6.01.2007 | "Hired strategists" for faith?

It is sometimes amusing to read what the liberal mainstream media writes about religion. But what comes across for the most part is the sense of a cultural anthropologist working down among the primitives. There's a sense of detachment, for one thing: these crazy natives and their cargo cult.

It seems that those who write for papers such as the Washington Post are also prone to ignore the blatant cynicism that is the norm among left-wing candidates. From this fairly typical story, headlined "Faith Playing Larger Role in 2008 Race." Virtually the same story was in the air during the 2004 and 2004 campaigns, as Democrats attempted to regain some lost ground among evangelicals. They were, naturally, attempting to do what some Republicans had been doing for some time.

The difference? The Republicans were more likely to actually be faithful Christians; for them, it wasn't a matter of studying faith in order to tweak their message. For those Republicans for whom speaking truly about faith was a form of speaking in a foreign language, I've got as little respect as I do for those Democrats who are doing so. Just that Democrats are much more likely to be faking it.

Now we see the Donk response for 2008. Faith isn't something that informs your inner core and guides how you live your life. Oh no. Faith is something you pander to and make a part of your strategy. The Post reports this without so much as a hint that this approach is almost a complete negation of what faith should be. From the story:

Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have hired strategists to focus on reaching religious voters. Obama's campaign holds a weekly conference call with key supporters in early primary and caucus states whose role is to spread the candidate's message to religious leaders and opinionmakers and report their concerns to the campaign.

"Hired strategists" says it all. No matter what else is said or done, a politician who needs to hire a "strategist" is, at the very least, unsure of his faith. And a huckster, looking for the best way to fool a sufficiency of voters.