Straight-talk McCain once derided evangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as "agents of intolerance," and he placed last of nine candidates in a straw poll at the Values Voter Summit held by socially conservative activists last year in Washington, D.C.
Perhaps Rove reminded McCain that the 2004 vote for President Bush by 78 percent of white "born again," or evangelical Christians may have secured his reelection. In any case, McCain has become decidedly more active in soliciting the support of evangelicals and more public in "witnessing" his faith.
Not only did McCain agree to an anti-abortion statement in the Republican platform, he bypassed Tom Ridge and Joe Lieberman as running mates because their pro-choice views made them unacceptable to the extreme Christian right-wing. Although their belief in the right of women to choose abortion would have endeared them to most women, McCain instead chose Sarah Palin, an extremist evangelical who wants to legally deny women the right to have an abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. Why?
Palin’s selection appeals to radical conservatives because she lives her pro-life beliefs. Not only did Palin choose to carry and deliver a Down Syndrome child, she proudly accepts the pregnancy of her unmarried teenaged daughter who has visibly failed the abstinence test.
However, Palin does not appeal to moderate Republicans without a religious agenda. Nebraska Senator Hagel says she does not "have any foreign policy experience" and that it would be a "stretch" to say she was qualified to be president.
Conservative writer Andrew Sullivan recently commented about McCain, "because he could see he was going to lose, ... he threw caution to the wind" and decided "that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That’s all that is happening right now; a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove."
The McCain-Rove ploy was not only designed to appeal to the religious prejudices of the most narrow-minded evangelicals, it may also encourage racially-prejudiced white women to vote against their own self interests. A new ABC/Washington Post poll shows that support of white women for McCain has risen 20 points since his selection of Palin and now stands at 53 to 41 percent.
Finally, by picking a former beauty contestant with limited experience at governance, McCain and Rove are providing cover for racially-prejudiced white male workers to vote against their own interests. Retired Army Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski recently wrote, "There is something sinister in Palin’s attempts to seduce the voting public." General Karpinski concludes:
"Palin, however, is a dangerous choice and her style goes against the grain of feminists and women everywhere. We spent years seeking equality, and ask only for a level playing field where we can find credit for our accomplishments and capabilities and the opportunities to compete fairly. Sarah Palin can launch us back in time and remove years of progress, albeit slow and incomplete. She encourages men and women to be drawn first to the sexuality and beauty of a woman before making a decision about her credibility, intelligence and leadership. There is abundant truth in the age-old saying ‘beauty is only skin deep.’ We need and deserve a vice-presidential candidate who offers far more than ‘skin deep’ - her absolute lack of substance on the issues; her lack of experience, particularly in the international and foreign affairs environment; her lack of a sound economic policy to regain control of our national treasure; and her insistence on propelling herself as tough and capable because she can murder wildlife when there is virtually no chance of missing, are the issues of substance."
It’s working! Palin is being blogged as a "right-wing redneck fantasy girl," and photo-shopped images of her wearing an American flag bikini and holding an assault rifle are flashing around the Internet. A CNN survey this week found 62 percent of men to now have a "favorable" opinion of Palin, compared to 53 percent of women, and 57 percent of men, compared to 43 percent of women, actually say she is "qualified" to be vice president.
The Rovian appeal to religious and sexual prejudices works with less-committed Democratic voters, since loyal Republicans are unlikely to cast a crossover vote. A recent AP/Yahoo poll used a sophisticated computerized selection program to record people’s reactions as black or white faces flashed on the screen and documented their impulsive responses to positive and negative adjectives.
The poll found that only 59 percent of Democratic voters want Obama to be president and 25 percent believe that "if blacks would only try harder, they could be just as well off as whites." The poll also found that nearly 17 percent of Clinton’s white backers plan to vote for McCain.
Triple Whammy - Class Disenfranchisement
As we learned in 2000 and again in 2004, when all else fails, a losing candidate can simply steal the election. The public has become too apathetic to notice the loss of their vote; the single-party Congress has become too impotent to do anything about it, and once elected, the entrenched presidency becomes too powerful to impeach.
While the theft of the 2000 election can be traced to misleading "butterfly" ballots in Florida and the political decision of the Federalist-controlled Supreme Court to ignore the will of the people, and the theft of the 2004 election can be traced to manipulated computerized voting machines in Ohio and the vote suppression machinations of its Secretary of State, underlying and subverting both elections was a sophisticated and continuing conspiracy to deny and interfere with the constitutional rights of those voters most inclined to vote for Democratic candidates.
The concerted effort to disenfranchise a whole class of American voters can be traced to statements made by Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the modern Christian conservative movement, who once described the necessity of a "cultural civil war":
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