Confusion for Christian Conservatives

From the department of my-kingdom-actually-is-of-this-world:

Barely three months before the voting for a new president begins, the religious right has yet to unite behind a Republican candidate, heightening concerns among evangelical leaders that social liberal Rudolph W. Giuliani will capture the party's nomination.

The splintering of religious conservatives, if it endures, could ease the way for New York's former mayor to emerge as the party's first nominee to explicitly support abortion rights since the Supreme Court legalized the procedure in 1973.

But the lack of a consensus choice for president is only one of the troubles facing conservative evangelicals, a powerful force within the GOP for more than a generation.

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Leaders of Christian conservative groups are threatening to back a third-party candidate in an attempt to stop Giuliani from winning the nomination, the New York Times reported Sunday.

Some evangelical leaders hoped that former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee could be their standard-bearer. But his early stumbles have raised doubts about his capacity to rally support. And some evangelical leaders have questioned his commitment to battling same-sex marriage and abortion.

James C. Dobson, one of the country's most influential evangelicals, told allies in a recent e-mail that Thompson could not "speak his way out of a paper bag."

"He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent 'want to,' " the founder and chairman of Focus on the Family wrote. "And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"

Also vying for the backing of the evangelical community is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. His heavy spending on TV ads in Iowa, where religious conservatives dominate the GOP caucuses that traditionally launch the nomination contest, has vaulted him to the front-runner's spot in polls there.

But he is still struggling to surmount guardedness toward his Mormon faith and his switch to conservative stands on abortion, gay rights and other matters after campaigning in Massachusetts as a moderate on social issues.

I'm not a big fan of James Dobson or the whole social conservative movement in America that is embraced by mainstream evangelicals. For starters, I don't understand why Christians would wish to set up laws in order to force people to obey Christian morals without letting them be converted first. Moreover, I think that to gauge a candidate based upon social conservatism or their Christian faith makes the assumption that they will actually be a decent president. Personally I think American Christians should vote for the candidate who they think will do the best job, not the one who is the most overt Christian.

But if evangelical leaders want someone they can vote for, why doesn't someone like James Dobson run for president? I'm sure millions of Americans would vote for him - even more so if he was the Republican candidate.