The Fringe President

David Rozelle instructs Kerry on how to overcome Bush's iron-clad support from the evangelical fundamentalists:

By David Rozelle - June 14, 2004 Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man. - Thomas Paine Be forewarned, John Kerry. By contesting George W. Bush, you are contesting "God." In spite of Bush's sworn duty to uphold the constitutional separation of church and state, this president wears his Christian evangelist religious fervor on not only his sleeve but his every policy proposal and decision, including the one that lied us into waging a world-be-damned war on a sovereign nation. From the day he took the oath of his office, George W. Bush has behaved more like a muddled mullah than a president. Asked, for instance, by Bob Woodward (as detailed in the book "Plan of Attack") how he approached the final decision to go to war, Bush replied, "I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will ... that I be as good a messenger of his will as possible." Asked if he had conferred with his father, George H.W. Bush, the president responded, "There is a higher father that I appeal to." And lest candidate Kerry simply dismiss "God as God," he should know the dimensions of the deity he may be up against. George W. Bush's divine father is the God of an estimated 90 million evangelical Christians in America. Most assuredly, most evangelicals conduct themselves as witnesses to Christ's teachings of love and tolerance. Near their fringes, however, are large numbers of extremists who, unlike their more moderate co-religionists, practice no "love thy neighbor" unless their neighbors believe as they believe: no religious or racial parity, no gay or abortion rights, no stem cell research, no United Nations, no evolution, no environmentalism, no eye without an eye in return, no personal salvation without their Christ. And at their absolute fringe, they are the befuddling prophesiers who hold that something they call the "Rapture" may be at hand. In short, this phantasmagoric forecast calls for a final "seven-year tribulation" between Israel and the hordes of the "antichrist." Before the onset of their Rapture, God's truest believers will be lifted into heaven to observe the pestilence and bloodshed erupting below. To ensure his re-election, this "faith-based" president will rely on the coattails of extremist right-wing Christians like these. They number in the tens of millions. They could make the difference. So what's to be done? First, as Bush's opponent, Kerry would do well to study ex-President Jimmy Carter's broad pragmatic distinction between Christians. In a recent interview, Carter, a Baptist, said that "the two principal things in a practical sense that starkly separate the ultra-right-wing Christian community from the rest of the Christian world" are the support of peace and the "alleviation of suffering among the poor and the outcast." Second, while Kerry cannot run as a religiously inspired candidate (he has read the Constitution), the question becomes can he win over Christian voters - including legions of evangelicals - without citing Christianity? He can. What John Kerry must do is cast his every position on every vital issue in a bright moral light that reflects the longstanding ideals of this nation. Embedded in our ideals is a humane concept of Jesus Christ that stands in sharp contrast to Bush's harsh, vainglorious vision. For most of us, believers or not, Christ is a peacemaker, champion of the poor, a healer, steward of the earth, a lover of each of us as a child of God without exception. Kerry, in secular opposition to Bush, must invoke the moral philosophy that underlies our Constitution. On Iraq, he must offer a plan for a generous withdrawal, leaving behind a country guided by the United Nations. On the economy, he must renounce the rich as the fount of economic well-being for the rest of us, while repositioning the poor and middle class for prosperity. On human rights, he must assert that all of the world's inhabitants have the same rights to dignity and respect. On the environment, he must avow that the Earth is now in our human hands to hold precious for future generations. Kerry must proclaim that if he is elected president of the most powerful nation on Earth, its "rules" will be a return to the "golden rule" of its Constitution and Bill of Rights. That's all. Really. What's so hard about saying that? These ideals embody what most of us as Americans thought we stood for. And by Nov. 3, we could stand for them again. "Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man," Paine reminds us. It also makes for a cruel nation. To defeat George W. Bush, we must defeat his god as well.

And the Financial Times gives the supporting numbers (snippets):

....According to The Economist in its "American Survey" of November 2003, Evangelical Christians make up the largest single religious group in the US, larger than Roman Catholics. Thirty per cent of all Americans in 2003 (up from 24 per cent in 1987) belong to the group, which, according to Professor George Marsden of Notre Dame University in Indiana, includes "holiness churches, Pentecostals, traditionalist Methodists, all sorts of Baptists, Presbyterians, black churches in all these traditions, fundamentalists, pietist groups, Reformed and Lutheran confessionalists, Anabaptists such as Mennonites, Churches of Christ, to name only the most prominent types". In spite of this bewildering variety, Evangelicals generally agree on the absolute authority, and literal truth, of the Bible, the redemptive power of Christ, the importance of missionary work and the centrality of a spiritually transformed life. George Bush became an Evangelical in 1985 by being "born again". Being born again transforms the believer. As the Gospel According to St John puts it, "Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (John, 3:5). Bush makes no secret of the fact that God transformed his life in just that way. Asked at a televised debate during the Iowa primary in 2000 to name his favourite philosopher, he said, instantly, "Christ" - explaining how, through Christ, he had become a new man. Here, too, he shares his identity with a very large number of his fellow citizens. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, about 35 per cent of Americans have been "born again". In a survey carried out in April 2004 for the Public Broadcasting Service, 71 per cent of Evangelicals polled said they would vote for George W. Bush if the election were held at the time of the poll. No wonder the White House calls them "the base", that bloc of voters in "Middle America" whose unstinting loyalty to the Republican party and willingness to turn out to vote gives the president a built-in core of support, a support strengthened by the way the Electoral College magnifies the distribution of votes in the south and south-west, areas of Evangelical predominance....

Liberals, this is not a battle we can afford to lose