and god said touché
by Ryan Porter
Published: January 2, 2008
As the starting gun of the 2008 presidential election readies to fire with the Iowa caucus now only days away, Vegas stakes would typically be favoring God’s candidate for the GOP nomination as He has done pretty well in the last two presidential elections. His sway became blatantly obvious in 2000 when his candidate won even after losing. Talk about divine intervention. After that showing, it would be foolish to bet any other way, but this year, Vegas, as well as the rest of the conservative- Christian voting bloc, seems to be stumped over which man is God’s man.
In past elections, Christian Right leaders like Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, known for their warm, loving, pious bigotry, coalesced around a single Republican candidate, solidifying God’s choice for President of the United States (election years are, after all, the highlight of God’s eternity). This year seemed to be a no-brainer with the entrance of Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, into the race as his Christian-credentials rate off the charts.
In an unusual twist of fate, the conservative-Christian voting bloc splintered, subsequently dividing their support evenly among the frontrunners. Some, including primo-kook Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, decided to support Rudy Giuliani, the one candidate who stands in opposition to all of the Coalition’s main platforms, specifically abortion rights and rights to homosexual marriage. So what could possibly be motivating this strange behavior among America’s most adamantly stubborn voting bloc? Robertson, despite his eccentricities, could not possibly transition from dubbing Hurricane Katrina as God’s punishment for abortion and homosexuality in America to all of a sudden downplaying their significance without some other motivation.
Obviously these Christian Right leaders are currently motivated more by a desire to pick the winning horse than to back the one who best identifies with their views. No one wants to bet on a loser, but this seems a bit extreme. Initially, I assumed the Christian leaders were driven by a selfish desire to be right, but then I realized that they are really just looking out for God’s reputation. These leaders purport to support God’s candidate, so if they pick a loser, then God could lose His street-cred.
This reasoning seems to jive with the fact that Christian leaders were hesitant to throw their support to Huckabee since he only recently evolved* into a viable candidate. The fact that Huckabee has emerged at the front of the pack without the support of these influential Christian leaders seems to suggest that a Republican might be able to win without an obvious nod from God. At the same time God clearly took some time away from politics during the 90’s presidential elections, so maybe it is just an off year and we have only to look forward to the impending doom of America slumping back into financial security, as was the case under the Clinton administration. What a shame.
But if a Republican can win without God then more power to you because no one would guess it could be done. Touché, Huckabee. Touché.
*This is the good kind of evolution, not the evil Darwin/Satan kind.
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