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Politics : THE VAST RIGHT WING CONSPIRACY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (5046)	12/30/2003 12:11:04 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 6358

Render unto Howard Jay Bryant (archive) December 30, 2003 \| Print \| Send One of the things ye of little faith regularly berate ye of much faith about is how ye should not be so intent on imposing thy religious beliefs on others who do not share them. Now comes Dr. Howard Dean, announcing, among other grand preachings that he is going to put Jesus into his campaign. I cannot prove the following assertion, but you can paint me yellow and call me a Hummer if it is not true: that his vast and vaunted Internet congregation is composed principally of little faith types. After all, according to a Pew Research study, people who attend church more than once a week vote Republican by a 63 - 37 percent margin, while people who seldom or never attend vote Democratic 62 - 38. And Dean's followers, given everything we know about them, seem unlikely to be more religious than even the average Democrat voter. Nonetheless, the Deanistas will doubtless forgive Howard for trespassing from the secular straight and narrow onto the sinuous bike path of religion. Now it may be that Dean's confession of faith – made in a Christmas week interview with the Boston Globe – was nothing more than a random moment of seasonal inspiration, but it may also be a political tactic. Dean, after all, has a history of bending his religion to his politics. In the early 80's, he left the Episcopal Church in which he had been raised over a political issue, whether or not to build a bicycle path along the shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington. The taint of insincerity regarding his Globe statement is reinforced by his having said therein that while he probably wouldn't air his religious beliefs in New Hampshire, he would do so in the southern states. Perhaps he feels southerners are more in need of redemption than New Englanders, but redemption from what sin? Voting increasingly Republican? Perhaps. But the whole thing smells a lot more like political triangulation than anything else, at least to this observer. Religion simply doesn't sell as well in New Hampshire, which the late Senator George Aiken once described to me as being different from its northern New England states in that, as he put it, "they have more sin in New Hampshire." New Hampshire also has very few African-Americans, and it is these voters Dean especially needs if he is to build on his existing base. The South, one notes on the other hand, has many African-American voters, who constitute a substantial percentage of both the 37 percent of churchgoers who regularly vote Democratic. Thus, Dean's affirmation of faith would appear to be just another expostulation of a "Southern Strategy," the moral equivalent of, and racial balance to, his earlier promise to campaign for the votes of people driving pickup trucks bearing Confederate flag decals. No one confused that statement with a sincere belief, on Dean's part, in the virtues of fellow Democrat Jefferson Davis. Neither should one confuse his newfound need to wear his Christianity on his political sleeve with anything resembling heartfelt religious commitment. ''Christ was someone who sought out people who were disenfranchised, people who were left behind,'' Dean told the Globe. ''He fought against self-righteousness of people who had everything . . . He was a person who set an extraordinary example that has lasted 2000 years, which is pretty inspiring when you think about it.'' Few politicians strike me as more self-righteous than Dean, and as one born to wealth and privilege, growing up on Park Avenue and in the Hamptons, he may fairly be described as one who has "had everything." How will he expand on his theme? What, exactly, will he be saying about Jesus as he travels through the South? Here are a few guesses. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's," will perhaps be interpreted as justifying his promise to repeal all of President Bush's tax cuts. "Blessed are the peacemakers," can certainly be construed as justifying his opposition to the Iraq War. And as for "Suffer the little children to come to me…" why certainly, and how shall they come? On their bicycles, no doubt, riding along pork-barrel trails to be built in every city in South Carolina. Veteran GOP media consultant Jay Bryant's regular columns are available at www.theoptimate.com, and his commentaries may be heard on NPR's 'All Things Considered.' ©2003 Jay Bryant

To: calgal who wrote (5046)	12/30/2003 2:02:00 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6358

Nor is it unusual for presidents to be vilified. Lyndon Johnson was detested for the Vietnam War. Even before Watergate, Richard Nixon was seen as a dishonest schemer ("Tricky Dick"). Jimmy Carter was ridiculed as an incompetent who mismanaged the economy and foreign policy. Reagan was depicted as a far-right fanatic intent on dismantling the New Deal. To their detractors, all these presidents promoted national ruin. But none inspired the "H- word." Indeed, among most Americans, Bush doesn't either. Because surveys didn't ask, we don't know how many Americans hated past presidents. But now the question is being asked, and the answers show that only a small minority -- millions, to be sure -- claim to hate Bush. One poll in December found that 3 percent did. The hating may have been slightly higher in the Clinton presidency, because the same poll asked respondents whether they now hate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and 5 percent said they did. But the central conclusion is striking: Most Americans don't see themselves as haters. If "hate" were used loosely (as in, say, "kids hate spinach"), the word choice would be harmless. But people who claim to hate really mean it, and that's serious. It signifies that you've gone beyond discussion, compromise or even (to some extent) coexistence. The differences are too basic to be bridged. Genuine political hatred is usually reserved for true tyrants, whose unspeakable acts of brutality justify nothing less. More than the language is butchered. Once disagreement turns into self-proclaimed hate, it becomes blinding. You can see only one all-encompassing truth, which is your villain's deceit, stupidity, selfishness or evil. This was true of Clinton haters, and it's increasingly true of Bush haters. A small army of pundits and talking heads has now devoted itself to one story: the sins of Bush, Cheney and their supporters. They ruined the economy with massive tax cuts and budget deficits; the Iraq war was an excuse for corporate profiteering; their arrogance alienated foreign allies. All ambiguity vanishes. For example: The economy is recovering, stimulated in part by huge budget deficits; and many traditional allies of the United States like having Bush as a political foil to excuse them from costly and unpopular commitments. In the end, Bush hating says more about the haters than the hated -- and here, too, the parallels with Clinton are strong. This hatred embodies much fear and insecurity. The anti-Clinton fanatics hated him not simply because he occasionally lied, committed adultery or exhibited an air of intellectual superiority. What really infuriated them was that he kept succeeding -- he won reelection, his approval ratings stayed high -- and that diminished their standing. If Clinton was approved, they must be disapproved. Ditto for Bush. If he succeeded less, he'd be hated less. His fiercest detractors don't loathe him merely because they think he's mediocre, hypocritical and simplistic. What they truly resent is that his popularity suggests that the country might be more like him than it is like them. They fear he's exiling them politically. On one level, their embrace of hatred aims to make others share their outrage; but on another level, it's a self-indulgent declaration of moral superiority -- something that makes them feel better about themselves. Either way, it represents another dreary chapter in the continuing coarsening of public discourse. washingtonpost.com