Analysts Question Dean's New Discussion of God

Fox News ^ | 12/26/03 | Major Garrett and Sharon Kehnemui

[mansion]

WASHINGTON

[mansion]

How can you know if someone is sincere, or just trying to use their religion as a campaign tool?

I guess I'm too cynical - I always have doubts when I hear a politician mention God or religion...

[goldstategop]

There's a book about GWB out at Worldnetdaily discussing him and religion.

[Cicero]

It's open to interpretation what it means to "use the Lord's name in vain." But I'd say:

1. Swearing and cursing.

2. Invoking God's name to tell a lie, or lying under oath.

3. Trying to use God instrumentally. God is to be loved and served, not to be used. And that appears to me to be what Dean is trying to do here.

That raises another proverbial phrase: "God will not be mocked."

[Steve Eisenberg]

How can you know if someone is sincere, or just trying to use their religion as a campaign tool?

You can't. I disagree with the OP comments about Dean needing to be sincere. When Dean tells folks how important Jesus is in his life, I doubt that swing voters will disbelieve it. Now, when he says that he is supports low taxes, low government expenditures, and a strong national defense, there I think we have a better shot at convincing swing voters the truth.

[goldstategop]

Its not the kooks and loons Nikita Dean has to worry about. Its the middle. They don't want a secular tax and spend leftist out of touch with their values. So Dean's moving right as far he can without turning off his base - that's an expected move.

[Jackson Brown]

"He [Christ] fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything ..."

Ya mean like the Elite/Hollywood Limousine Liberals that look to use their millions to impose their self-righteous view of the world??

[kennedy]

he will talk more about Jesus Christ when he campaigns, but only in the south.

I reckon he's gotta talk to us dumb southerners about something besides NASCAR and confederate flags.

Does ANYONE, even the most rabid Dean supporters, actually believe that he can carry a single southern state?

[goldstategop]

He's patronizing. He thinks every one down South still lives in Hicksville. Its that smug Yankee know it all demeanor that turns Southerners off a lot more than his liberal leanings.

[Celtman]

Dean, a member of the congregationist church ...

      Interesting.  The Congregational Church almost ceased to exist in 1957 when the national denomination became part of the United Church of Christ, although a few congregations did not participate in the merger and formed the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches and the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference

[San Jacinto]

Dean gets more hilarious by the minute. it was in an interview with the Boston Globe that he said he would start mentioning religion while campaigning down South. He was simply warning his New England and liberal brethern that he would be doing so in order to innoculate them against a backlash.

In other words, he was just saying, "Now when I'm down there with them hicks I'm gonna have to put on a little Jesus show, but don't you worry none. I just like Jesus 'cause he was a liberal always looking out for the little guy against those self-rightous rich people."

[Agnes Heep]

Maybe he should borrow Clinton's big Bible.

[elbucko]

but left the faith in the early 1980s in a dispute over a bike path.

If a bicycle path was enough to get Dean to forsake his faith, how little will it take for him to forsake his Party or his country. Dean is too impetuous to be president.

I'll wager that the records Dean has sealed in Vermont are his medical mistakes.

[arasina]

Jimmy Swaggart Dean! Send out that news release about how you're going to have a full-immersion baptism while campaigning at a [501(3)c] church in the South. Network coverage and new believers voters!

[angkor]

Dean's a bike path born-again in the Church Of Nuclear Disarmament.

[San Jacinto]

Does ANYONE, even the most rabid Dean supporters, actually believe that he can carry a single southern state?

To answer your question, the Dean supporters hope and think that Dean can carry most or all of the Southern states in the Dem primaries. They also have deluded themselves into thinking Dean might carry a few Southern states in the general election-- if he has the "right" V-P candidate, but they can scarcely agree on who the V-P candidate should be. Graham sure wants it. Maybe it's a McGovern-Bentsen kind of a deal-- it sure worked well for those guys, huh?

[elbucko]

Its that smug Yankee know it all demeanor that turns Southerners off a lot more than his liberal leanings.

I agree.

[Intolerant in NJ]

"He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything..."...really bizarre coming from the son-of-a-New-York-stockbroker, Ivy-League-grad, physician......

[88keys]

So what do you-all think about "bike paths"??

This is priceless...

"Dean used to belong to the Episcopal Church, but left the faith in the early 1980s in a dispute over a bike path. Dean wanted the bike path built in Burlington, Vt., but the church he attended did not. Dean decided the conflict was too large to overcome."

ROTFLMAO!!!

[mansion]

That WAS a big bible. Knowing Clinton, it was hollowed out and had some "Hustler" mags hidden inside.

[88keys]

Y'all are too fast for me...!

Wonder if John Kerry could ride his motorized "bike" on that bike path that really should have been in Burlington? Another "question of faith", no doubt...!

(still LMAO!!)