”

Unfortunately, that is exactly what Giglio did not do. Instead he issued a weak statement that reads, “Due to a message of mine that has surfaced from 15 to 20 years ago, it is likely that my participation, and the prayer that I would offer, will be dwarfed by those seeking to make their agenda the focal point of the inauguration.

“Clearly, speaking on this issue has not been in the range of my priorities in the past 15 years. Instead, my aim is meant to call people to ultimate significance as we make much of Jesus Christ.”

This reads like it was written by the same people covering up the massacre at our consulate in Libya. And “ultimate significance as we make much of Jesus Christ” means exactly what?

Christ is significant with or without Giglio’s help. What He needs are teachers who will engage the culture. My fellow conservatives are off the mark when they view this incident as another instance of a politically correct culture that hostile to Christianity.

The culture has always been hostile to Christianity. Good grief, Herod murdered all the male children in Bethlehem aged two or under in an effort to end Christ’s ministry before it began. You can’t get much more hostile than that.

What Giglio has done is acquiesce in the disparagement of the truth of the Bible. What kind of message does this send to the young Christians that Giglio is supposed to be leading? Does Giglio hope the culture will be at least as accepting of him as it is of tobacco executives?

Does it mean Christianity has some vaguely disreputable beliefs that we only share privately with our friends, but the philosophy is not something we want to identify with in public?

How, exactly, does that differ from a meeting of the Klan?

We are losing the culture war because Christians are lead by pacifists, as I wrote about earlier. Giglio has “evolved” from confronting the culture to surfing cultural waves. His current cause is “human trafficking,” which has a number of advantages for a timid Christian. One, all the right organizations are against human trafficking. Two, you get to hobnob with celebrities. And three the chances of offending someone in the congregation are infinitesimal.

Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, asked the Washington Post: “Are all Orthodox clergy now to be banished from civic life if they openly affirm their faith’s teaching about marriage and sexual ethics?” “Are only clergy from declining liberal denominations now acceptable according to hyper–political correctness? Will the same standard also apply to Muslims and members of other faiths who don’t subscribe to the views of Western secular elites?”

Giglio evidently thinks refusing to confront the administration’s “Heretics Only” drinking fountain policy is being polite. But the message it sends the flock is one of weakness and vacillation when it comes to the plain language of the tougher parts of the New and Old Testament.

And it really compares poorly with the Catholic bishop who is preparing to go to jail rather than comply with the Obamacare abortion mandate.

Lou Giglio is building a ministry designed to attract the young in Atlanta. Up until now the name was “Passion City.” In light of his failure to affirm his own message, I suggest Giglio might want to consider changing the name to “Mildly Enthusiastic (But Not to the Point Where We Would Offend Anyone) City.”

Did you have a filet on chicken day?

My sympathy goes out to the president of the Chamber of Commerce where I live. Here Rob Clapper was simply trying to line up an interesting speaker and suddenly he’s in the midst of a controversy.

Who would have thought when he scheduled Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest as the November speaker that Forrest’s views on white supremacy would become the focal point of the event?

“We had begun to coordinate it long before his remarks, but his remarks are irrelevant because this chamber does not engage in or have a part in social issues, “ Clapper said.

“Regardless of what his personal beliefs are and what he’s stated about social issues, that doesn’t play a part in what he’s coming here to speak about. Many of our members…have expressed a strong desire to hear the business practices and strategies that the KKK deploys in building a nationwide organization with over one million members,” Clapper concluded.

Oh, wait — inviting a genuine bigot who promoted violence and intimidation would have been a genuine controversy. Instead what we have here is a faux controversy ginned up by the same fanatics supporting faux marriage.

When Clapper invited Chick–fil–A President Dan Cathy to speak to the chamber it should have been an interesting event with an excellent speaker. Instead Clapper is now fielding questions from hysterical grievance–mongers who make it a point to attack any public figure that does not support their unprecedented redefinition of marriage.

Well, you may say, that’s what Cathy gets for spewing his “hate” during a news conference at the National Press Club. Except that’s not what happened. Cathy was interviewed by the Baptist Press. So a Baptist news service was interviewing a prominent Baptist about his faith. Homosexual extremists had to conduct an extensive search to find something that would offend them.

What’s more, during the interview Cathy didn’t “attack homosexuals” and he didn’t “oppose homosexual marriage.” Here’s what he said after being asked if he and the company support the traditional family, “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit…We intend to stay the course, we know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”

In an earlier interview with the Biblical Recorder, a weekly newspaper published by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, Cathy said, “We are very much supportive of the family – the Biblical definition of the family unit…I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,’ and I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about.”

It’s not like Cathy was asked to cater a homosexual wedding, although I’m sure there will soon be an avalanche of carefully documented requests by wedding parties eager to exchange their free–range, living–will crab cake tapas for a wheelbarrow full of Chick–fil–A nuggets.

Cathy was simply making a positive statement regarding what he believed. It was hardly a declaration of war on homosexual “matrimony” and I doubt many would consider the Biblical Recorder a national platform rivaling the Washington Post.

Still, Cathy does not appear to have read the part of the Constitution stipulating the separation of God and mammon. In today’s Brave Liberal World you are grudgingly allowed to practice Christianity in the privacy of your own home, as long as everyone is a willing participant and you practice “safe religion.” Of course there is zero tolerance for Christians if they start proselytizing at rest stops and in public parks.

On the other hand, if Chick–fil–A wanted to sponsor a float in a homosexual “pride” parade — where participants often dress as sexual organs and the behavior by some participants is so vile you would cover the eyes of children — Cathy might land a profile in the New York Times.

Social conservatives are in a culture war with an opponent that will accept no compromise. By the time you read this “Chick–fil–A Appreciation Day” will be over. I hope millions of Americans supported a company that is not cowed by the liberal media and homosexual extremists.

Even more, I hope that at the next chamber board meeting they not only reaffirm their invitation to Dan Cathy, but they do it between bites of a Chick–fil–A deluxe spicy chicken sandwich.

Homosexual marriage is the unholy product of a union between "living Constitution" and "living Bible" propagandists.

John Hawkins, proprietor of Right Wing News, recently selected his favorite quotes from C. S. Lewis. One has a great deal of relevance with regard to President Obama’s recent embrace of homosexual marriage.

 “No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did…The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority that the patient refuses to accept. And therefore resents.”  

Coverage of Obama’s announcement stressed how his views evolved, but truth be told his view didn’t so much “evolve” as revolve. In 1996 when Obama first ran for the Illinois State Senate, he was a strong supporter of homosexual marriage. Now, like the earth around the sun, choose–your–own–plumbing marriage has done a complete orbit of The Obama and arrived where it began.

That a peripheral question like this could have any role, however large or small, in a presidential election is yet another indicator that we live in a decadent age. Homosexual marriage is the Rosemary’s Baby of political questions: The unholy product of a union between the “living Constitution” and the “living Bible” crowd.

“Living Constitution” advocates interpret the document to support whatever faculty lounge fad is currently making the rounds in intellectual circles. In the last 50 years the Constitution has gone from a document protecting individual liberty to a grimy little pamphlet protecting the sexual proclivities of the libertine set.

The Bible has not fared any better. It could not be more clear on homosexual practices, yet there are clergy who take it upon themselves to breathe a little life into that dusty scroll. The Post quotes the Rev. Clement Aapengnu of St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church claiming, “Who has the authority to define what marriage is?”

For starters I would have said the church does, based on the Bible, but if one doesn’t regard the Bible as the inspired word of God, then the book becomes just an ancient collection of folktales. We don’t take child–rearing advice from Hansel & Gretel, so why consult the Bible for a definition of marriage?

In fact that’s pretty much the take of the Post’s “religion” columnist Lisa Miller who wrote last week, “On the specifics of what constitutes a “good” or “right” kind of family, the Scriptures offer no guidance at all.”

The interesting question is why make the change now? Obama was going to carry Hollywood and San Francisco anyway, why take a chance on alienating red state voters?

Each time homosexual marriage has been put before voters it has, without exception, lost. North Carolina, the most recent state to vote, ratified man–woman marriage by a landslide 61 percent.

In its top–down campaign of sexual enlightenment, the media drags out various polls that show when the choice is binary between regular marriage and imitation marriage 51 percent support imitation marriage. When offered “civil unions” as a third option, support for homosexual marriage plummets to 38 percent.

This, however, is not good news for social conservatives. There is essentially no difference between civil unions and marriage. Just as the marriage of male and female by a justice of the peace has all the rights and privileges of a wedding in a church, the civil union is essentially the same as heterosexual marriage.

Even worse, as we saw in California, once they get “civil unions” the homosexual lobby terms it  “second class” marriage and uses its existence to prove discrimination in the courts.

You don’t have to be a Wal–Mart shopper to fall prey incoherent thinking with regard to homosexuals and the family. Mitt Romney, to his credit, opposes both homosexual marriage and civil unions. But then Romney says he does not oppose two random homosexuals who decide it might be fun to play house and adopt a child without even the formality of marriage.

If your basis for defining marriage is the “feelings” and “love” of the interested parties, then no coherent intellectual argument can be made to define numbers of wives or husbands and, with a bit of evolving, their ages. It’s not a slippery slope, this change is a leap into the abyss.

Currently Obama reassures the religious that he supports a same–sex marriage law that is “respectful of religious liberty.” Which sounds a lot like what he said regarding forcing religious institutions to cover abortion and contraception before the passage of Obamacare and we know how that turned out.