In a speech on Tuesday, Barack Obama told his audience that the 2008 presidential election would answer the question: “What kind of America will our daughters grow up in?” What, one might wonder, does he want to protect our daughters from? An oversexualized culture? Predators on the Internet? Alas, no. Mr. Obama was addressing a Planned Parenthood convention and worried that if the wrong person got into the White House, our daughters might grow up in a country without . . . partial-birth abortions.
Polls conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life show that Americans believe the Democrats to be less friendly to faith than they had been even a few years ago. Yet a donkey with a halo over his head graces the cover of Time magazine this week and the story inside chronicles “How the Democrats Got Religion.” From faith working groups to faith breakfasts, Mr. Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are all participating in what strategist Mike McCurry tells Time is “a Great Awakening in the Democratic Party.”
And as far as Leslie Brown is concerned, the Democrats are making progress. Ms. Brown, the coordinator of the Faith in Action initiative at the Democratic National Committee, says she is working for a “big tent party,” with plenty of room for people of faith. She tells me, for instance, that “evangelicals often get painted in broad strokes, as a monolith,” but they’re not. Efforts to get these potential swing voters include speeches by DNC chair Howard Dean at various religious institutions and the addition of both national and local religious leaders to the organization’s advisers.
Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, is probably less than excited by such initiatives. She recently said in a speech, “I don’t want a progressive evangelical movement any more than I want the conservative one we have right now.”
As I previously posted, this is all a calculated propaganda campaign by the Democrats to trick people into thinking they are “people of faith.”
And comments like Jim’s are a calculated propaganda campaign by the Republicans to trick people into thinking that the religious faith of Democratic voters and candidates is somehow false.
The title should be:
Democrats try to squeeze voters.