The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Religiosity In POTUS Candidates

Posted on | July 16, 2011 | 18 Comments

by Smitty

In the midst of the political scrum, one behavior pattern exhibited on the left and the right is the exhuming of religious for use in finger pointing.
For example, even the dead Robert Byrd will always be Senator KKK to conservatives. Also famously, Ronald Reagan was a lefty, and FDR admirer, before uncluttering his head. But nobody would remember him as being a huge Christian. More recently, Ann Althouse posts about Michelle Bachmann’s former church being anti-papist. Bachmann’s case is clearly a variation on the theme of Jeremiah Wright.
A few questions:

  • Is the Bachmann religiosity angle (church, husband’s ministry) merely ‘an eye for an eye’ over Jeremiah Wright in 2008?
  • What are the criteria for figuring out the acceptability of her church involvement? How do we have a standard whereby Wright is unacceptable, but other spiritual forms are OK?
  • If the consensus is that Bachmann is a closet theocrat or something, what guarantees would work to make her an acceptable candidate? Or is it the case that you cannot hold any strong religious views if you’re going to run for POTUS?
Category: Uncategorized

Comments

Comments are closed.