Excerpt from God’s Politics, by Jim Wallis.
“After the 2002 midterm elections, I attended a private dinner for Harvard Fellows in Cambridge. Our speaker was a Republican political strategist who had just won all the major senatorial and gubernatorial election campaigns in which he was involved. Needless to say, he was full of his success and eager to tell us about it. This very smart political operative said that Republicans won middle-class and even working-class people on the “social” issues, those moral and cultural issues that Democrats don’t seem to understand or appreciate. He even suggested that passion on the social issues can cause people to vote against their economic self-interest. Since the rich are already with us, he said, we win elections.”
The author then goes on to say that he stood and questioned the speaker, asking what they would have done if they had faced a candidate who…”Took a traditional moral stance on the social and cultural issues.”, “was not mean spirited…”, “would not criminalize the choices of desperate women…”, “was decidedly pro family…” Further, if the candidate were “an economic populist, pro-poor in social policy, tough on corporate corruption and power.” “…environmentalist,…” “…and committed to a foreign policy that that emphasized international law and multilateral cooperation over preemptive and unilateral war.” The answer was a long time in coming, but what he finally said was, “We would panic!”
The book is really worth reading and allows you to see that there are more choices than just “Republican” or “Democrat”.
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