Bush is pushing this anti-gay-marriage amendment pretty hard right now, even though there’s not a chance it’s going to get voted out of the Senate before the election. Obviously, this is a ploy to shore up his support with what is already one of his core constituencies: Religious conservatives. Rove is, with the same end, pushing an organizing drive through sympathetic churches. (We’ve already had a GD thread on whether the churches should lose their tax-exempt status if they actively campaign for a candidate, but never mind that for now.)
My question is, is all this going to work? Will the religious conservatives turn out in force and vote solidly for Bush? Personally, I have my doubts. Certainly Bush is more representative of their values than Kerry, who is pro-choice and pro-civil-unions. On the other hand, many religious conservatives are also working-class and middle-class people who have seen their jobs outsourced abroad since Bush took office. Many of them also are in military service or have relatives in military service – and Bush sent them to war based on a lie, is extending their tours of duty, and has been slashing veterans’ benefits. I’m thinking a lot of these people, if they can’t stomach Kerry, will just stay home on election day. What do you think?
I live in the deep south/bible belt and I think that there are very few things that he could do that would cost him votes. Child pornography and conversion to Islam might do it, but I doubt it. He is a capital C Christian and for that very strong/vocal majority in the south, that is enough.
My In-Laws give me grief about my liberal sensitivities, even though I have never voted Democrat (they voted for Carter, so I can’t figure it our). As such, I have never felt so impotent about a presidential election. My state will cast all of its electoral votes for Bush and whichever VP he choses. What did I do? I sent John Kerry money. I hope that he wins, he won’t get my state, but maybe the money I sent will buy some votes in a state that he can win. What an F-ed political system.
I have fundie relatives that I think would vote Republican no matter what, simply because they cannot abide pro-choice candidates. That is the ultimate end-all issue for them.
Unfortunately, this may be one instance where their blind devotion to a single cause will serve them best, given how many SC seats are up for aucti- er, appointment.
Well, those are two very different questsions. Will they 1) turn out in force and 2) vote for Bush.
I have seen no evidence that #2 won’t hold. The key will be #1. As I’ve noted in other threads, there are claims of there being 4M “evangelicals” out there who are potential voters and who didn’t vote in '00. Can you say “Gay Marriage”?
Yes . . . see the OP . . . but, consider, apart from that and the “faith-based initiatives” thing (and some of that federal funding is going to mosques!), how much has Bush actually done to advance the religious right’s agenda since he took office? Is abortion any harder to get than it was under Clinton? Are prayer and creationism back in the schools? And anyone who knows anything about the amending process should be able to see that even if Bush gets another four years, we aren’t going to have an anti-gay-marriage amendment.
This incenses me; George Bush is a nominal Christian only. Why can’t the religious right see that? How could a true christian directly cause the death of thousands of innocent people by declaring war on Iraq? Does “love your enemies” stop at politics? How does a “born-again” christian become a politician? Aren’t christians supposed to deny themselves to follow Jesus? Didn’t Jesus have only a tunic to call his own, and not even a pillow to sleep on? How could W desire to be the most powerful man in the world, whose every need is taken care of by the tax-payer’s expense, if he is such a faithful man? Is the religious right so blind to see that lusting after governmental power is not a christian trait??
Most of those people are concentrated in states that strategists on both sides of the floor assume will go for Bush. Having a few thousand more energized faggot-hating Bible-thumping fundamentalists turn out to vote in Utah, Mississippi, and Alabama isn’t going to make it less likely that Utah, Mississippi, and Alabama are going to end up in Bush’s column.
Meanwhile, in the battleground states, making this his campaign’s second major message (the first being the “terrorists/911” mantra) might backfire. The fundamentalist Bible-pounders in those states were probably going to turn out anyhow, but the wide range of people who are collectively responsible for those states being battleground states rather than Bush states may include lots of people who decide this administration is too beholden to the fundies (with whom they are probably familiar) and too dangerous to folks who favor civil liberties even if they like conservative economic policies.
You’re setting forth counsels of perfection, Brandus. No true Christians in government, ever? I have no doubt Jimmy Carter is a perfectly sincere B.A.C. As for W’s sincerity – as I think I’ve seen on a bumper sticker or something, George Washington couldn’t tell a lie, Richard Nixon couldn’t tell the truth, and George W. Bush can’t tell the difference.
Besides, if the religious right accepted the idea that “lusting after governmental power is not a christian trait,” they would have to give up on electing any of their own to public office or having any significant influence on public policy, and just keep to themselves and pray – which was, in fact, their general attitude until the mid-'70s, when they decided they couldn’t tolerate the direction the country was going and they had to start organizing politically.
I think it’s a given that Bush will get the hillbilly/fundie vote again. What’s not a given is how that effects the electoral college vote. It’s going to be Red and Blue all over again, and Bush does have a good chance of winning. But so does Kerry. In fact, I think there will be some surprises, and some Bush states will go to Kerry. But no, not in the hillbilly South.
I think we’ve been over this a number of times. It can easily be framed in terms of appointments to the supreme court. If ever there was an “enemy of religion”, it’s the Supremes.
Whom do you think religious fundamentalists want to appoint the next Justice-- Bush or Kerry? The issues you have raised cannot be changed thru legislative or adminstrative action directly. Only by reversing Supreme Court decisions.
Please bear in mind that there are two Souths – the “hillbilly” or Highland South, and the Tidewater South. (Think West Virginia vs. Virginia.) And their cultures are somewhat different. Evangelical Protestantism is roughly as strong in each of them, but in political terms – remember it was Arkansas, a Highland South state, that gave us Bill Clinton.
(Well, and then there’s Texas, which might be classified as Psychotic South. And Florida, which is kind of in the South but not of it.)
I can’t imagine that the religious conservatives could be all THAT crazy about Bush. With a Republican Congress, he should have been able to get a heck of a lot more done. But they even failed to partial-birth abortions: choosing to make it a ploy rather than real legislation.
If these folks had the intelligence and independent thinking to realize that voting for Bush is against their own best interests, they wouldn’t be religious fundamentalists to begin with.
I wish it were that simple. Many highly intelligent people – even some great intellectuals, professionals, writers, artists, philosophers, scientists, entrepeneurs, brilliant military officers – also have been passionately committed to belief systems that must appear completely insane to anyone not similarly caught up in them. As Avram Davidson once remarked in discussing Aleister Crowley, “The mind has compartments, and they are often water-tight compartments.”
It is inconceivable that the religious right would vote for Kerry. And they are traditionally very politically active and will doubtless come out in droves again. What will drive the result is the turnout of everyone else. Many who sat on their hands for Bush v Gore will be out for Kerry in the fall. A high turnout is very likely and in my opinion spells doom for Bush.
Aszute as ever, rjung. But don’t worry- I have faith that some day, you’re going to say something intelligent, and blow all our minds.
Economic self-interest is supposed to trump all, is it? Well then, Steven Spielberg and Barbra Streisand must be the stupidest people alive! As multimillionaires, they benefit immensely from Republican economic policies and tax cuts, and yet they support the most liberal Democrats! How dumb is that?
“Oh, that’s DIFFERENT,” you say! It’s very ADMIRABLE for people like that to ignore their economic self-interest and concentrate on social issues. It’s only middle and lower-class voters put social issues above economic self-interest that are being foolish!
Amazing, really- people like you show open contempt for the values of people whose votes you need, and then are AMAZED when those same people sneer at “elitist” liberals. (“Us, elitist? That’s ridiculous… Rush Limbaugh must’ve told them to think that!”)
If you look at Bush’s convention lineup, you can see that he’s not exactly putting religious conservatives at the forefront. In 2000, he tried to run as a moderate, and it worked because he pretty much had no record at all for people to judge on. He’s trying it again: after the FMA attack, he’ll try to play up his moderateness again. And religious conservatives are already hopping mad that a bunch of pro-choice Republicans who could just as easily be conservative Democrats are getting the spotlight instead of people like Santorum.