This is a fairly amazing time where the Republican party is either getting ready to implode or explode depending upon your perspective. On the one hand, you have the governor of Texas and crazies like Bachmann calling for cessation or revolution. Very frightful stuff. and on the other hand, you have folks like Schmidt calling for the Republican Party to pull away from it’s fall into becoming a religious sect.

Schmidt is for gay marriage and does not believe that public policy should be based solely on religious views:

“If you reject [gay marriage] on religious grounds, I respect that,” he said. “I respect anyone’s religious views. However, religious views should not inform the public policy positions of a political party because… when it is a religious party, many people who would otherwise be members of that party are excluded from it because of a religious belief system that may be different. And the Republican Party ought not to be that. It ought to be a coalition of people under a big tent.”

Steve Schmidt, McCain Campaign Manager: Religion Could Kill The GOP.