God, Guns and Electoral Glory
The Washington Post treats us to this post-mortem about major Democratic inroads among the religious set, especially among Catholics and regular church-goers.
While some accept the Democrats’ explanation that the efforts to reach out to these voters have finally paid off, and others noted that the apparent appeal of wedge issues (gay marriage, for one) seems to be dying down, I’m more likely to accept the Republican explanation: ostensibly, it’s about Foley, stupid. Or, more broadly, people of sincere moral beliefs were actually sickened not so much by the sexual predator himself as the culture of corruption that desperately tried to cover up his actions, and of course, in the view of hard-ass religious righties, “acted no better morally than… Democrats.”
Well… yeah. Think about this, Nancy Pelosi, before you consider putting Alcee Hastings in charge of… anything.
This wasn’t about right-left at all (and if it was, given the kind of centrist/right-centrist candidates we’ve fielded, many of whom are to the right of Joe Lieberman, we’d better think about this), so much as “right and wrong.” Or, in short, the Republicans piled stick after stick of corruption on the pile… and Foley lit the match, finally.
We have an opening now. We can expand our slim majority with solid, good government– simply opposing the extremism of the last six years, basic, solid values (minimum wage increase, tax fairness, maybe some sensible homeland security measures) … and no tolerance for corruption. None. And no room for arrogance.
And maybe, if we can’t win over serious religios… well, we can at least neutralize them electorally… and then again, maybe we CAN win them over. Just saying…
November 11th, 2006 at 10:54 am
Being a Secular Pythonist, I’ll remain committed to the idea that one can be more moral in ‘deed’ than all those Christians who grant themselves the escape clause of “I’m-forgiven-because-I-accept-Jesus-as-Savior.”
I accept Jesus as my mentor. I make no claim to perfection, but I’m leagues ahead of most of the visible hypocritical Christianists touting that as an elective issue.
Inroads? I hope we make inroads on voters who want uncorrupted, effective politicians who don’t favor the rich over the poor.