Posted on 06/01/2006 6:24:06 AM PDT by isaiah55version11_0
At some point in the last eighteen months, a meme was born in the mainstream press that has, so far as I can tell, no basis in fact. According to this meme, politically active evangelical Christians are an "up for grabs" swing group of voters, many of whom are ripe for the Democrats’ picking. This bizarre idea was expressed most recently by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post in May. Writes Marcus:
Democrats these days are a party on a mission that might sound impossible: to persuade evangelical Christian voters to consider converting -- to the Democratic Party.
Just as Republicans have worked, and to some extent succeeded, at peeling off some African American voters from the Democratic Party, evangelical voters are too big a part of the electorate (about a quarter) for one party simply to write off. Democrats have a shot at luring some of them…
The facts do not back up this assertion. Marcus herself bases her argument on some pretty thin evidence. Apparently House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accepted an invitation to the opening of a new mega-church. Howard Dean appeared on the 700 Club (where he lied about what the Democratic Party platform says about gay marriage, by the way). And the founder of Redeem the Vote recently met with the leadership of the Democratic Leadership Council.
This is not the stuff of a groundswell.
President Bush, for example, has been "invited" to meet with Cindy Sheehan on several occasions on the issue of the Iraq War. Accepting the invitation would not win Mr. Bush the endorsement of MoveOn.org. Elsewhere, Marcus gets her facts horribly jumbled. For example, she states:
And evangelical voters' growing dissatisfaction with President Bush doesn't appear to be trickling down into congressional races; in a recent Pew poll, 64 percent of evangelicals (compared with 41 percent of all voters) said they would vote for the Republican congressional candidate in November, about the same as in polls before the 2002 midterms.
There is no evidence, so far as I am aware, that evangelicals have expressed a "growing dissatisfaction with President Bush." Rather, as Tony Carnes has observed in Christianity Today, evangelicals remain among the last pro-Bush voter subgroups in America. What is more, these pro-Bush evangelical Christians have expressed a "growing dissatisfaction" with Congress. A recent Family Research Council poll showed that almost two-thirds of evangelical voters believe Republicans in Congress have not kept their promises to "moral values voters." Perhaps Ms. Marcus is projecting her own "growing dissatisfaction" with President Bush, but whatever the case is, she cannot be said to have reflected accurately the views of evangelical Christians in her column. Finally, Ms. Marcus’ belief that Democrats can whittle away at the GOP’s strength among evangelical Christians only when they begin to seek common ground on issues of poverty and the environment can only be said to have been cribbed from the Democrats’ playbook. This entreaty has been made by various high-level Democrats since Election Day 2004 and betrays both a naiveté about why evangelicals tend to vote Republican and an arrogance surrounding the political left’s position on these two issues. Evangelicals vote Republican because evangelicals are social conservatives. And at this time in our nation’s political history the Republican Party represents those same socially conservative values. John C. Green—whom Marcus relies on for her column—acknowledges as much in a recent article he co-wrote with BeliefNet’s Steve Waldman for The Atlantic. Green and Waldman identified three key religious “tribes” within the GOP’s electoral coalition: the Religious Right, Heartland Culture Warriors, and Moderate Evangelicals. The groups differ in their varying degrees of religious and political orthodoxy, but Green and Waldman describe all three groups as conservative on cultural issues. And while it is true, as Marcus points out that only 47% of Moderate Evangelicals are self-identified Republicans, 64% of these folks voted to re-elect President Bush in 2004. Their behavior on Election Day makes them, in effect, a larger Republican voting bloc than mere voter registration numbers indicate. Ms. Marcus’ column appeared in the same week that an Amy Sullivan piece appeared in The New Republic. Sullivan’s piece was subtitled, “The Christian right moves left,” and TNR teased the reader on the cover with the provocative headline, “Swinging Evangelicals.” At this point, it should become obvious that we are dealing with an orchestrated effort to create the impression that liberals are gaining traction with Christian conservatives. Forget about all that “Theo-Con” stuff, it’s time for Democrats to “take back the faith!” But Sullivan’s piece is fatally flawed and dishonest in its omissions. Sullivan writes of the National Association of Evangelicals’ (NAE) vice president for governmental affairs Richard Cizik’s work on global climate change as if Cizik represents the broader NAE in this regard. He does not. The NAE has not endorsed Mr. Cizik’s Evangelical Climate Initiative and several leaders within that organization have expressed to me frustration with Mr. Cizik’s freelancing. Ms. Sullivan does not mention that the NAE’s official position on global climate change is identical to that of Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and Chuck Colson’s Prison Ministries (the stodgy old rightwing zealots in Sullivan’s account.) Elsewhere in her article, Sullivan observes that a Christian biology professor named Joseph Sheldon derided Sen. Rick Santorum’s environmental record after the screening of an environmentally extremist documentary on the campus of Messiah College, Professor Sheldon’s employer. Sullivan creates the impression that a bunch of rightwing Christian kids went bananas when they discovered that Santorum had voted against the Kyoto Accord (along with 98 of his colleagues, it should be added). But Sullivan leaves out the inconvenient truth (to borrow a phrase) that professor Sheldon is, above all else, a long-time environmental activist who, as far back as 1996, evoked the biblical story of Noah and the flood to advocate for a hard line version of the Endangered Species Act. What is more, sources familiar with the event tell me that more Casey for Senate staffers and supporters attended the event than born again Christians. The screening was, in short, a thinly-veiled rally for Sen. Santorum’s political opponent. No wonder Sen. Santorum declined the invitation. Sullivan leaves all this information out of her piece. Posturing is important in the game of electoral politics, so no one can blame the Democrats for pretending to be the new party of the faithful in the run-up to the 2006 election. And the motives of Messrs. Cizik and Sheldon are not in question; they, we can assume, are believing Christians with passionate (if minority) views about the preferred direction of political evangelicalism. Ms. Marcus and Ms. Sullivan, however, have earned our condemnation for dressing up their wish fulfillment in the clothes of journalism. They have soiled the pages of the Washington Post and The New Republic in pursuit of political gain for their favored political party.
Patrick Hynes is the proprietor of Ankle Biting Pundits and is currently writing a book on the Religious Right for Nelson Current.
Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com
Evangelicals are only swing voters in the sense they may stay home. The anti-religion, pro-abortion, pro-gay Democrats have no chance of actually getting evangelicals to vote for them.
Do evangelicals listen to Cardinal Mahoney and the catholic church? With all his discussion, exposure and support those that actually don't want to talk to an evangelical might get that impression.
...When Hell freezes over
Gotta love the MSM. When Evangelicals get angry at RINO's for being too liberal the OBVIOUS answer is that they will decide to vote Democrats in who are even more liberal than the RINO's. Makes perfect sense (/Sarc)
The true swing voter is the guy with a gun and a confederate flag mounted in the back of a pick up truck.
And Howard Dean is aggressively courting that voting bloc.
They think that an anti-Christian party has a prayer at getting the evangelical vote? It is true that evangelicals are becoming more and more disgruntled with Bush, but they are not becoming more and more enamored with the Democrats.
You know, that is a harsh statement, but I believe it to be correct. Moreover, the way the parties are structured, I could not ever see myself voting Democrat - ever! On the other hand, I could feel totally justified sitting on my hands in the event a RINO is running against a Dem.
Oh yeah. Gimme my ballot. I wanna vote for the commies now cuz they said so.
They swing all right, from conservative to MORE conservative. That is if they are real evangelicals and not "liberal Christians."
I also suspect the noveau "Emerging Church" movement that is sometimes very subjective in its approach is another factor in making the leftists think they can make inroads.
I'd argue that the "swing" voters are the "socially liberal (live and let live types)/ Politically Conservative (for limited govt)".
Bush is a Social Conservative. He is *not* a political conservative, quite apparently.
The 'Contract with America' revolution of 94 was all about "political conservative" issues like govt corruption, lower spending, etc. That's what made the current Rs the majority. Now, clearly, they have all abandoned those of us who are politically C.
I predict either the Rs start to take action on 'politically conservative' issues like the ones in the contract with america or else they will lose their majority.
And they will deserve to.
Someone yest put it best (sorry I can't remember who, where, to give them credit):
"The party I voted for in '94 has become the party I voted against in '94."
Polls fooled them once into a false sense of winning (Kerry). So let them have their polls. But we have to stand together and agree/vote on the best (Christian) candidate. Otherwise it will no longer be things that we don't like but things that we hate.
1) The Evangelicals stayed home in 2000 and almost handed the country to satan. They recognized that and didn't make the same mistake in 2004. They won't make that mistake in 2006 or 08 either.
2) The Evangelicals are the GOP's Blacks except they are even more valuable because they not only vote, but work for candidates and contribute to candidates. This means they take themselves out of the "groups to worry about column". That helps too. They do not need courting or hand holding.
"If God had intended us to vote, He would have given us candidates." (Joe Sobran)
Since God sometimes helps those who help themselves, we need to go to the primaries and choose acceptable candidates. Sitting out an election is always a bad choice, contrary to what many have espoused. Not voting is NOT non-cooperation. It is cutting off your nose to spite your face.
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