I heard a woman on MPR who called in about Mitt Romney and she said “I’m a Democrat and I’m a Mormon so I don’t know what I’m going to do — I’m torn!’
Torn between being a Democrat and a moron? By that I do not mean that non-Democrats are morons, I mean that people who make political decisions based on religious affiliations are morons.
Now hold on, moron is a strong word and many people feel that someone’s religious affiliations may indeed be evidence of their character and of shared values. My question to them is: how is that character demonstrated in real life in a political context? Answer: by their views on issues. What are political parties? People who have similar views on issues.
She is choosing between someone who represents her political views and someone who shares her religious views in a political race. That’s like choosing a piano player based on their hockey skills. We’re not electing clergy. The role of the President is not in any way religious. Foreign policy and domestic economics are not issues which rely on a particular religious view. They are hard and in many ways boring aspects of our government. The “moral” leadership of Bush has been a disaster and the last thing we need is people choosing elected officials based on completely irrelevant criteria.
lolife 
I agree that people do that. I don’t believe it is a good way to judge people simply for the reason that there are people of poor moral character and people of high moral character spread evenly among all different religions (and non-religions). A church-going Protestant is not any more likely to be of good moral character than a Catholic, Jew, Muslim or atheist. Mitt Romney or anyone else can profess to be pious and devout but how they actually act is another thing all together. An example to some would be Bush claiming to be devoutly Christian and yet electively starting a war that has killed no less than hundreds of thousands of people.
If I were a devout Catholic, which I once was, I would highly question someone that thought they should get my vote because they were Catholic, too.
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I think there are other ways with which a persons character are reflected in a political context. Where they stand on issues is maybe the most obvious, but there are more subtle ways as well that effect things like a politician’s effectiveness and corruptibility. Not that someone’s espoused religions belief is the best way to determine the quality of someone’s character, but I could see that being a place to start.
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There are millions, probably multiple millions of people that vote Republican because of religion. The Pro-choice/anti-abortion issue alone puts “would be” dems on the right. Single issue religious voters…swayed by their “faith” and the belief that the Right represents them…
This is whacked on its own, but the truth is that the right merely “uses” them. What has Bush done to overturn legalized abortion? zip! and did he run on an “I’ll stop abortion” platform? , yes he did….
The religious right are in interesting lot.
The other interesting lot are the single issue…”pry my gun out of my cold dead hands” NRA nut-jobs….
These are two significant demographics that ,for every other reason under the sun, should be dems…instead they vote on the right…
bizzare!
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