Purposely Mixing Faith and Politics

I tried to do this last election - take the claims and promises that Candidate McCain and (then Candidate, now -) President Obama made during their campaigns and look to see how they really stacked up against my faith. I didn't finish last time - didn't even get close - because I bit off more than I could chew. This time I'm going to set myself some more stringent ground rules and hope that helps me to actually finish.

First of all, last time around I made one decision that I am going to stick with this time, as well. I was baptized as in infant in the United Methodist Church, confirmed in the United Methodist church when I was in 7th grade, and am still active in my United Methodist Church. My brother is a United Methodist Church pastor. I was brought up with, in, and surrounded by the faith and love that is the United Methodist Church. Therefore, as an easily accessible and already-written down proxy for my own personal faith, I am going to refer to the Untied Methodist Church's Social Principles (found here http://www.umc.org/site/c.lwL4KnN1LtH/b.2294683/k.B1A4/Church_and_Society.htm). I have read them through on more than one occasion and I agree with them - mostly wholeheartedly, though there are some points that I have more or less enthusiasm for.

Last time, I tried to wade through the Social Principles point by point and then looked through each candidate's website to find evidence that they did or did not promote policies that agreed with each given point. That's where I tripped up and couldn't finish. The candidates' websites were a hodge-podge of different points, all of them very vague, and the points on the candidates' websites rarely matched up with just one of the Social Principles and vice versa.

So this time I am going to go about it a different way. I'm going to take each of the two national parties' Platform documents, and go through each plank of the platform, and then look at the Social Principles and try to determine how well the plank matches up with what I believe.

A final note: the Constitution of the United States explicitly states that there shall be NO religious test for elected office. Therefore, I'm NOT going to address whether Mormonism is Christian or not, whether President Obama is a closet Muslim or not, Rev. Wright and whether he is loony-tunes or not, or anything like that. 

Since the Republican Platform is out and the Democrats' isn't yet, I will start with the Republicans and see how far I get.