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Previous Posts
Closed for the Season
With Election Day finally having come and gone, God-o-Meter is closing up shop till 2012--or at least 2010. Till then, get your faith and politics fix over at Beliefnet editor-in-chief Steve Waldman's blog.
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posted 4:32:33pm Nov. 19, 2008 |
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On The Religious Left, Great Expectations
The first priorities for Barack Obama's administration will be the economy and a variety of foreign policy issues. But the burgeoning religious left, which worked so hard to get Obama elected, expects some movement on its issues, including a robust White House office of faith-based initiatives, pove
posted 1:49:31pm Nov. 07, 2008 |
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Howard Dean's Vindication
God-o-Meter wrote a piece for today's Roll Call on the vindication of Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean's much-derided 50-State Strategy, which is largely about reaching out to the nation's more religious voters in the red states:
Years before Barack Obama showed that a liberal Demo
posted 2:01:06pm Nov. 06, 2008 |
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A Post-Election Chat with Ralph Reed
Amid today's talk that Barack Obama has narrowed the God Gap, God-o-Meter checked in with Ralph Reed, who spearheaded religious outreach for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns and who pioneered such outreach for Republicans as executive director of the Christian Coalition.
What surprised you i
posted 3:09:07pm Nov. 05, 2008 |
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More Innacurate Faith Storylines From the Media
God-o-Meter is struck by the number of faith-based storylines the news media appear to have gotten dead wrong this year.
One was the line that Obama was poised to make big gains among white votes, especially evangelicals, who were undergoing a generational shift in their political thinking and reexa
posted 11:53:20am Nov. 05, 2008 |
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God-o-Meter caught up the other day with Charmaine Yoest, the Family Research Council VP of communications who left her post last year to become a senior advisor to Mike Huckabee. Yoest returned to FRC last month, when Huckabee’s cash flow got too tight, but she had this interesting insight in what keeps Huckabee going in the face of very long odds:
posted February 20, 2008 at 7:35 pm
I think that the Huckabee camp might want to start asking themselves if they really want to do what’s possible at the expense of what’s the right thing to do. We would the majority of voters want their election results overturned just because someone wants to play the spoiler?
posted February 23, 2008 at 11:27 am
Study the primary process and you’ll see that election results are NOT being overturned. For instance, delegates (no matter what the exiting candidate says) must vote on the first ballot at the convention for their candidate – even if that candidate left the race long ago. Who is to say what the ‘right thing’ is for where those votes go? Should one man/woman (the no-longer-running candidate) have the say over what might be the will of those voters?
The primary process is convoluted at best. It awards party leaders, distributes delegates based on prior voting (giving ‘bonus’ delegates to states who have voted their way in the past), and gets so complicated that even now, the number of delegates each candidate has varies depending on which media outlet you read/watch.
The primary process requires a candidate to get 1,191 votes (in the Republican party). If a candidate does not get that – because he or she cannot gain the support of the very people who should be his or her base – should that candidate simply be awarded the nomination? That is truly overturning election results. The primary season isn’t over – and many conservative-leaning (so-called red states) haven’t even voted yet, because of a front-loaded season (again, a process – all legal – that is not as upfront and ‘fair’ as we may assume) that benefited a more liberal candidate.
I’m all for this process being carried out. If a sports game goes to a tie, and no one won at the end, is it suddenly unfair to follow the rules until someone prevails?
Mike Huckabee is not a spoiler for wanting major parts of the country to have a voice, a vote in this primary process. And if John McCain can’t handle a debate (oh yeah, remember those?) within his own party, how on earth will he handle the general election? If Mike Huckabee speaks for many in this country – who have voted, and many who haven’t even had the chance yet – how is that not ‘the right thing to do’ to continue, so the process goes forward, and the people get to vote? I fail to see the logic here.