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11.08.04 Fascinating
So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe ministers aren't the puppets of the
corporate ruling class. From Slate's
news summary:
The "untold
story of the 2004 election," says the WP [Washington Post] on
its front page, is the impressive organization of the evangelical
Christian right. In many battleground states, evangelical
Protestants, conservative Roman Catholics and others took it upon
themselves to mobilize voters for President Bush, often organizing
without connecting with campaign officials. Ministers sermonizing on
voting; organizing voting drives around same-sex marriage bans;
handing out voter registration forms on Sunday— they all contributed
to the crucial demographic coming out in scores for Bush.
Well, wait a minute. I actually went and read the article.
In dozens of interviews since the election, grass-roots
activists in Ohio, Michigan and Florida credited President Bush's
chief political adviser, Karl Rove, with setting a clear goal that
became a mantra among conservatives: To win, Bush had to draw 4
million more evangelicals to the polls than he did in 2000. But they
also described a mobilization of evangelical Protestants and
conservative Roman Catholics that took off under its own power.
Karl Rove is still behind much of it. But some of the
grassroots mobilization is self-reported by ministers and
conservative Catholics -- claiming this credit for themselves is their
way of setting up the expectations for payback. So, now I see a two-way
alliance between the economic power-brokers and the ecclesiastical
power-brokers.
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mad
in pursuit: greed & arrogance