It's been said that the fundamentalist movement is demoralized and fractured during this election cycle. The Republicans are gaining a candidate, John McCain, who is viewed suspiciously by the religious right, even after a series of half-hearted capitulations on his part. As a commentator remarked recently, if you aren't a thousand percent pure, the religious right disapproves. In addition, younger Christians no longer vote in a rigid bloc like their elders. Thus the Rev. James Dobson came out last week to condemn McCain, citing specifically that the candidate is too soft on immigrants and voted to uphold stem-cell research, while in several primaries on Super Tuesday all three leading Republicans, McCain, Romney, and Huckabee, split the evangelical electorate almost evenly. What does this mean for God's vote in 2008?
For secular, moderate, liberal, and progressive Americans, not to mention immigrants and racial minorities, the ideal would be for God not to vote at all. Which is to say, elections should not require a religious litmus test. That ideal, which the country adhered to in the past -- not perfectly but successfully nonetheless -- remains far off. The religious right is powerful, and power is addictive. The irony about a "values candidate" like George Bush is that the religious right is allied to so much that seems immoral. Most people would praise Sen. McCain for having an immigration policy that isn't totally punitive, just as they would support him for campaign reform, another blot on his record in the eyes of conservatives.
Starting with Reagan, America has been forced through the looking glass, turning right into wrong and vice versa. The successful right-wing campaign to make words "liberal" and "progressive" into taints of character is one indication. Likewise, the sub rosa connection between the religious right and bigotry, both racial and religious, is unmistakable. The greatest example of true public morality in recent decades hasn't been the rise of religious values but the fact that the Christian right itself has been tolerated, given its pro-war, pro-gun stance and the unwholesome flavor of conservatism in general as it cavalierly disregarded civil liberties and equality for all.
Therefore, splitting God's vote comes as good news. Nobody doubts that the Christian right will still vote Republican in the Fall; their natural home remains within whatever party is most anti-progressive. But while America was tolerating its worst impulses in the Bush administration, serious problems arose that need reasonable solutions without the distraction of disputes over gay marriage, abortion, and school prayer, the stale trio of Christian causes to which anti-immigration has now been added. It's indispensable for a society to show tolerance toward everyone, even those who march under the banner of intolerance, as the Christian right proudly does. But at a certain point reality -- and real moral values -- must intercede.
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Posted February 11, 2008 | 03:26 PM (EST)