Or maybe religious conservative awareness week.
On Tuesday, Senator McCain gave a speech promising to appoint conservative jurists to the courts. Some in the Christian Right applauded.
On Wednesday, he gave a speech that opened with a celebration of evangelical hero William Wilberforce and that included McCain's strongest calls to date for the U.S. to defend religious freedom abroad, do more to combat human trafficking, and crack down on online child predators. It's an unusual speech for McCain, and worth reading. What struck God-o-Meter is that, even in a speech on religion and the threat of moral relativism, McCain sounded more like a secular humanist worshipping at the altar of American exceptionalism than he did a man of faith:
There is a tendency in our age to accede to the spurious excuse of moral relativism and turn away from the harshest examples of man's inhumanity to man; to ignore the darker side of human nature that encroaches upon our decency by subtle degree. There are many reasons for this. Blessed with opportunity, and intent on the challenges of work and family, our own lives often seem too full and hectic to take notice of offenses that seem distant from our own reality. There is also the threat in a society passionate about its liberty that we can become desensitized to the dehumanizing effect of the obscenity and hostility that pervades much of popular culture. It is in our nature as Americans to see the good in things; to face even serious adversity with hope and optimism. And yet, with so much good in the world, for all the progress of humanity, in which our nation has played such an admirable and important role, evil still exists in the world. It preys upon human dignity, assaults the innocence of children, debases our self- respect and the respect we are morally obliged to pay each other, and assails the great, animating truths we believe to be self-evident – that all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- by subjecting countless human beings to abuse, persecution and even slavery.
Will such talk bring wary religious conservatives around to McCain's side? David Brody, for one, sounds skeptical:
The question for McCain is whether he will really work hard on these issues and spend some political capital or is this just lip service? Is it just a "to do checklist"? ...What social conservatives want to see from John McCain is PASSION on these issues, not words.
Indeed, what interests God-o-Meter is whether McCain's campaign to win over voters of faith is just a weeklong blitz or part of a sustained, long-term effort that probably should have been started more than a year ago. In fairness to McCain, he did have a serious religious outreach campaign underway a year ago, but it was canned during his summer '07 implosion and is just getting back on line now.
To bottom line is, McCain has a lot of catching up to do among religious voters. Is this week the beginning of that catch-up campaign, or a series of showy gestures?
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I for one am glad for Mcclain's speech. I'm VERY glad that he is reaching out for the issues that the Religious Left are concerned with. WE are the ones that have been left out in the cold all these years. We have been rejected by the Conservative so called Moral Majority and the Secular Left.
If we are to be a Nation of Integrity, we must stop catering to the Nations of Human Rights abuse and support efforts to stop or slow down global warming and other issues that destroy lives. I always felt that to be to conservative was to stall progress, We must be pro-active and progressive in our thinking.
I believe McCain is offering a token tribute to please conservatives. He is a liberal while pretending to be receptive to conservatives. In fact, he is more than a liberal at heart--he's a traitor. I don't refer to people as traitors if they flip-flop on issues or change parties: I call them traitors if they pull stunts like the North American Union and McCain-Kennedy. If you are not loyal to the Constitution--and he is not!--you are a traitor. I do think McCain loves Mexico more than the United States, and he makes amnesty sound compassionate. Is it compassionate to think so short-term as amnesty for illegals? Most illegals probably do come as migrant workers because they want a better standard of living here. Illegals get money to send back to Mexico, but many also bring an onslaught of disease, prostitution, drugs, flag-burning, pillaging, and more. McCain says it's RACIST to want illegal immigrants out. He never has promised to get them out of the US, just to secure the border. And then grant amnesty? Most likely.
It's not a thing about whether people and their standards of living matter. It's about whether America can continue to offer what it once offered. Illegals contribute to America's downfall because they don't benefit the US economy. They shouldn't be allowed to be citizens here with government handouts unless they act responsibility and become American citizens! (People shouldn't be allowed government handouts at all--the Constitution does not grant government that prerogative!) I know amnesty has nothing to do with McCain's token tribute to religious people, but it has a lot to do with McCain.
Check out www.thompsoncoalition.com if you're dissatisfied with our three Marxists McCain, Hillary, and Obama.
I'd choose Fred Thompson, Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, or Alan Keyes any day over those three. It's just I think Fred's the only one who can unite America again--and that's just what I've noticed, and is not intended as a criticism of any of the others.
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