Yes,  the title is a “rock musical” reference, which should tell you we are getting desperate for titles.

Good News!?

Mike Allen, Politico:

In a surprise to many Republican insiders, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is at the top of the vice presidential prospect list for John McCain.

But why is he there?

One of the chief reasons the Massachusetts governor is looking so attractive is his ability to raise huge amounts of money quickly through his former business partners and from fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormons.

Cash is good, but will Mormons pony up down ticket like they did when competing for the top spot?  Should they?  The question directly - should they contribute simply because Romney is Mormon?  Gosh, I hope not.

Lowell chiming in:  Oh, please.  I cannot imagine that any serious, knowledgeable analyst thinks that access to Mormon money is a reason to add Romney to the ticket.  There just are not enough Mormons and of those few people, not enough of them are wealthy.  Now, if we are talking about Romney’s economic expertise or his turnaround experience, that makes more sense.

Another “leader” in the Veepstakes, Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty talked to CBN’s David Brody:

“John McCain is a person of faith and he is a committed Christian and he is somebody that I think is probably less comfortable being overt about that than perhaps some others might be but his value system and his belief in Christ I think is something that is part of who he is as a person and I think he is somebody who would be well received by Christian leaders and Evangelical leaders and I just want to encourage the McCain campaign to make that effort and to reach out and they are but I think there are a lot of Christian leaders, evangelical leaders who haven’t yet been contacted or who haven’t been part of meetings who are feeling perhaps, are they going to reach out to me and at a minimum we want to make sure that he is speaking on issues of concern to them and I think you’ll see perhaps more of that in the summer and fall.”

Part of being Evangelical is that you are overt about your faith.  I relate to what Pawlenty is saying here.  My father was a deeply committed Christian, but he never uttered the Evangelical formulation “Jesus is my Savior” in his entire life.  Dad was raised Lutheran - it’s a thing with them.  But I am bothered, deeply bothered, by the fact that we were treated to countless calls, Brody being a primary voice among them, for Romney to “explain his faith,” and yet we are willing to let McCain be covert about his?

Lowell:  I hate to say it but that is a direct product of religious Mormon-bashing by a minority of Evangelicals who find Mormonism so upsetting that they cannot abide the idea of a Mormon present.  To my mind that is the plain, unvarnished truth.  I am hoping we we are moving beyond that, or at least listening to those folks less and less.

Obama and Evangelical “Disarray”…

Reid Wilson, RCP:

 While the Republican brand suffers and independent voters focus on issues that favor Democrats, John McCain should be able to rely on one key voting bloc that overwhelmingly favors his party: evangelicals. But Barack Obama is doing more than any Democrat in recent memory to win over religious voters and, facing an opponent in McCain who has been historically shy about his own faith, Obama could close the “faith gap” better than any Democrat come November.

Lisa Miller, Newsweek:

The leaders of the religious right don’t have great affection for John McCain. They think he’s too moderate on immigration, embryonic-stem-cell research and campaign-finance reform, and they think he doesn’t do enough to promote his pro-life positions.

That’s where they agree. But as the 2008 general election unfolds, it’s clear that their movement is in disarray—in a transitional period that could diminish its influence this cycle. For decades, right-wing kingmakers used their sway with voters to pick candidates and set a national agenda at the polls and in the courts. But McCain’s candidacy has tamped down their enthusiasm, exposing fractures that make a rallying of the troops in the pews unlikely.

OK, lets separate the facts from the wishful thinking here.   Energy from the religious right, heck the right in general, is at a low ebb right now, agreed.  They did not get who they wanted in the primary, but come on let’s be real - that group of people is going to vote for Obama?  I don’t think so.  (The staff at RCP’s VP Watch blog, commenting on the Pawlenty interview above, seem to agree.) They might sit it out, but the more Obama stands far enough to the left to make John McCain look like the second coming of Ronald Reagan, the more energized that group is going to become.

What Obama IS doing in energizing the religious left.  They were always there, but they have been the ones sitting quietly until recently.   Maybe even registering as Republicans because they did not want to stick out too much.There is no “disarray” inside Evangelicalism, there is simply a debate between left and right that has been nascent until this cycle.  There is competition for political space inside Evangelicalism, which there has not been for a couple of decades, but that is very different than “disarray.”

Of course, the Old Gray Lady would have us think that Obama is going to shift the entire religio-politcal landscape.  What’s really funny about that is that even if the landscape does shift, it will not be Obama’s doing.  He might catch the train, but that baby was in motion long before he came along.

One thing I know with certainty.  This is not going to play out like any of these pundits expect.

Lowell:  What happened in 2008, among other things, was that Evangelicals forgot how to be in a coalition and ended up nominating McCain.  Now many of that movement are unhappy.  That is not necessarily a permanent situation.  The MSM glee over religious conservatives being in disarray really does seem to be wishful thinking, or at best premature.

Dobson and Obama - Who Started It?

Collin Hansen In Chistianity Today regarding last week’s dust-up between Obama and James Dobson:

Politicians understandably fear to tread where theologians rule, the field of hermeneutics. Here theologians debate how to interpret the Bible and apply it across time and culture. In his 2006 speech Obama made a hermeneutical point when he doubted that the U.S. Defense Department could survive application of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. If we knew what was in there, Obama implied, we wouldn’t find it such a simple thing to say our politics were based on Scripture. “So before we get carried away, let’s read our Bibles,” Obama said. “Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles.”

[…]

Usually, politicians want no part in these theological debates. Otherwise, they would provoke Christian leaders such as Dobson to say, “He is deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology.” But Obama is no typical politician. That which makes him interesting makes him controversial.

Look, Obama did cross a hermeneutical line first, but I still don’t think Dobson should have responded as he did.  Obama’s statements simply do not pass any sort of serious test, it is blatant, even lousy, proof-texting (a phrase one uses when doing hermeneutics to mean “taking a verse out of context to support a point I want to make,” as opposed to letting the Bible tell me what to think).  In my opinion, so much so that res ispa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself) should apply.

By picking up the hermeneutics ball, as it were, what Dobson did was invite continued debate along those lines.   That is NOT a debate we want to have in the political arena.  Unlike Obama, there are any number of left-wing theologians out there whose arguments and not quite so self-negating.  All it would do is confuse things.

As we found out last week from the Pew Forum, most people like their faith a mile wide and an inch deep.   A theology debate in the public square is just going to drive them away in droves, and they are likely to side with the guy that “feels” right.  Right now, Obama has got it all over us on the “feeling” thing. Capice?
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