I'm confused about the American Republican party

[eppie]

I stay away from political threads when they descend into non-stop debate. I'm not looking to debate anything here; I'm just curious about American politics and why it's so vastly different than Canadian politics, even though we have the same sort of 2-party conservative+liberal system and have so much else in common. The only conclusion I can come up with is the religion angle.

So I don't really get your question then. You find the politics in the US ad Canada so much different and think that is because of religion. And you want to know why?
I think the answer to that question isn't political but just reflects what the people in majority want.
There are many countries in which religion is very important in politics.
Canada is more a progressive country such as the north western european countries maybe New Zealand or so. But again this has nothing to do with the political system but just with how the people are.

If you ask why religion is so important in the US you could ask the same for Italy, Poland, Iran, Sudan or Indonesia.


However, an interesting topic to read up on is how separation of church and state works in different parts of the world. In many country a strong connection between church and state ensures that the church doesn't sink down in a culture of extremism.
A country completely on the other side of the spectrum is France; I think a good example of how it should be. However, now you see that there are issues rising with the Islamic religion that are difficult to handle exactly because the state doesn't want anything to do with religion.