The invisible voters

Omaha World Herald ^ | 11 6 04 | Omaha World Herald Editors

[flixxx]

The invisible voters

Commentators tardily discover the political importance of religious conservatives.

Commentator Andrew Sullivan exaggerated this week when he said the key to President Bush's re-election was "a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country."

William Bennett, the former U.S. secretary of education, resorted to similar hyperbole in a column he wrote for National Review Online.

Actually, the involvement of conservative Christians in national politics dates back at least to the 1980s. Ronald Reagan, for one, benefited significantly from their support. Religious traditionalists were quite active in the 1988 bid by television evangelist Pat Robertson for the Republican presidential nomination.

Moreover, the talk this week of "religious revival" in American politics tends to focus on socially conservative Protestants without plac- ing due weight on the political significance of traditionalist Catholics.

Such a consideration is of particular importance in Wisconsin and Michigan, where the presidential voting was close this year, as well as in Nebraska and other Northern Plains states.

True, voters in 11 states approved ballot measures against gay marriage Tuesday, helping boost turnout for Bush's re-election effort.

But it's silly to depict the votes against gay marriage as a new and radical turn to the right. Those vote results were an unsurprising defense of the status quo at a time when many on the political left have been pushing the courts to rush to legitimize gay marriage.

(On this question, American society needs to leave itself room for different approaches among the indi- vidual states. A civil-union compromise should be available to states that want to consider such an approach.)

Meanwhile, scholar Garry Wills grumped in the New York Times on Thursday that Bush's enthusiastic support from social conservatives contradicted the "Enlightenment values" on which Wills says the American republic was founded.

Wills approvingly cited "the secular states of modern Europe," which, he says, "do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate."

It is surprising that such an argument would come from Wills, of all people. After the 1988 presidential contest, Wills wrote a tartly worded book, "Under God," in which he appropriately took liberal academics - as well as the campaign staff of Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis - to task for failing to understand the importance of religious values in the election between Dukakis and George H.W. Bush.

"Much of American (indeed, human) experience is off their mental maps," Wills wrote in the earlier work as he described the failure of liberal intellectuals to appreciate religious traditionalists.

Such intellectuals, he wrote, "have a serene provincialism. . . . It seems careless for scholars to keep misplacing such a large body of people."

Wills also wrote: "Religion has been at the center of our major political crises, which are always moral crises."

As for the 2004 election, commentators already are hard at work this week offering suggestions about how the Democratic Party can adjust its message to appeal to a greater share of religiously inclined vot- ers. It's an appropriate and important topic for the party.

Sociologists and theologians are the appropriate ones to judge the question of "religious revival" in American society. But as for the role of religion in American politics, it certainly isn't anything new - despite the exaggerated claims this week from some political observers.

[flixxx]

An Editorial from the Omaha World Herald today...a 'Red State'...which means that the Dems on the Coasts will NOT be reading it. I still do not think that the 'morality' issue being played up by the MSM is all about religious conservatives. I view the decision to free the people of Iraq and support their strives for independence as a moral issue...freedom can be seen as a moral issue...once again, the MSM and the Dems are interpreting the exit polls in a manner to denigrate those who disagree with them.

[jim_trent]

The OWH is pretty conservative. I like it -- except for their stand on gun rights. They are just about as anti-gunowner as the big city newspapers.

[El Oviedo]

I believe the key to the President's increase in vote is the Catholic vote. This is the only time when Catholics were urge to vote against those who are pro-abortion, pro-authanasia, pro-stem cell research, etc. Out of the tens of millions of Catholics only 58% voted for Bush leaving the 42% who didn't care or were not notified.

But 4 years into the future, these will sink into every Catholic consience which should result in a higher ratio next election year, unless the candidate is pro-abortion, then the Catholics won't vote or touch that person.

This fact is not well known because it was planned to be a very very low key campaign against those candidates who are pro-abortion, etc.

Wait and see.