Republicans Born Again

Bible Belt evangelicals unhappy with McCain take simplistic comfort in Palin
as VP candidate

By Eric Margolis

09/09/08 "Toronto Sun" -- - PARIS - Trying to explain American politics to
my French friends and Paris media is not easy. They are still struggling to
understand how Barack Obama popped out of nowhere to run for the world's
most powerful office.

Now the French are even more stunned and confused by Sen. John McCain's
surprise vice-presidential choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Wasilla, Alaska, a
hamlet just a snowball's throw from the North Pole.

Frenchmen, being French, think she has nice legs. But no one here can
understand why Republicans picked a lady whose primary experience was being
mayor of a one-husky town and making moose stew.

"Mon dieu," one Parisian told me. "Those crazy Republicans must have the
wish of death." No, no I explained. The party is being born again.

Palin's emergence simply confirms the final dumbing down and ruralization of
the Republican Party, and its metamorphosis into a right wing
politico-religious movement.

The pistol-packing Sarah Palin is the party's new housewife saint, a cross
between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.

Two factors led McCain to his dramatic decision. First, 53%% of American
voters are women. The choice of Palin clearly was an attempt to grab
disgruntled Democratic female voters who are still fuming that their
heroine, Hillary Clinton, was a woman scorned.

CLUMSY PLOY

But McCain's clumsy ploy may insult more Democratic female voters than it
will attract. Palin, save for being a woman, is against almost everything
Hillary Clinton supports.

Far more important, McCain chose Palin as his running mate because she is an
in-your-face, born-again, evangelical Christian. Some 44-50%% of Republican
voters now call themselves evangelical Christians.

Concentrated in America's deep heartland and southern Bible Belt, these
ultra conservative, fundamentalist white Protestants provided the Bush
administration's core support in a nation where 63%% believe every word in
the Bible is true. Evangelical TV ayatollahs have become major political
figures on America's right.

Many evangelicals believe in the absolute literal nature of the Scriptures,
biblical prophecy, the Messiah's imminent return, and mankind's destruction.
They oppose evolution and ecology. Evangelism has become the Republican
Party's official religion, and Mrs. Palin its new high priestess.

The evangelist's view of foreign policy is simple. Either wicked France,
Russia or the UN is the anti-Christ (take your pick). Muslims are evil and a
menace. Israel is the paramount foreign policy issue. Support for Israel
must be absolute and unlimited. All Palestinians must be expelled from the
biblical Holy Land, the world's Jews gathered therein, and converted. Then
the Messiah will return, Armageddon will come and Earth will be consumed by
fire and brimstone.

Only born-again Christians will survive and be teleported up to heaven. The
rest of us will roast.

TOO LIBERAL

Evangelicals were very unhappy with the choice of McCain, an East Coast
Republican they viewed as theologically untrustworthy, and far too liberal
when it came to social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Without a heavy turnout by evangelical voters, McCain would not have a
chance of winning. That's why his original favourite for VP, the smarmy Joe
Lieberman from Connecticut, was dumped in favour of kill-a-polar-bear for
Jesus Mrs. Palin.

The brainy Republican political analyst Kevin Phillips, who forged Ronald
Reagan's first electoral victory, makes a very important point in his
must-read book, American Theocracy.

We've all heard of hockey or soccer moms, but Phillips identified an even
more important voting group backing the Bush administration: "National
security moms."

These middle class mothers in the outer suburbs and rural areas were
petrified by the Bush administration's campaign over terrorism and scared
into believing their little Johnny's in remotest Alabama and Kansas were
about to become targets of al-Qaida.

So they voted in droves for Bush and Cheney, who promised to wage war on
"evil."

McCain vows to continue this crusade that appeals to fear and ignorance, now
led into battle by the new wilderness saint, Sarah Palin, M-16 in one hand,
Bible in the other.