Musings

In perusing around the New York Times the last couple of days, I ran across a couple of articles that caught my eye. The first, The Evangelical Crackup is about the apparent move toward the political center by many of the so-called "Christian Right." It is an interesting article and I recommend that you read it, although I don't neccessarily agree with all of it.

My view of it all is that the "Christian Right" was never really represented by the Falwells and Dobsons and Robertsons of the nation. As a Christian, and a Republican, I never was, and I don't think a huge number of others were, either. Many of the issues were shared, to be sure, but the apparent extremism never was. The fact that Christians voted the same way had more to do with their own values than a unity behind those people.

In spite of what the Times says, I think that those values still exist. What they are seeing is that like most of the country, many Christians are closer to the political center than to the so-called hard right (or left), and there are other issues than abortion and other purely religious issues that govern their voting choices. We see that with the polls that show many in the group support Rudy Giulani or Romney, and some even support Obama or Hillary. My prediction is that a big majority will remain right of center, however.

The other article was For Retiring Republicans, Several Explanations . This is a pretty benign article, probably just filler for the paper, but it had one quote that I noticed, and I want to speak to the issue raised.

Deborah Pryce, and republican Congresswoman from Ohio is retiring, and, among other things, told the Times:

“I don’t think anything will change until Americans revolt and get it into their heads that they need to be informed voters instead of just listening to the paid political ads,” she said.

This was in response to the high amount of negative political ads in political campaigns, and to the fact that they apparently work.

Unfortunately, she is right about that. But the problem goes even deeper. Many voters only vote for a party with no further analysis. Others never know more than what they learn from the 20 second sound bites that the TV networks choose to run. Few voters pay attention to the issues more than superficially, and have no real knowledge about any of the candidates or the potential effects of their proposed policies.

In other words, voters are their own worst enemies. We all complain that the government really doesn't represent our views, but few of us bother to participate in the process, even if that only means studying the issues and the candidates. So we get what we deserve, most of the time.

Maybe it will take Ms. Pryce's "revolution" to wake us up. I wonder what the wake-up call will finally be? If any.