Does the GOP need a religious retreat?

Marx and his colleagues insist they aren’t especially concerned about the growing secularization of young voters. They are primarily looking to diversify the GOP’s religious coalition, Marx said. To close the Latino gap, Marx says conservative activists are planning a major outreach effort to evangelical Hispanics and to Hispanic Catholics who attend Mass. “We are casting a wider net—the politics of addition, not subtraction,” Marx said, adding that Latinos and other minorities have been attracted to many conservative positions”

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It’s no surprise that Florida Sen. Marco Rubio took heat for an interview he gave to GQ magazine this month: Departing from scientific consensus, the rising Republican star refused to state whether the Earth is billions of years old or a few thousand, as many fundamentalist Christians believe. What no one expected was the rebuke from televangelist and longtime Christian conservative leader Pat Robertson, dismissing theories of a “young Earth.” “If you fight science, you are going to lose your children,” Robertson said last week during an appearance on the Christian Broadcast Network, the television empire he founded three decades ago. Robertson wasn’t directly speaking to Rubio, but the senator and others in his party might heed the advice. Viewed by many voters as anti-science and too conservative on social issues such as gay marriage, the Republican Party is in danger of losing young and less religious voters for years to come. In a post-election breakdown by the Public Religion Research Institute, the Obama religious coalition mirrors the demographics of 18-29 year olds, whereas Romney’s mirrors those of voters aged 65 and up. Click here to read the rest of the article.