Why do Christians vote conservative?

I used to. Rather thoughtlessly, really. It seemed like a lot of Christians were in the conservative parties (whether PC, Reform or Alliance) so that must be good right? Also, being passionately pro life, I noticed that any candidates that were also pro life were in conservative parties.

Turns out even voting based on one issue isn't as simple as it seems. Reading an article on the Cornerstone website recently, I found out that numbers of abortions went down under Clinton (who is pro choice) and up under Bush (who is pro life). The reason for this is most likely that the social policies of the Bush administration make it harder to be able to adequately care for an infant.

Concerning Canada, Sunday's Free Press had an interesting article on Alberta. Despite being a fantastically wealthy province that is almost debt free, the numbers of homeless are growing and it has a rediculously low minimum wage. My knowledge of this area is still rather small, but as far as I can tell economic policy will have one of two effects: It will either make the rich richer and the poor poorer or it will narrow the gap. It doesn't seem to be possible to help the poorest without taking something away from the wealthy.

God seems very concerned about the poor. To Israel He said that there should be no poor among them. Everything was distributed equally and as inequalities arose over time He put "policies" in place that would restore the balance every so often.

I used to like the saying,"Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it". That thought seems to be behind many conservative policies. If you are having difficulty it is because of your own choices. Yet when I read about the poor in the Bible, God talks about the poor needing to be delivered from oppression, not needing behavior change.

So the question remains, why do Christians vote conservative?