(02-10-2012, 10:56 AM)eppie Wrote: It is also highly suspicious that deebye started this thread....he usually steers away from the political threads.
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.
I started really wondering about it when I read about US Christian religious leaders meeting in Texas to decide on a preferred Republican candidate (Here's a link, don't know if the website is biased but there are more sources). That sort of blew my mind because with my understanding of the 1st amendment, church leaders should never have influence over politics - right?
A bunch of people have replied saying that each side panders to voters, so are Republicans pandering to Christians just to gain their vote - or are the nominees really as religious as they say they are? The same question applies to Democrats stating their pro-Christian views.
Edit: I also should thank everyone for their very informative replies. I haven't replied to each of you, but I have read everything and I appreciate it. Politics is confusing.