Lincoln Davis was a guest on
Steve Gill's program this a.m. and not only refused to withdraw his
previous holier-than-thou comments--comments which were repeated and endorsed by Junior,
he reiterated and emphasized his point: the Democrat Party is more consistent with the Bible and "the faith of Abraham" than the GOP. Ford and Davis also declined to back off their comments yesterday.
Tennessee's 2006 U.S. Senate race is unprecedented in various ways, but it is most extraordinary in elevating the issue of "faith" as a campaign issue. This is a national trend as the Democrat Party appeals to Red Staters. For the record, I welcome this development.
It has been disturbing on a number of levels and on a continuing basis to watch as Harold Ford, Jr. has manipulated the issue. Junior's
"church lady" ad; his reference to God or "the man upstairs" (wink, wink) in EVERY photo opp and debate answer; and now his Democrats_not_Republicans_love_the_Lord comments. The exposure of it is new, but this has long been a part of Democrat politics--particularly in turning out
their base--African Americans.
So the good thing about this nation-wide development is that it demonstrates the hypocrisy over all these years of National Dems accusing Republicans of using religion as a wedge. But it also demonstrates how disingenuous/ignorant Democrats are who chatter on about "separation of Church and State." The reality is that
every law reflects someone's values, and those values are very often rooted in religous convictions. Republicans and Democrats (or Conservatives and Liberals) certainly have different views of the interaction between gov't and religion.
In the second U.S. senate debate
from Memphis, the faith issue was raised in a question posed to Harold Ford, Jr. and his answer (especially his surrebuttal) exemplifies the fallacious foundation for the so-called Religious Left. Precisely, their objective is to impose their religious views on others through gov't.
Ford, Jr. also said, "The other thing we have to be conscious of when we talk about faith is that some people are dishonest about it. Some people talk about how important their faith is and then vote against packages that would provide relief to people who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Some people talk about it and then they vote to make drugs more expensive for seniors, and some people talk about how important it is and then vote to cut funding for education for kids."
I'm interested to see which "Katrina package" Ford, Jr. is referring to--and moreso the "people" he's referring to, because I'm not aware of much if any spending resraint related to Katrina. But
Ford, Jr.'s statement illustrates the Liberal's view of faith's role in politics: using someone else's money to show compassion (or perhaps more accurately, buy votes). (Aside: Phil Valentine has said, "If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you rarely get any disagreement from Paul.")
What Liberals seem not to comprehend is that government, generally speaking, does not have its own money to spend . . . Harold Ford, Jr. appears to think that it is the ultimate hypocrisy for people to claim to be a Christian while thinking it is appropriate to use judgment before throwing taxpayers' money at any and every request from the Mississippi Delta or at any and every demand for money from a broken, dysfunctional, irresponsible gov't education system.
I won't even concede the point that Democrat-leaning folks are more charitable than Republican-leaning folks. Indeed,
data from the Center for Philanthropy plainly refutes that proposition. But this demonstrates that Conservatives principally practice their faith apart from government policy. Al Gore's 1999 tax returns beautifully demonstrated putting your money (not others' money) where your mouth is.
We can debate how and to what degree religious views impact on public policy, but please acknowledge that there is room for disagreement on the matter. As a Religious Conservative, I'm more than willing to have that debate.
I won't expect Democrats to acknowledge that they've been demagoguing the issue over the past 25 years.
