Maybe he can hire Esther-Madonna.

Abortion is their single most important and party-unifying issue and has been for decades; kinda tough for them to then turn around and start asking religious voters, even the religion-lite types so many churches covet, to support them.

Miracles happen every day.

Paul Begala talking religion. I have seen everything now. I can go to the Lord.

Chris - Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall in those tutoring sessions? I've never previously observed the blind leading the blind.

Chris:

Begala is supposedly devout and left Washington because he didn't like the whole tenor of the politics there, but that was the story before he came back to defend the rapist...

PJ: You have no idea what I'd pay for that.

OJ: Somehow, Begala never struck me as a terribly Godly man. I try not to judge others on their faith, but as you say, very few men wo are right with God flack themselves out for serial sexual abusers.

Chris:

Begala at least thinks he is

http://www.thehoya.com/news/020703/news4.cfm

"With regard to abortion, Begala said that he does not like when fellow Catholics reduce all sanctity of life issues to simply the abortion issue. “What about the injustices in the death penalty, health care and lack of housing … Why have people never chastised a Catholic politician for supporting the death penalty or war?” Begala said.

Recalling former president John F. Kennedy’s hurdle of convincing people that he would not take orders from the Pope, he said that it would be a mistake to tell all Catholic politicians to vote in a certain way.

Begala criticized Republican candidates for using Protestants and anti-abortion rights advocates simply to get votes, and giving them nothing in return except judges, simply because the anti-abortion rights position is unpopular. He further noted that at least Democrats who get support for opposing abortion rights make strides to support those rights groups despite any effect on popularity."

As a rule of thumb, a Catholic who does not understand his own faith is not terribly Godly.

As a further point, a man who conflates the murder of millions of children with spikes in housing prices is at best a moral idiot.

As a final point, Godly men do not question the right of God to tell them the right way to act.

Put differently: I may think I can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but this does not mean that bullets, in fact, bounce off of my chest.

The big problem is that the Democratic leadership does not understand the issue. They're simply trying to pick and choose specific religious teachings a la carte to justify previous positions. That's not going to convince everyone. These are the issues:

1) Many religious people feel the culture is very antagonistic towards them and that the govt is being used as a weapon against them.

2) The party requires complete uniformity to various doctrines for people to be candidates. If someone supports most of the platform, but is against abortion, or gay rights, or some other cultural issue, they will be attacked by vested interests within the party.

None of the party's talk about religion affects these concerns. They are only preaching to the choir and not actually listening to the criticism and changing the policies that drive away those votes.

It seems Begala thinks that all that is necessary is for Democrats to do exactly what they have been doing, but talk about it a different way.

Chris:
As one of Orrin's wise commentors said here not too long ago:
"The basic worldview that informs the Left these days is based on logo-realism, the idea that words are more important than deeds, that action is simply fluff over the central reality of social concensus. It is inherent to this view to search for the magic words that will change the political situation."
Sorry, I don't remember who this savant was.

>Sorry, I don't remember who this savant was.

I think the guy over at Eject! Eject! Eject! often touches on the same subject. When you "deconstruct" everything into just a matter of language and words, whoever is best at parsing the words ("It all depends on what the meaning of 'is' is...") will WIN THE ARGUMENT and that is all that matters. ("I WIN! YOU LOSE! NYAAAAH! NYAAAAAH! NYAAAAAAAAAAAAH!") And when you have done nothing your adult life but parse words and use language in academia or law...

anon - The wise commenter was Annoying Old Guy, aka AOG, the proprietor of Thought Mesh:

http://blog.thought-mesh.net/

Thanks pj. I just switched to Firefox and hadn't got the settings right when I posted. I try not to be anonymous - I don't care for people who hide when making public comments.

JD: Maybe some of us are a bit shy, and live in areas where our public comments could be used against us....

You display your goods on a tv show called Third Watch. This show has people getting killed as a form of entertainment. I have a problem with this, and last night they killed an eight year old child. If you must promote violence on tv, why don't you just do it with adults