Posted on 11/07/2004 9:53:38 PM PST by Coleus
Election 2004: The Role of "Moral Values"
Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Esq.
This election was supposed to be about terrorism, the economy, and Iraq. But there was a more pressing issue that motivated people to vote this year, and that was the issue of moral values.
According to exit polls from the National Election Pool, the official election source for broadcast and cable television stations, "moral values" was cited as the most important issue this election by more people than any other concern. The economy and jobs was next, followed by terrorism, then the war in Iraq. Among those who cited moral values as paramount, 80 percent voted for Bush and 18 percent voted for Kerry.
While abortion and marriage certainly were not the centerpiece of either campaign, their importance to voters cannot be underestimated.
Eleven states had ballot initiatives to defend traditional marriage, and each one passed by a healthy margin. Sixty-five percent of Floridians voted to overturn bad court rulings and amend their constitution to allow enactment of a law requiring parental notification for minor girls seeking abortions. Only California bucked the apparent moral values trend, by voting to put billions of dollars into embryonic stem cell and human cloning research.
The 2002 mid-term election suggested that the pro-life position is a "plus" for candidates, and this election proved it again. The House of Representatives will have more pro-life votes after this election, but the real story is the Senate, where there were significant pro-life gains. New Senators who vote pro-life were elected in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and South Dakota. In Louisiana, a Senator who sometimes voted pro-life was replaced by a strong supporter of the cause.
These new Senators will provide a stronger margin in the Senate on issues like abortion, human cloning, and embryo-destructive research. Their most significant impact, however, may be on judicial nominations.
In a statement issued the day after the election, NARAL Pro-Choice America's President Elizabeth Cavendish warned President Bush against trying to "pack the Supreme Court with new anti-choice zealots." Planned Parenthood's Gloria Feldt promised to "fight these and many other battles" with "unity of purpose and fierceness of heart to protect our human rights."
These and other abortion advocates are utterly out of step with the world around them.
Last year the pro-abortion Center for Gender Equity published a survey of women showing the startling result that, of all the "top priority" issues for the women's movement, "keeping abortion legal" ranked dead last. The survey also showed that a majority of women -- 51 percent -- believe that abortion should never be permitted, or permitted only in cases of rape, incest, or life endangerment (2 percent of abortions yearly).
More good news comes from the recent Pace University/Rock the Vote poll. "Rock the Vote" was launched by MTV in 1992 to get young people to register to vote. And where do these super-hip-MTV-rock-the-voters stand on abortion? According to their own poll, 54% of them are pro-life.
It shouldn't have surprised us that "moral values" came first.
Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Esq. is the Director of Planning and Information for the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
USCCB Pro-Life Secretariat
GRASSROOTSPA CALL TO ACTION
STOP SPECTER FROM BLOCKING BUSH'S JUDGES
Contact Senator Frist
202-224-3135
Contact Senator Santorum
202-224-6324
Tell them in no uncertain terms that Specter cannot be made Senate Judiciary Chairman
Do NOT take "no" for an answer!
Bush has no Mandate?
Just say "NO" To Specter's Games!
Senate Judiciary Committee GOP Members
Contact Senator Orrin Hatch
202-224-5251
Contact Senator Charles Grassley
202-224-3744
Contact Senator Jon Kyl
202-224-4521
Contact Senator Mike DeWine
202-224-2315
Contact Senator Jeff Sessions
202-224-4124
Contact Senator Lindsey Graham
-202-224-5972
Contact Senator Larry Craig
202-224-2752
Contact Senator Saxby Chambliss
202-224-3521
Contact Senator John Cornyn
202-224-2934
We were talking about this in our non-Catholic church today too.
SAY NO TO RUDY THE RINO IN 2008!
The election showed 59,000,000 with morals, 56,000,000 without.
Sometimes I find it impossible not to gloat.
The one "moral value" that seems to be getting ignored by everyone, bearing false witness...
Too many people gave Clinton a pass on it, the economy seemed to be humming along, we thought & were told that there were no threats to our security, we were collectively allowed to think it was okay to be like teenagers, live for today.
Events slapped us up & told us it was time to grow up. Kerry tried to take us back to a simpler time, but we saw through him with our reawakened adult critical eye. We could no longer be teenagers. Even the generation long accused of never growing up, did. Character matters.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!!!
The reason it appears that moral values turned the election is because of the bad (and possibly intentional) way the exit poll questions were asked. The following is a paraphrase of Charles Krauthammer's analysis of the situation on Brit hume's show last night:
In polling, a generality will always beat a specific, because more people can fit their opinion into the generality. The categories related to terror issues and eceonomic issues were very specific: Iraq, Security, Terrorism, Jobs, Taxes, etc. Meanwhile, moral values were one category. If you take the Econ categories and the terror/foreign policy categories and combine them into two general categories--Terror and The Economy--then Moral Values comes in dead last. That doesn't mean people don't see Bush as moral and like him for it, it just means that they didn't vote on that as their foremost consideration.
Krauthammer also said he went looking for the angry white male after the 1994 Gingrich Revolution, and he could find no evidence of such a demographic carrying the election. There's no evidence that a wave of evangelicals and conservative catholics carried this election, either. </Krauthammer>
It's all just libs trying to cover their failures and salvage their bloated sense of moral superiority, and prominent Christians are buying it hook, line and sinker. If we go out and strategize based on this piffle, we will lose in 2006.
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