Barack Obama Fakes Interest in Evangelicals

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

And here I thought Democrats had learned a lesson from DNC Chairman Howard Dean when he made a fool of himself during his presidential run saying he wanted to be the candidate "for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."

Winning elections is all about getting the votes; something Democrats haven't successfully done in a long time. Realizing there's big numbers in the religious bloc, the popular first-term senator from Illinois is trying to tap that reserve.

The only problem: he's a Democrat:

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats on Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people," and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.

"Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters," the Illinois Democrat said in remarks prepared for delivery to a conference of Call to Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty.

"It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase `under God,'" he said. "Having voluntary student prayer groups using school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats."

Sounds reasonable, right? But that kind of thinking is considered "extreme" by many far-left liberals who don't want the phrase "under God" recited by children in fear of indoctrination. They don't want voluntary prayer groups anywhere near schools. They get behind the ACLU, an organization that sues the government every time a single red cent of tax money ends up in a church.

Just what incentive is there for religious voters to go blue? As if one speech by Senator Obama is going to convince the religious masses. And it's not like Obama is somehow a friend of the faithful just because he wants their votes. Since he became a senator in 2004, Obama has so far opposed every federal judicial appointment by President Bush who is seen as a threat to the constitutional right to abort a fetus in the ninth month.

He talks about voluntary prayer groups in school as being okay, but the judges his party appoints routinely strikes them down as unconstitutional. Obama was one of only 22 senators to oppose John Roberts for the Supreme Court, placing him to the left of most Senate Democrats. He opposed Samuel Alito and many of Bush's appellate court picks - for the same reasons the party is getting scorn from Obama in the first place.

Forgetting that he always opposes judges who loosely interpret the "separation of church and state" doctrine, Obama criticizes his party for not loosely believing in the "separation of church and state" doctrine:

"Secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square."

As a result, "I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people and join a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy."

Obama mentioned leaders of the religious right briefly, saying they must "accept some ground rules for collaboration" and recognize the importance of the separation of church and state.

So Obama wants it both ways. He wants religion to be tolerated in public but not to the point that it violates church and state. But at what point does that happen according to Obama? If reciting the Pledge is okay, how about a monument of the Ten Commandments? I can see him sweating already.

Democrats will never win the Christian vote because they don't understand Christians. I can't think of a better way to earn the respect of evangelicals than to vote for an amendment protecting the flag from desecration. Sure enough, just yesterday the proposal fell one vote shy in the Senate because most Democrats opposed it. Gee, to think if only Obama had voted in favor of the amendment it would have successfully passed the Senate.

But to Democrats, supporting an amendment protecting the flag is "silly" and a "waste of time." Yet it's those silly patriotic issues that are important to evangelicals, and yet Democrats can't even get that issue right. Let's not even go near abortion - perhaps the single most important issue to religious Christians, an issue they're still fuming over ever since the Supreme Court invented a right to the practice back in 1973.

Sorry Obama, your party is far from getting the religious voters on your side.