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Potemkin Villages of Democratic faith.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  December 19th, 2010 at 10:30 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

This New Republic article on the Democrats’ abrupt loss of religious voters suffers from a fatal flaw: it’s all ‘how,’ and no ‘why.’  Despite the slightly breathless tone of the author, the ‘how’ is both obvious and not particularly surprising: from 2004 to 2008 the Democrats actively went out and told voters that liberalism and religious belief complemented each other.  The Democratic party spent a good deal of money and resources on that message, and it paid off in 2006 and 2008.  Since that point, the Democrats have effectively stopped their religious outreach except among African-American voters – and their support among religious voters has effectively cratered.  That’s the ‘how.’

‘Why’ is more interesting, though.  It is significant that liberal religious outreach requires constant funding and attention to get anywhere among American voters; it at least implies that the entire thing is a highly artificial construct that is not capable of independent, organic growth.  It is also significant that the organizational structure of the Democratic party was apparently deeply institutionally hostile to the continued development of this particular special-interest group (religious progressives): the entire edifice apparently depended on no more than half a dozen people keeping fairly specific jobs in the party hierarchy, and when they went elsewhere, nobody was permitted to really take their places.  Take those two points together and it is not unreasonable to conclude that there is something in either the Democratic party’s organizational structure or its ideology that is at best indifferent, and at worst actively hostile, to religious sentiment; and, given that the predominant element in both is liberalism, it does not seem unreasonable to conclude that perhaps it and religious sentiment do not complement each other.

There is some evidence in favor of this statement.  At least, on the street level – which is where the work’s being done.  Or, in this case, where the work isn’t being done; and is fact instead being curb-stomped.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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  • victrola

    I honestly believe the main animus of the modern Left is militant secularism. If you spend anytime around liberals, it almost always comes out their extreme hatred of anything religious. They can only pretend to be”tolerant” for so long.

    I say this as a conservative that is not a big fan of the Jerry Falwell/ Pat Robertson wing of the Republican Party, but I certainly take huge issue with the Democrats outright hostility towards my faith.

    I know a lot of people that are turned off by the Democrat Party permanently (even when they agree with them on many issues) simply because they know culturally they are so hostile to their beliefs.

  • nessa

    …at the altar of the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful government. Outside the halls of academia and the headquarters of labor unions, their only acolytes are found in their mothers basements spreading the good news on teh interwebz.

  • woodbridgeva

    “from 2004 to 2008 the Democrats actively went out and told voters that liberalism and religious belief complemented each other. The Democratic party spent a good deal of money and resources on that message, and it paid off in 2006 and 2008.”

    Yes and many of the more libertarian and fiscally conservative members of the conservative coalition noticed the defections of the religious right in 2006 and 2008. We may (or may not) cooperate with them in the future; but we will never again trust them.

  • d_lamar

    In fact, the religious right, in my opinion, was an integral component of the tea party movement. We saw that the gop, through Bush and the rinos in congress, abandoned conservative principles. They ignored the conservative campaign promises which helped elect Bush, such as the total abandonment of the cause of school choice.

    To paraphrase Reagan, conservatives did not leave the GOP, the GOP left conservatives, and they paid the price for that in 06 and 08. Let’s hope that McConnell and Boehner don’t forget that part of history.

    Your statement about not trusting the religious right is plain silly. It’s the rinos that you can’t trust.

  • http://www.buckforcolorado.com bjwilson83

    some of the fiscally conservative members of the GOP were no doubt secretly happy to see social issues thrown under the bus (think GOProud, pro-choice libertarians, etc.) If the party does not give social conservatives their time in court in the new congress, social conservatives may be lost for ever. The social justice people are more than willing to scoop them up.

  • woodbridgeva

    to the tea party movement AFTER they realized the Democrats had pulled the wool over their eyes in 2006 and 2008. Who is more of a RINO, the pro-life voters who helped elect Bob Casey and Jim Webb to the Senate as well as Heath Schuler and the blue dogs to the House or the libertarian/fiscal conservatives who may now vote for social conservatives in the general election but pass them by in primaries?

  • Adjoran

    are hallmarks of Marxism, which dominates the modern Democratic Party.

  • Scope

    and when Roger Baldwin and Chrystal Eastman started the ACLU back in 1920, they were tied very closely to socialism/communism/marxism. Not that long after it started, Baldwin publicly stated that it was his goal to destroy traditional culture values in the US. They have been working on those goals ever since. George Soros, a self described atheist, through his Open Society network is a major funder of the ACLU. Soros also funded the faux Catholic organizations such as Catholics in Alliance for the common good. The purpose was to remove guilt from Catholics that support abortion (a deep Progressive/Democrat position), because the greater good is looking out for all God’s creatures, including the illegal aliens. I doubt that many don’t blame the ACLU mainly for the removal of all Christian symbols from public buildings, and to remove all Christmas religious displays from public places as well. They are evil.

  • runner12

    Many churches are preaching “social justice”, and the Left has picked up that this may be a vehicle to skim off some of the social conservatives votes. They were largely succesful (as this diary rightly points out) in 2008. I do not think they will be as successful in 2012, but if the GOP does not listen to social conservatives, they may just give up and stay home (sadly).

  • Next93

    It’s kind of like saying that bigotry is caused by racial intolerance; they’re pretty much one and the same.

    I spent years not understaning why Marx didn’t embrace Christianity; after all, more than one person has read the New Testament and come away thinking that Christ was an early communist. If Marx had tapped into the religious traditions of charity and what we now call “social justice”, he’d have been about halfway to home.

    After years of being part of a Catholic parish, it finally occurred to me that the reason liberals don’t like religion is that it represents a form of competition for thier core consituents. Look at any congregation of any faith, and they’re finding ways to help the less fortunate, or what the libs like to call “our most vulnerable citizens”. They do it with volunteer labor and volunteered money, they’re efficient, and they tend to address the roots of the problems.

    Liberals want to do the same thing, but they want to do it with unionized bureacrats, with tax (read: confiscated) money, and thier goal is not to address the problems, but to create vast swaths of government dependents who will aid them in the power grab.

    So, what it comes down to is that the Liberals want to drive real charity out of society and replace it with a form of rent-seeking that they can control, and they can’t do that if they have to compete with organiztions that are more cheaper, more effective, and completely outside the control of thier purchased union bosses and politicians.

  • 1689

    The Democrats are obviously secularist — people who would rather have all our representatives just vote on what is immoral and thus illegal, with their judgment turning on whatever beliefs are now culturally fashionable as driven by media. They clearly doesn?t want our morality rooted in lessons handed down from the past (by, say, the Bible & the traditions of Western Civilization) as a gift from our ancestors to the present, generation to generation, whose lessons were achieved the hard way, in the crucible of past conflict & distress.

    Beware independents ? if we?re all just voting on what is immoral & illegal, inevitably those who believe in the greatness of the almighty State are going to come to full power again. And they?re going to decide that anything that harms the State is immoral & they won?t give a damn about any one individual?s rights. Examples: Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot (pick whatever nasty dictator you want). They decided in the 20th Century that whatever harmed the State (in reality, themselves) was immoral and that philosophy unleashed time & again an ugly terror — heinous mass murder, that we have never had here in the United States in the past 229 years. Care to guess why? Could it be that, in the past, the ambitions of our elected leaders have been restrained, tempered, & moderated by, not only by the Constitution, but also our judeo-Christian traditions? You elites should use those ivy-league educations to figure out what makes more sense ? should our morality be rooted in time-tested ancient ethics? Or untethered to anything other than our naked wants in the present?

  • http://bluecollarmuse.com Blue_Collar_Muse

    Nicely done, Moe.

    Concise, pithy and pointed.

    Yet another reason I hope to be you if I ever grow up …

  • leehazel

    Good post, but how does this gel with the Democrat party’s obvious “love-affair” with Islam.

  • doubledok

    Islam is the fastest growing so-called religion in the world. Among disenfranchised US residents, Islam is a veritable steam-roller in pockets. Championing party alignment with “religion” invites long-range establishment of a theocracy. We may be observing such a catalytic evolution in parts of Western Europe – and in NYC!

    A few days ago, here on REDSTATE, an astute observer noted the Vermont transition to Liberalism in their vote had been driven by politically-motivated transplants intent on delivering Democratic Party electoral votes. This occurred in a bit over one election cycle. Envision several Muslim enclaves as staunch as Utah’s Mormon-Conservative reliability.

    Next, see a state constitutional change to Sharia Law and them thumbing their noses at Federal withholding of funds as hard assets pour in from OPEC wealthy. Local and state officials and residents fail to cooperate with FBI, CIA, enforcement. The liberal establishment in power pussy-foots with their abatement of the US Constitution. Next, an adjacent state goes the same way – Someplace geographically defensible and sparsely populated like Wyoming and a Dakota.

    Posse comitatis is suspended. Muslim countries move to defend their brothers (not sisters). Worldwide oil supply becomes embargoed to the US. China seizes the opportunity to force collections; Hugo Chavez invades FL and LA. Mexican drug cartels roll through AZ, NM, SO-Cal. Texas secedes. Not a single nuclear weapon enters the fray and Western Civilization goes the way of Roman & Ottoman empires.

    I am conservative and conventional in my religious beliefs and habits. Government needs to be government and religion needs to be a personal choice and radically separate.

    Just as Mormon polygamy exited that “official” faith, Muslims practicing in the US need to reform the Quran to eliminate theocratic displacement of individual rights, local law and unconstitutional expectations. We should ABSOLUTELY be completely intolerant of ANY so-called faith-based system that undermines the documents that established the US. The Christian, Mormon, Jewish, New-Age, Islamic, Pro-life, Pro-choice, Wicken, Dianetic, Rastafarian, Voodoo, Scientology, Christian Scientist, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Hindu, Tao, Buddhist, etc. all need to be clearly dealt with in the same way.

    So-called “Sanctuary” sites – bull-doze them first, execute, er I mean PROSECUTE them later. So-called “Islamic Cultural Centers” and ?Mormon Polygamist Sects” same treatment, “White Supremacists” same deal but use cluster bombs and napalm as they are well-militarized. “Black Supremacists” might include NAACP as they are a racially-based advocacy group illegal since the Civil War – similar treatment.

    I hope you see that the threat is “special interests” and that hiding within the protective conclave of race or religion leads to demise. Reference the Romans, Greeks, Moors, etc.

    It so happens that the US Constitution, Declaration of independence and properly formulated founding documents strictly avoided using terms like ?Christ?, ?Jesus?, ?Allah?, ?Joseph Smith?, ?Buddha?, ?Ron Hubbard?, ?Al Sharpton?, ?Adolph Hitler?, ?American Idol?, ?News Media?, etc. The mingling of individual religious views and US politics seems unnecessary, given the Christian origins of the governmental system. In fact, one sees the problem with excessive ?tolerance? as leading to undoing of the society most-coveted in history.

    Now, if we had unlimited energy reserves, no deficit, pollution abatement, Constitutional requirements of all ?religions?, and secure borders ? we could be somewhat invincible. With FAIR TAX, BALANCED BUDGETS, TORT REFORM, FUEL CELL ENGINES, and testicular adequacy in government our major threats would not exist. Would religiosity rise to the level of civil war?

  • methodius777

    during the Reformation formulated the Doctrine of Vocation. In short he positied that God works through Masks or through the various vocations of people rather than directly. Each of us has various vocations in our lives whether we are Christian or not. I for example, have the vocations of husband, father, pastor, citizen, friend, boss, and etc. God works through these various vocations as He touches the lives of those around me. To further illustrate the point: God feeds me, not directly by making food miraculously appear upon my table, but through the farmer who plants the wheat, the worker at the bread factory, the delivery man to takes the bread to the store, the stock boy who places the bread on the shelf, and the girl who works the cash register.

    As a Christian I live out my Christian values in each and every one of my God-given vocations. I do not stop being a Christian just because I am outside of the four walls of the church building. Even when I am in the voting booth I am still a Chrisitian and I am obligated to vote according to my Christian beliefs. This can be diffucult as there is no such person as a perfect politician. Yet I do my level best to not vote for a man or woman who openly supports the slaughter of the unborn or the destruction of western civilization through the promotion of ungodly and unclean acts.

    Some will argue that this makes me a “religious fanatic” or that religion and politics should be infinately separated. These points are only argued by those who either refuse to be held accountable to a higher power or simply want to live life according to their own rules which is, in reality, related to the first. It is a simple point of fact that there is either a Supreme Being that rules us all or we are each a god unto ourselves. Therein lies the difference between the majority of liberals and conservatives. Liberals who claim to believe in God simply believe, by and large, in a god of their own making. Conservatives, on the other hand, who are of the faith believe in the God who made them. Liberalism and true Biblical theology cannot mix any better than oil and water. Similarly, Christians cannot support politicians who consistently and openly oppose the major teachings and stands of our faith. And when that “perfect” politician cannot be found – then it is the Christian who should be running for office to give others a clear choice.

  • dmccracken

    The GOP was putting candidates out there who were somewhat to the left of center (RINO’s). Even nominated some for President (Dole, McCain). The Republicans were taking them for granted and not considering their views, so they bolted. Was it smart? No because look what it gave us. But it was certainly understandable and in a sense, justified.