Who is the Santa Claus Party?

After the 2004 election, in which the states that went for Bush formed a relatively neat geographical unity and in all the states that went for Kerry maps and T-shirts were circulating labeling the Republican states as ‘Jesusland,’  I thought, what should the rest of the USA and Canada be called?  Santa Claus Land?

As a matter of fact, from the Left, ‘fake consultant‘ proposes some candidates for the new Santa Claus – among them Michael Moore, Meghan McCain, and Lady Gaga – who would confirm the role of the Left as the Santa Claus party.  But the Right has invented a Santa for their own purposes.  I thought at first that the term ‘Two Santa Claus Theory’ was a nasty term invented by the Left, but it turns out, according to Bruce Bartlett that the term originates with Jude Wanniski himself, out of memories of the Goldwater disaster of 1964.  As I have said before, if we lower the top rate from 90% or 70% we might well see an increase in government revenues, but not necessarily when we lower it from Clinton’s 39.8%.  The really rich, especially the financial sectors and hedge funders, may not be the ‘job creators’ they claim to be, but measures aimed at them often fall harder on the not-so-rich business people who are not in the 1% and are the real job creators.

It must be mentioned in fairness that the original Santa Claus Party, of which I am a reluctant member, has tried to capture Jesus, at least those portions of Jesus that can be detached from the rest of the Bible and taken way out of context.  Something, by the way, which the real Jesus is not willing to let us do:

Scripture can’t be abolished.   John 10:34b

Don’t even begin to think that I have come to do away with the Law and the Prophets.  I haven’t come to do away with them but to fulfill them.  I say to you very seriously that as long as heaven and earth exist, neither the smallest letter nor even the smallest stroke of a pen will be erased from the Law until everything there becomes a reality.  Therefore, whoever ignores one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called the lowest in the kingdom of heaven.   Matthew 5:17-19.

Some of the evangelical Left, like Jim Wallis, have expressed disgust with the contemptuous attitudes of their secularistic comrades.  When Wallis says, “God is not a Republican – or a Democrat,” I get the impression he really means, ‘God would like to be a Democrat, but He finds a lot of the Democrats disgusting.’  C. S. Lewis, in his “Meditation on the Third Commandment” in God in the Dock, warns us against getting too much in bed with any political party.  And Francis Schaeffer is supposed to have popularized the term ‘co-belligerent’ as opposed to ‘ally.’  A healthy stance for Christians of left, right, and center, as we enter an election year.

More Posts