I don’t know if that actually influenced many people, though. He had his jumping the shark moment in the debate when asked about the death penalty wrt his wife being raped and murdered. I think you lose a lot of votes in a US national election if you oppose the death penalty across the board. Witness Kerry’s conversion to the death penalty in cases of “terrorism”. And I’m a bit worried about Obama on that front. IIRC, he’s anit-death penalty, too. Does anyone know what his position is on that issue?
Again, it was pretty clear that his campaign was all it was hyped up to be. The media made a big deal about the scream, but they were the ones who played him up in the first place. When he failed to do well in Iowa, it was pretty much over-- scream or no scream.
ETA – John Mace, good points. There are a lot of reasons candidates win or lose – but I’ve spoken to people who seem to pick the stupidest basis for their decision. Of course, they probably don’t actually vote, so maybe it works out.
I agree that way too many people make their voting decisions on the basis of something stupid-- like focusing on one single issue, or voting for the person they’d most like to have a beer with. I just think that the media sometimes overplays the significance of certain single events because it makes an easy story. Dukakis lost the election because of his picture in a tank, or Dean lost because of The Scream. Even in our dumbed-down elections, it’s a bit more complicated than that, I think.
Maybe you can believe this one. Twenty-five years ago the Southern public school system where I taught was essentially run by Southern Baptists. As a liberal Christian, I supported separation of Church and State laws (which were ignored) and still wanted to take the two religious observance days allowed all teachers on Ash Wednesday and All Saints Day. Every year it was like walking through a mine field to get these days off. One assistant principal told me that he was told to “run interference” on the request.
That may not rise to the level of persecution, but it is repression.
I’ve never felt repressed by atheists or the government except when a particular arm of the government was being mismanaged by a segment of fundamentalists who are very hostile.
And this is just one example of how they could make life miserable liberal Christians teaching among them. Some schools were better than others.
I don’t understand. Why were they so opposed to you taking Christian religious holidays off? Was it a dislike for your liberal version of Christianity, perpetrated by the Southern Baptist administrators? Or was it a dislike for Christianity as a whole perpetrated by separation-of-church-and-state administrators?
I think the persecution complex comes from a longing for the “good old days”. Times, like **Zoe **mentioned, when local towns and/or schools could ignore the establishment clause (or at least our modern interpretation of it) pretty much at will. Then along come these secularists ( :eek: )who are often operating at the federal level ( :eek: ) telling folks they have to raise that wall of separation a bit higher. It makes them fell persecuted, even if they aren’t being persecuted. By any objective standard, it’s absurd to claim that Christians are persecuted in the US. Christianity pervades out culture, and is the default assumption pretty much everywhere (with a reference or two usually thrown in about the Judeo- part for good will). It’s hard to go anywhere in the US without bumping into Christianity on some level or another.
Guess the moderator believed it would turn into a heated discussion once the name Clinton came up. I’ll see if I can’t increase the thread’s pit-worthiness:
The thing about Huckabee that sets him apart from other Christian republicans is that he actually (sometimes) acts on his religious beliefs to do things like help the poor and show basic human decency. The others bloviate all the time about their beliefs, but merely use them as a justification for why they thinks gays shouldn’t marry and abortion should be illegal. In Arkansas he (GASP) raised taxes in order to maintain infrastructure. Well, sir, that just won’t do.
The republican part as it stands now is composed of a small group of the very rich whose goal is to turn the U.S. into a third world country a la South American states such as Argentina. They will be the tiny elite who will use the government to make themselves richer while creating a huge lower class. Obviously, there aren’t enough plutocrats to win general elections, so they’ve been in bed with evangelicals so that they can get the number of votes needed to win . They know the evangelicals can be counted on voting against their own self-interest if they say the right stuff about gays and abortion and throw them the occasional bone - such as a conservative judge appointment. The rest of the party is shrinking so fast it barely merits mention.
All of a sudden, two things are happening with the evangelicals. 1) They’re starting to wise up and realize that they’ve been had and that their elder leaders such as Dobson and Robertson are corrupt. That, in and of itself, is no big deal. Afer all, if Guiliani is your candidate the evangelicals may hate voting for him (what with the mistresses and the support of terrorist countries and all), but they will if the alternative is Hilary. But then add in 2) they have someone to vote for that not only talks the talk but has walked the walk. And all of a sudden the religious right has left the building.
Its as if the republicans spent the last 30 years building Frankenstein and are now shocked and dismayed that he’s come to life.
Ah, the vast right wing conspiracy isn’t so vast afterall. Thanks for clearing that bit up, though. I’ve been wondering what the Republicans stood for, and now I know! Ignorance fought.
True. But that’s the reality of modern-day politics, regardless of party. I saw on the news the other day that the Democrats alone are spending 4x the money in Iowa as was spent by their counterparts in '03/'04. It’s like Moore’s law applied to politics-- we can expect political spending to double every two years.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy so much as a world view.
I’m don’t follow politics all that closely, but I can’t think of anything the current administration or republicans in the senate and house have done that aren’t designed to make the rich richer and screw the middle and lower class. Perhaps you can enlighten me.
I wouldn’t mind the geometric increase in political spending if the money spent actually was spent in the state being targeted. but most of it isn’t. The ads are produced elsewhere, the materials are printed elsewhere, the ads are run on stations owned by companies based elsewhere, etc. If you really want to control campaign spending, require 75% of all monies spent on a stae campaign to be spent in that state. That way you at least get a bit of an economic boost out of the whole circus.
Promoting free-trade policies drives down the price of consumer goods, and lower-class people spend a greater percentage of their income on consumption than the uppser classes. Your error may be in looking for zero-sum policies - those that help the poor specifically at the expense of the rich (although Bush’s healthcare plan has elements of that), rather than for the whole “rising tide lifts all boats” stuff
