Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Truly Born Again

Ever since David Kuo's book Tempting Faith was published about evangelicals and politics, I've been curious to see how they're viewing their “Godly man” president now. Not from a schadenfreude perspective, but from the perspective of people who have been... well, used.

The folks at AlterNet have reported on an interesting survey that like most people, they don't enjoy being referred to as “nuts” or otherwise treated as campaign fuel. The study found that of the people identifying themselves as “Born Again” or “Evangelical,” and who voted for Bush in 2000 and again in 2004, 40% of these people will now vote for a Democrat, and 29% would vote for a Republican. And most of the remaining voters say they'll just vote on the merits of the candidate, whichever party that might be.

The callous disregard for these people is finally beginning to be exposed—and rewarded—now that the veneer of Christianity has been sanded away from the political machinery and nobody in this administration cares who gets elected to anything anymore. There's certainly nothing wrong with being Christian (or any religion), but when religion is used by politicians as a tactical weapon—well, that's the worst kind of emotional bait-and-switch you can perpetrate on a population. And the Bush administration has done this repeatedly.

Trent Lott and people in his situation have now built up enough lobbying contacts, and they've rigged enough of the rules that they have retired from politics to work the lobbying end of the equation to see how much they can continue to wring from public coffers. Think of it: The guy wins re-election, only to retire a little over a year into his term. Might that have anything to do with the looming restriction on legislators becoming lobbyists as soon as they leave DC? Huh. Ya think?

The people in Karl Rove's 51% strategy (you don't need to win every vote, just enough) and squeezing the evangelical Christian vote out of the South and Midwest have finally had another kind of awakening: There is no God in politics. There are only politicians, and the Republican kind have treated evangelical Christians like toilet paper for the past four or five general election cycles.

Looks like they've had enough of the Conservative Revolution, too.

Comments:

Blogger jeaninelwalker said...

I AM a conservative right-wing Christian. We spent days focusing on the resurrection, along with focusing on the death of Jesus. It is important to understand the price Jesus paid for our salvation. There is nothing wrong with this.

I find it terrible you used Easter as just another device to create division among Americans, even though you liberals always say we should be brought together. That's a lie.

You would not have used Muslim Holy days to take a shot at Muslims. But then again, you would never attack and mock Muslims in the way you do conservatives. Your hypocrisy again shines through

March 24, 2008 10:40 AM  
Blogger Larry said...

Jeaninel -

My dictionary defines hypocrisy as: The false profession of desirable or publicly approved qualities, beliefs, or feelings, esp. a pretense of having virtues, moral principles, or religious beliefs that one does not really possess.

My reading of Keith's post leads me to believe that he is being straight forward. Where is the hypocrisy? If Keith had chosen the day after Easter to post his article, what would you have chosen for your argument?

April 3, 2008 6:42 PM  

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