Skip to main content

The God Vote



The Republicans still don't seem to have figured out that part of their problem is the voters they cater to.  This is a vote they have in their back pocket.  Who else are religious voters going to vote for?  Certainly not Democrats.  But, the Republicans only gut check seems to be to re-identify themselves with their own core constituency.

Joe Biden teed off on the Republicans this week, notably Rand Paul and Ted Cruz.  Not surprisingly, the veteran senator had a hard time understanding how Republicans and a handful of Democrats could allow two freshmen senators to bully them on the background checks bill.  But, these two senators appear to feel they have god on their side.  At least, Ted Cruz does.

It was great to see a leading Democrats finally come out and attack Republicans.  For the past two years the Dems seem to have been laying low, afraid to get in the fray, as they cater to social conservatives as well in many Congressional districts.  But, with the political lines growing ever more divisive it seems veteran Democrats are tired of all this filibustering and grandstanding and are making a big push to overturn the House in 2014, and hopefully get something accomplished in the last two years of the Obama administration.

Already, the Republicans are gearing up for 2016 with Mitt Romney (of all people) hosting a policy retreat in Park City, Utah.  He seems to think the Republicans have a chance, but I'm sure any potential Republican nominee will stay as far away from Mitt as possible.  This guy is damaged goods.

But in this strange world, new polls show that Americans now have a more positive impression than negative impression of George W. Bush.  See what a few dog paintings and opening a presidential library will do for you.  Probably no one did more than Dubya to make the GOP God's Own Party.

Daniel Williams further expounds on the making of the Christian Right in a book by the same title.


Comments

  1. I don't know if it was intentional but the title of the book could be a play on Buffett's classic song, God's Own Drunk,

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqjQu0KzvA0

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of  The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl.  The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics'  Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts.  The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories.  The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...