Posted on 12/13/2001 7:50:35 AM PST by 11th Earl of Mar
STAYAWAY CHRISTIANS ALMOST COST ELECTION
Many Christians believe that prayer played a major role in sending George W. Bush to the White House, but stayaway believers came close to losing him the election, according to his chief political adviser, Karl Rove.
Rove said that one reason the 2000 election was so tight was that as many as 4 million Christian conservatives did not go to the polls, reported "The Chicago Tribune." Although the Bush campaign had expected 19 million evangelical voters to vote for their man, election returns revealed only 15 million turned out to cast ballots.
Speaking yesterday at an American Enterprise Institute seminar, Rove said the Bush campaign "probably failed to marshal support of the base as well as we should have," said the "Tribune." Rove added: "But we may also be returning to the point in America where fundamentalists and evangelicals remain true to their beliefs and think politics is corrupt and, therefore, they shouldn't participate."
Rove said that if the "process of withdrawal" went on it would be bad for the country as well as conservatives and Republicans. "It's something we have to spend a lot of time and energy on."
However, I really don't blame these people for staying home. For years, the media and left has been screaming that everyone should be able to participate in the political process, EXCEPT for the religious right.
I am not sure Republicans have done enough to defend their constituency of christian conservatives.
I also think the word "compromise" is not in the christian conservative vocabulary and much like the hard left groups who won't compromise: PETA, ACTUP; etc, they have become increasingly irrelevant to the mainstream political debate.
Exactly. I highly doubt even a simple majority would vote for it.
Lormand, you ask how it costs the President political capital. How long do you think the media would have harped on Bush's inability to get a bill through a GOP-controlled Congress? Right off the bat, the American electorate would have an image of some bumbling, politically inept fool living in the White House. I believe the President understood this, and understands that there is a proper time to address sensitive issues (that time was not in the first six months of office under the current Congress).
Can you tell us how Bush's first budget proposal compares in size to Clinton's final budget proposal?
Thanks.
Why? The federal government somehow forgot about the 10th and decided to walk all over the states
You know something is up when you look at the "conversions" on this issue. There are lots of people who were formerly pro-abortion that are now strong pro-life advocates. Nobody changes their mind the other way except limp-wristed Republicans who decide that a pro-life stand is a political liability.
I met a guy a few years ago who is now a Republican Congressman. Married to a former National Right to Life spokeswoman and everything else. If this guy represents the future of the pro-life movement in Congress, then we are doomed.
And as for incrementalism -- that would be fine, except that we're still incrementing in the wrong direction. (All while we're adding more cabinet-level bureaucracies and growing the budget at a rate that Ted Kennedy use to have wet dreams about.)
Tell me again how the Republicans are the party of less government and conservatism. Wake up.
With a "mouth" like that, I don't think you're going to have to worry about anyone up There getting in your way.
Sort of like Bush. I don't know any Christians who hold strongly to their beliefs who run around calling people a-holes.
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And the Republicans crushed them. (Gingrich gets plenty of credit here, because found every open wound, and every "scandal" from the abuse of power, that the Democrats had left open -- and he rubbed salt hard into each one of those open wounds. But even without Gingrich, the Republicans would have won that election).
I'm sorry if some get offended, but you have to keep the passive mushy massive middle of a huge nation comfortable. They are not comfortable with anything that smacks of extremism. This is where the left has been effective -- slowly, through schools and media and entertainment, changed the minds of the population just enough to make many of their truly wacky ideas mainstream -- ideas that would have been extremism if they had attempted to impose them through government fiat.
Since 1994, the Democrats have not erred in that way again and they have slowly eaten away at the Republican gains, because they DO represent the strongest plurality (not majority, plurality) in this generation. The Republicans have not really "won" an election outright since 1994. They have, through a well-run campaign, through a relatively weak Rat candidate and through the "thousand small cuts" of a sordid scandal, by the barest of margins managed to "guerilla" in a President. One who is now very popular. Hopefully, fortune is with us again, but I'd be more comfortable seeing the Rats make a few mistakes, just to be sure.
Rather than enjoying and building upon the progress acheived to date, you grouse and merely number yourself among the chronically malcontented.
It is certainly not the attitude of a winner. Perhaps the more you lose, the more righteous you believe yourself to be.
Gotta get yourself off that treadmill.
That being said, there is definately a place for religion in politics, but if you are looking for a religous experience in politics, you are going to be dissappointed.
At first read of this article, I was preparing to blast Rove. The article is written to suggest, apparently, that Rove intended to take us Bible Thumpers to the woodshed. The excerpt is an example that if we remove the quotes from the commentary things can look different.
After further review it appears to me he's being rather introspective.
One needs to be aware that the word "fundamentalism" (and variattions of...) has now been given a negative connotation, just as "liberal", "ignorant", and others have. By doing this we can rhetorically tar-and-feather all kinds of folks.
I often thought that throughout the '80's and on(when the moviemakers and politicians had a heyday making Islamic people their whipping boys, and "Rock the Casbar" crap was going on)that it was just a matter of time until they used that precedent to marginalize Christians. Well here we are.
I don't see much to gripe at Rove about here, but I AM watching.
That may be, but you sure don't recognize "good cop-bad cop" when you see it. The Dem's trot out their left wing extremist "bad cop" each election and the Pubs answer with their slightly to the right warmed over socialist as the "good cop". And then both parties sit back and watch as the idiot voters jump for the chance to make government even larger and more left wing than it was in the last administration, by voting for the good cop.
Never fails.
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