G. Frink's

One of the world's most influential religious conservatives says Republican Presidential nominee John McCain has become a cynical, unprincipled, waffling George Bush retread.

Richard Cizik, chief lobbyist for the 30-million-member National Association of Evangelicals and a Republican, told the Colorado Independent on Monday, "I thought John McCain was a principled person."

But John McCain has backed off, not just on climate change but on torture and a sensible tax policy -- in other words, he's not the John McCain of 2000. ... He seems to be waffling on issue after issue.
It's not illogical for someone to conclude that John McCain is going to be more like George Bush than John McCain is going to be like John McCain in 2000.

Cizik is a leader in the Creation Care movement -- an response by Christian evangelicals to global warming and other human environment depredations -- and dismayed by McCain's desertion of environmental responsibility in favor if the identity politics.

That desertion is a part of McCain's attempt to play the culture-war card. It is exemplified by McCain's choice of Alaska's Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Cizik told the Colorado Independent:

He's playing that card, and many of us thought he didn't need to do it -- it just polarizes the country. The irony of it is that John McCain can't speak with an evangelical voice of faith -- let's face it, it's just not his thing -- so I guess the substitute is this other [Palin]. I guess that's pretty cynical, but maybe his actions are cynical.
The consequences of going to identity and culture-war politics is that experience is denigrated, authority is questioned and ignorance is strength.

Dubbed one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time Magazine, Cizik's assessment is a refreshing contradiction of the overweening endorsement of Palin by Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberties Commission and by James Dobson's Palin-driven flip-flop from opposing McCain, to support.

Cizik's precisely spoken insistence on principle, and rejection of cynicism, suggests a religious right that cannot be driven to the polls blindly, like a herd of cattle.

No matter what decisions are made by a few other, high-profile leaders.