Politics
State of The Race, Or, What a Great Time to be a Republican
by Clay Staggs
So, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts. One of the reasons for my reticence has been a fear that I just won’t be able to control my thinly veiled glee at what’s transpiring on the Dem side of the aisle. What a fantastic time to be a Republican! We may yet lose, but we’re going to have MONTHS with a spectacular view of the Dems twisting in the wind.
On the one hand, there’s Obama and his spiritual mentor, the race-hate spewing Jeremiah Wright. If you reverse the races involved, any person saying such things would be rightly condemned and ostracized from polite society, like David Duke. Everyone knows that, and yet, somehow Obama’s trying to avoid doing that, which brings me to his speech.
I have often lamented the downfall of the teaching of formal logic. Obama’s speech would be a wonderful place to have a logic lesson. He said that, while condemning Wright, he could no more disown him than his own white grandmother. Haven’t we all known folks who, for good reason or bad, disowned a relative? He could have disowned either his pastor or his grandmother. Certainly it should seem an easier task to disown the pastor, to whom he wasn’t related, than the grandmother. But, more to the point, consider this hypothetical: if any pastor at Riverwood had said the things that Wright said, over and over, from the pulpit, how many of us would have sat idly by?
Today, Barack was on The View, and suggested that Wright has apologized:
Had the reverend not retired, and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying at the church…
Um, did I miss this? When did the apology to the offended happen? Surely this would have been front page news, no? This is Clintonian double-speak at its finest: just say it enough, and it’ll be true. No wonder he and Hillary are at each other’s throats - they’re cut from the same cloth.
Oh, yes, and it has now come out that Wright is building a 10,000 square foot house in a suburb of Chicago. Perhaps the “white greed” that Wright railed against in one of his sermons (acknowledged and recounted in Obama’s own book - see here) isn’t so racially limited after all.
So where does this leave the race? Contrary to what had been predicted by the MSM’s fawning coverage of Obama’s speech, Obama’s negatives are now almost as high as HRC’s. Here are the latest Rasmussen polling numbers (favorable rating first, then unfavorable):
| Obama | Clinton | McCain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 13 | 51%-46% | 48%-50% | 51%-45% |
| March 18 | 52%-44% | 47%-50% | 53%-43% |
| March 24 | 46%-52% | 42%-55% | 55%-42% |
Note the tank in BHO’s favorable’s and rise in unfavorables. Anyone care to take bets on whether HRC is leaking out one damaging Wright revelation every few days? What of HRC anyway, will she bow out gracefully for the sake of the party? Consider her words to Greta Van Susteren:
VAN SUSTEREN: And if he says, no, I won’t do it, that leaves Michigan and Florida out. And does that leave you out?CLINTON: No. Not at all, because we are going to make sure those votes get counted, one way or another.
VAN SUSTEREN: How?
CLINTON: Well, you know, you can always go to the convention. That is what credential fights are for. You know, let’s have the Democratic Party go on record against seating the Michigan and Florida delegations three months before the general election? I don’t think that will happen. I think they will be seated. So that is where we are headed if we don’t get this worked out.
If a credentials fight erupts at the Dem convention in August, I will be GLUED to the TV. I may even live-blog it, for the sheer joy it will bring to me as a Republican.
Meanwhile, John McCain has been traveling to Iraq and the middle east looking and sounding, uh, presidential.
Enjoy this while it lasts, folks.
Posted by Clay Staggs at March 28, 2008 01:42 PM
I’m not really sure I’d be so gung-ho about the “wonderful” republican candidate either. I just can’t understand how you/someone can be so for a candidate like John McCain. I’m not saying that Obama and Clinton are good candidates by any means, but I honestly don’t think that McCain is much better. I can not understand how a Christian who says he loves his enemies (or should love them) can support someone who is so strongly for war and the death penalty. What rights does anyone have to take another person’s life? And if Jesus didn’t kill anyone, where do I get the idea that I can?
Derek Webb wrote a song about the topic called “My Enemies Are Men Like Me.” Here are the lyrics, just for referrence:
My Enemies Are Men Like Me
(vs. 1) i have come to give you life and to show you how to live it. i have come to make things right: to heal their ears and show you how to forgive them.
(pre-chorus) because i would rather die i would rather die i would rather die than to take your life
(chorus) how can i kill the ones i’m supposed to love. my enemies are men like me. i will protest the sword if it’s not wielded well. my enemies are men like me
(vs. 2) peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication; it’s like telling someone murder is wrong and then showing them by way of execution.
(pre-chorus)
(chorus)
(bridge) when justice is bought and sold just like weapons of war the ones who always pay are the poorest of the poor.
(chorus)
I just don’t think it is possible to make a pro-war argument as a Christian (if you intend to be consistent with Scripture). And that is just one of the moral aspects of Mr. McCain. Then there is the whole deal with the politics of the war (to which he would not even think about stopping…”that would mean we lose” as he said) among other things.
I am not necessarily trying to divert the focus of the post, but I think we should be much more careful when we pledge support to a particular candidate. Honestly, I don’t think democrats or republicans really have it together completely.
Any thoughts?
Wes,
I will be the first to acknowledge that the Republicans do NOT have it all together. Frankly, saying that they don’t have it all together somewhat soft-pedals their level of disfunction.
Moreover, I’m not a huge fan of McCain. He was my next to last choice (last was Huckabee). I don’t think he’s a particularly good Republican, and I fear that, if elected, his wanderings off the GOP reservation may doom him to the same fate as GHWB, the last Republican president to seriously tick off his base.
This might also be a good time for me to point out that I do NOT equate the Republican party with Christianity. In fact, that’s what bugged me so much about Huckabee. I think the Republican party (generally speaking) supports some policies that many evangelicals tend to agree with - the pro-life stance being the most obvious example. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re chosen by God or anything.
The main thrust of your comment, though, questioned whether a Christian could support a war. (Correct me if I’ve misunderstood.) I personally do not believe that Christianity compels pacifism. I think that Christians have the obligation to defend and protect those who are innocent. Put in the context of a Christian president, or of a Christian trying to evaluate the actions of a president, I think a president who does not defend the country has failed in his primary duty. Paul says in Romans 13 that rulers do not bear the sword for nothing. Clearly, this contemplates that the ruler may have to use that sword to protect his people, which will mean taking lives.
I think reasonable people can disagree whether the Iraq war met those criteria. I personally think that, based on the information available at the time, and the fact that we had been attacked by another rogue state just a couple of years earlier, it was a reasonable calculation not to sit back and wait for the country to be attacked again. That’s just Clay’s view, not the church’s and certainly not a view required of any Christian.
These are really good topics, and perhaps I’ll find the time to post on them in more detail later. In the meantime, I’ll say this. We live in a very fallen world. Just as there will never be a perfect church, there will also never be a perfect political party or a perfect political candidate. I hope that Christians engage the world, and the political process, with enough wisdom to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. For their many flaws, I simply see the Republicans and McCain as superior to their alternatives.