Jonah Goldberg:
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Pelosi's dilemma is instructive. She desperately wants to be more accommodating to "so-called religious issues," but she can't put down her ACLU talking points about how dangerous religion is.
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But at the end of the day, Democrats still have a problem. Regular churchgoers, pro-lifers, traditionalists: These folks vote Republican now in staggering proportions. Bush increased his share among Orthodox Jews by huge margins over 2000, capturing 69% of their votes. He also captured a few more blacks and a lot more Hispanics this year by talking about faith and morality.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are in a box. Of course, many Democratic politicians are religious. But politicians comfortable discussing religion are overwhelmingly Republican. Democrats get their money from Hollywood and their shock troops from college campuses. Both constituencies get the heebie-jeebies from God talk. And yet, if the Democrats can't win over churchgoers, they are destined to be a minority party for a long time.
Former Clinton staffer Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., explained to The New York Times, "People aren't going to hear what we say until they know that we don't approach them as Margaret Mead would an anthropological experiment."
Most national Democrats sound silly talking about religion and faith. Like Pelosi, they can't resist offering applause lines to the Alec Baldwin wing of their party. And when they fake piety, it's even worse.
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In the final presidential debate, John Kerry, a Catholic, did his level-best to talk about his faith. It is, he explained, "why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this Earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith."
But, at the same time, Kerry said he could not "transfer" his faith onto other people by legislating it. This struck many as a political and theological dodge. Why is it OK to brag about imposing the minimum wage and affirmative action — issues his faith is largely silent on — based on God's will, but it's wrong to do the same thing on abortion when his church's views there are clear and ironclad? Kerry wanted it both ways: to claim he was guided by faith on the easy stuff but that he couldn't impose his religion when it wasn't politically advantageous.
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