October 2008 Archives

We've entered the wacky pre-election days, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised at anything. But the Dole ad is one for the history books, and now we've got Sarah Palin claiming that media criticism of her for criticizing Barack Obama threatens her First Amendment rights. That's a beautiful thing. But, as Cab Calloway once sang, can't we talk about religion? I'm hoping that Sister Sarah will claim that her Free Exercise rights are threatened by someone raising an eyebrow about Bishop Muthee. That would be a treat!

It's obvious that the alleged anti-Semite that McCain apparatchik Michael Goldfarb cannot name is Jeremiah Wright, who has made statements sufficient to warrant considering him less than friendly toward the State of Israel. Why can't Goldfarb name him? I have little doubt that he's under orders from the campaign not to--and the question is why. I can think of a few reasons, all mutually reinforcing. Let me list them, a la Letterman, in what I suppose to be reverse order of importance.

4. The Right Thing. It's wrong to criticize your opponent's religious commitments. The Constitution says there shall be no religious test for office. Blah blah blah.

3. Been there, done that. If Americans remember any particular about Obama's candidacy during the primaries, it's Jeremiah Wright and "God Damn America." There's only a downside to bringing that up again now--such as to give Obama another chance to talk sensibly about race.

2. The Honor of McCain. John McCain said he wasn't going to bring up Wright during the general election campaign, and what John McCain says, John McCain does. To be sure, if independent groups choose to do so, that's out of our control.

1. Sauce for the Goose. Putting Wright on the table runs the risk of the media (egged on by the Obama campaign) taking a serious look at Sister Sarah's religious associations and convictions. Better not to go there.

Update: Here's JTA's take.

A friend from England writes: "Just in case America is tempted to do something stupid on Tuesday please tell everyone you know that "Vice President Sarah Palin" is an anagram of "Is Perhaps Evil Incarnate."

A scummy extended version of Dole's Godless ad--posted on Huck's blog.

From Pew's latest:

White Evangelicals: McCain 65, Obama 22
No Religious Affiliations: Obama 65, McCain 22

This is an ad that will live in infamy. And Campbell Brown's commentary deserves to be remembered too.

On Tuesday, CT voters get to decide if the state should hold its first constitutional convention in 40 years--the fond hope of those who would like to do away with same-sex marriage, as recently mandated by the state supreme court. And indeed, according to a new Hartford Courant poll, the voters seem to want to go ahead and have the convention. But not because they are against same sex marriage. What they want are citizen ballot initiatives. They oppose amending the constitution to ban same-sex marriage by 55-41.

According to the latest Le Moyne/Zogby poll of Catholic attitudes, barely 13 percent of Catholics who agree with their church's position on abortion say they would be unlikely to vote for a candidate who disagrees with them.

Correction: Make that 13 percent of all Catholics say they would be unlikely to vote for a candidate who disagrees with the church's abortion position.

The race in Indiana is tied at 45 each, according to a new Indianapolis Star poll. In this usually dependable red state, it is not good news for McCain that evangelicals are supporting him by less than 2-1 (57-33). In 2004, they backed Bush 77-22. Bush won Indiana by 21 points, 60-39. Evangelicals constitute 35 percent of the Hoosier vote, so their 31-point shift toward Obama represents about half the total shift in the partisan breakdown from 2004 to now. In other words, evangelicals in Indiana seem to be shifting disproportionately toward Obama. For a core (as opposed to a swing) constituency, that's big news indeed. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but once again it's Midwestern evangelicals who are proving susceptible to the Obama message.

My colleague Ron Kiener explodes the latest McCain-Palin scare tactic over at his blog, Bingoprof. Check it out.

Obama told Time's Joe Klein of that he is in favor of negotiating with the Taliban. General Petraeus agrees. This statement has prompted an elated response from blogger Mujahideen Ryder:"This is extremely good news, and makes me want to shout at all the Muslims in Texas, Virginia, Ohio, Florida and any other strong Republican states to get out there and vote for Barack Obama!"

However, scroll down and look at some of the comments and you can see this type of response is not unanimous. Some seem skeptical that Obama has their interests at heart. As in: "Obama is a Politician. At the end of the day he going to fold to the people who keep him in power."

According to Quinnipiac's latest, white evangelicals break 72-21 for McCain in FL, but 61-33 and 62-31 in OH and PA respectively. Helps explain why Obama's up by 9 and 12 points in the latter states, but only by 2 in the former, doesn't it?

There's been plenty of anti-Obama sludge sluiced at the Jewish community over the past few weeks, including by the Republican Jewish Coalition. It doesn't seem to be having any effect, however. Quinnipiac's latest Florida poll has the Jews breaking 75-20 for Obama. Looks like another teeth-grinding year for those conservative gedoylim and their neocon cupbearers.

I've been reviewing Mitt Romney's campaign for a paper John Green and I are giving on Romney and the evangelicals at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Chicago, and was reminded that, in fact, a lot of old dogs of the religious right were geared up to have Romney as the GOP nominee this time around. Not that Dobson, Land, and Reed actually endorsed him, but they did what they could to stick the shiv into Mike Huckabee, and made it clear that the Mittster was just fine with them. He had come calling, tugged the forelock, and assumed all the right social conservative positions. He looked like a moderate, had the chops to enlist the economic conservatives, and if he was rather vague on foreign policy, he'd tell the neocons what they wanted to hear too. The only problem was that the evangelical rank and file weren't buying--at least, not with Huck out on the hustings.

So when, as Jonathan Martin is reporting on Politico, the various con elites get together for their now not-so-secret Virginia confab right after the election, it should not be assumed that the paladins of the religious right will be carrying the torch for Sister Sarah. As much as they love her, and would cherish using her as their woman in the White House in a McCain administration, they'll know she's toxic in the country at large. What they will want, as always, is someone they they can trust on their issues but who won't scare the horses. Mitt is somewhat tarnished but the best they've got for now. After four years of Obama, a Mormon won't look so bad to the rank and file. I'd keep my eye on him.

It's been a while since all the Jeremiah Wright commotion. This is a last minute release by The National Republican Trust PAC. Apparently it will cost the PAC somewhere between 1-3 million dollars to air it. Brody suggests the moment's too far gone now for the video to have much impact and that if McCain loses on Tuesday, the Republicans will lament that they didn't display Wright, Ayers, and Rezko in one big tripartite character-smearing package sooner.

News that the Christian Science Monitor is killing off its print edition put me in mind of a story my late father used to tell. It was just after World War II, and freshly demobilized from the Army he was traveling around war-torn (as they said) Europe stringing for the Monitor. He had a purple streak in him in those days, and so began one of his stories, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death--are stalking Europe." Although the paper has never worn its religion on its sleeve, there have always been certain Christian Science no-nos, one of which was an absolute prohibition on the word "death." ("Passed on," I believe, was the locution of choice.) So Dad's lede would not do. Edited, the story began: "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--three of which are Pestilence, War, and Famine--are stalking Europe." CSM print edition, RIP.

According to the latest LAT/Bloomberg poll of OH and FL (Obama up 49-40 and 50-43 respectively), two-thirds of white evangelicals in FL support McCain and a quarter Obama, while in OH McCain has just 58 percent and Obama better than 30 percent. The OH number for McCain is exactly what the Rasmussen poll found last night. If he can't break 65 percent among white evangelicals there, he can kiss the Buckeye State, and the election, goodbye.

White House tells banks to stop hoarding money (AP)

Peter Wallsten writes in today's LAT:

The social conservatives and moderates who together boosted the Republican Party to dominance have begun a tense battle over the future of the GOP, with social conservatives already moving to seize control of the party's machinery and some vowing to limit John McCain's influence, even if he wins the presidency.

According to Pew, over the past three weeks white evangelicals have gone from 74-18 for McCain to 67-22, to 65-22. McCain's shedding them mostly into the undecided column, which now is up to 13 percent. Whether they return to their Republican roots in a week is the question. The Obama campaign is presumably hoping to round up a chunk of them. The Matthew 25 ads here and here, airing on Christian radio, hope to accomplish just that.

The cross tabs from the latest Rasmussen battleground polls (available to premium customers only) show evangelicals in some states sliding toward Obama. Not in CO and NC, where the numbers remain within hailing distance (71, 69) of the Bushian range. But in VA, FL, MO, and OH, Obama's breaking 30. In OH, that critical Midwest battleground, the numbers are striking: McCain 58, Obama 38. Just four years ago, the Buckeye State seemed on the verge of becoming the next big venue for politicized evangelicalism, what with the growth of mobilized megachurches and the likes of Secretary of State Ken Blackwell fixing to be governor. But between the implosion of the state GOP and economic hard times, it's looking more like the religious right's Gettysburg, its high water mark.

Pennsylvania Catholics back Obama 53-41, as opposed to Pennsylvania Protestants, who back McCain 52-44. According to the latest Temple poll.

Gallup's got the skinny on the God Gap. It's what you thought. The news? Palin's done nothing to enhance McCain's margin among frequent worshiping white voters. Of course, she may turn out to have helped turn them out. But since we won't know how they would have turned out in her absence, we won't actually be able to tell.

Michael Paulson calls attention to the Gap Gap, as disclosed in the Boston Globe's new New Hampshire poll. Namely: respondents who say they attend worship once a week or more break 52-40 for McCain. The trouble is, they make up only 23 percent of the state's voting population, and all other groups break for Obama by larger margins. Result: Obama by 15.

MuslimMatters.org is hosting a live online chat-box debate between Muslim supporters of both Obama and McCain. It will take place on 30th Oct @ 10 pm EST. Click here for more information.

The "Looking Backward" letter from Focus on the Family Action is a document worth preserving for historical purposes. Its claim that it is presenting a reasonable guess about what an Obama administration would do is preposterous. Take this example:

Church buildings are now considered a “public accommodation” by the Supreme Court, and churches have no freedom to refuse to allow their buildings to be used for wedding ceremonies for homosexual couples. If they refuse, they lose their tax-exempt status, and they are increasingly becoming subject to fines and antidiscrimination lawsuits.

But because the document has been put together with some care, it provides an excellent portrait of the 2008 edition of the religious right worldview. It's a world view that extends to such issues as taxation and health care that don't on their face have much to do with the moral agenda allegedly being promoted. But these do dovetail with GOP ideology--and without too much of a stretch dovetail with standard premillennialist fears of the Antichrist's one world government (single-payer health care, wealth redistribution). What's conspicuously absent, however, is any mention of the current financial meltdown, or what to do about it. Here, the ideological ducks are not lined up, leaving the poor, uneducated, easy to command followers of Jim Dobson in a quandary. If nothing else, this Republican inability to grapple intellectually with the most critical issue of the election is likely to put us in a position of being able to evaluate the accuracy of FOTFA's nightmare scenario, come 1212.

Here's Focus on the Family Action's 16-page mock letter written by "A Christian from 2012." It lays out the moral dystopia (terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, homeschoolers as refugees, pornography everywhere) America will become after 4 years of an Obama presidency, and is aimed particularly at younger evangelicals who (it claims) were responsible for naively handing Obama the margin over McCain: Forgive them for they knew not what they did.

Over at Progressive Revival, Matthew 25's Mara Vanderslice reports on the umbrage taken by some evangelicals, including including the following: "This kind of propaganda is ridiculous. No one thinks that any of this is going to happen, let alone all of it. I just can't understand how any Christian can think that this type of false witness is acceptable." The letter does amount to a kind of backhand compliment to Obama, who can be flattered that Focus believes he could accomplish so much in just one term.

Second Holocaust or GOP meltdown? TPM's Kurtz is on the case.

What to make of Laurie Goodstein's article in yesterday's NYT on Sarah Palin's connections to the spiritual warfare "brand" of Pentecostalism? You can check out the thing here and here. So far as I can tell--and I claim no expertise whatsoever--it's a strain of evangelical thought that emphasizes the believing individual's and community's struggle with otherworldly forces, conceived in highly specific terms as particular demons and particular demonically influenced places. Palin's regular invocation of "prayer warriors" (as in her recent chat with James Dobson) comes out of this strain of Pentecostalism. A representative of this tradition is Bishop Thomas Muthee, the Kenyan witch-hunter who visited Palin's old church and laid hands on her to protect her from witchcraft prior to her gubernatorial run.

Should we be worried about having such a spiritual warrior a heartbeat away from the Oval Office? In the spirit of the moment, I suppose John Stewart et al. could start postulating a Palinesque belief that the un-American parts of America are demon-possessed. Palin as Pentecostal Ghost-Buster or Woman in (Valentino) Black. But I'm not sure if it's really anyone's business if a politician believes that part of her religion involves spiritual combat against Satan and his minions.

Not the least disturbing sentence in Goodstein's article is:

"Religious leaders in Alaska, including Mr. Donelson [Patrick Donelson, 'a pastor and fishing guide who helped found a spiritual warfare ministry' appointed by Palin to the only seat reserved for members of the clergy on the state’s Suicide Prevention Council], declined interviews, with several saying they had been told by the McCain-Palin campaign not to talk to members of the news media."

This strikes me as playing the Tribulation card. Which means, of course, the Antichrist card. No Republican left behind.

Newsweek's got white Catholics at 45-45, white evangelicals at 65-29 McCain, all whites at 47-45 Obama. That's a popular vote margin better than Gore's with no people of color at all. With them, a 13-point landslide.

Silver's missing something here. As the Republicans have become the Party of Faith and Democrats the Party of the Unchurched, those unaffiliated Westerners have drifted towards the Dems.

Today's big news on Catholicism comes from the NYT/CBS poll, which shows white Catholics in a massive 30-point Democratic shift, from backing George Bush over (Catholic) John Kerry 56-43 in 2004 to supporting Barack Obama over John McCain 53-36. There are still a lot of undecideds, but even if every last one went for McCain, it would be a reversal of major proportions. In any case, the trend casts some light on some doings inside The Church.

There's that oddity in the Knights of Columbus poll of Catholics, suggesting (to me at least) a decision not to publish the response to a question about whether respondents would vote for pro-choice candidate. And the letter recently sent to diocesan schools by the Archdiocese of Hartford telling teachers not to hold any mock elections this year. (God forbid someone write a story in the Courant about how the students at Our Lady of Aetna voted 8-1 for Obama.) This sort of thing amounts to bishops sticking their fingers in their ears and going la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

Then there's the hysterical reaction of some prelates and their intellectual epigones to the defection of prominent pro-life Catholics to the Democratic side. For example, Paterson Bishop Arthur Serratelli's current pastoral letter identifying Obama with King Herod (executioner of John the Baptist). And (as David Gibson notes), Greensburg Bishop Lawrence E. Brandt's effort to get Obama-supporting pro-life law professor Douglas Kmiec disinvited from speaking at Seton Hill University. Not to mention Bill Donohue's denunciation of the progressive Catholic groups Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United as "apologists for abortion rights." (Here's Rocco Palmo's roundup.)

But nothing better captures the mood better than the uninvited appearance of Scranton Bishop Joseph Martino at a forum on the election at which panelists of different persuasions were discussing how Catholics might vote. Taking umbrage at the repeated mention of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' 2007 statement on "faithful citizenship" without any notice of his own pronunciamento on the subject, he set the assemblage straight:

“No USCCB document is relevant in this diocese,” said Martino. “The USCCB doesn’t speak for me.”
“The only relevant document ... is my letter,” he said. “There is one teacher in this diocese, and these points are not debatable.”

Meanwhile, abortion ranks well down on its list of the concerns of rank-and-file Catholics, and the social scientific evidence is that a politician's position on the life issues makes no difference to them. For those interested in an overview of the so-called Catholic vote then and now, you can check out the lead article by Andrew Walsh and me in America's the latest issue. Bottom line: The Catholics are voting Democratic this year, whether their bishops like it or not.

Mark Noll makes the point (In our edited volume, Religion and Public Life in the Midwest), that there's an underlying Methodist ethos in the Midwest, and in 2006 it was on display in the Ohio gubernatorial race, where sometime Methodist pastor and congressman Ted Strickland beat the pants off Ken Blackwell, paladin of the religious right in the Buckeye State. This year a replay is shaping up in Minnesota's sixth congressional district, where former Methodist pastor (and subsequent state transportation commissioner) Elwyn Tinkenberg has, according to a new SUSA poll, just pulled ahead of Christian conservative Michele Bachman, whose recent neo-McCarthyite call for a media investigation of unAmericanism in Congress on Hardball succeeded in raising $1million or so for her opponent. Come to think of it, McCarthyism has Midwestern antecedents too. El v. Michelle. Be there.

A few lines from my friend, the Last Democrat in Her Suburban Atlanta Church:

My observation is that the Republican church folks are worried that Obama may win, so they are working like crazy to get out the evangelical vote. Those of us who disagree and lean Democratic are working like crazy to get out the vote (all across the spectrum regardless of religion!) for our team. Georgia could just shock the nation on election night 11/4 in the presidential race.

Steve Waldman's got a useful post trying to make sense of Barna's new poll showing evangelicals splitting evenly between Obama and McCain. OMG. Barna's so idiosyncratic in the way he defines evangelicals--a narrow, theologically defined screen--that comparing him to other pollsters is like comparing a kumquat to a watermelon. And even taking that into account, I don't trust his results very much: He's always pushing an "evangelicals as backsliders" line, and this is of a piece with that. Still and all, comparing his kumquats, there does seem to be some kind of evangelical shift Obamawards. The way to look at this, as at the better documented Obama shifts among other religious groups, is not that the junior senator from Illinois has suddenly found the way into faithful hearts. It's that he's picking up votes across the board because of the economy, his temperament, and other secular reasons. Some of that shift is coming from parts of religious communities that he wasn't winning before--across the board, from frequent worship attenders. Some groups are harder to move than others--Jews on the Democratic side and, in the Republican camp, Mormons above all. Their partisan identification is very, very strong. In recent elections, white evangelicals have identified almost as strongly with the GOP, so if they do shift in significant numbers, no doubt about it, it's a big story. We'll see.

Update: Today's Times/CBS poll, which has Obama holding a 13 point lead, identifies evangelicals in the usual way ("Do you consider yourself a born-again or evangelical Christian?"), and finds that white evangelicals are supporting McCain 63-25, whereas they supported Bush over Kerry in 2004 78-22. What that suggests is that while Obama has not won many, a substantial number of them--12 percent--are still on the fence. Should they break strongly for Obama, such that the final margin was, say, 67-33, we'd have a real story.

Gallup has a new survey showing Jewish voters breaking for Obama 74 percent to 22 percent. That's Gore-Kerry territory. And contrary to the fears of Sarah Silverman et al., the Alte Kakers are more pro-Obama (74-19 among those 55 and older) than their children and grandchildren. Time for a reverse schlep?

Courtesy of 538, the Jesus Fish graph for anti-gay marriage Proposition 8.

The latest Quinnipiac polls of FL, OH, and PA show the regional bifurcation of the white evangelical vote that I've been postulating: 71-23 in FL but 63-32 in PA and 59-32 in Ohio. That Ohio number goes a ways towards explaining why Quin has Obama upby 14 in Buckeye State. The most striking news is that in FL, where Obama's ahead by five, Jews are backing him by a whopping 77-20. Oy, schleppers! As for Catholics, they love Obama in PA (55-38), in Ohio not so much (46-46). (Always bear in mind that a lot of Ohio Catholics are German Republican types in the Cincinnati area.)

You really do have a sense that the wheels came off the Straight Talk Express today. Why they'd let Palin anywhere near a public encounter with James Dobson is beyond me. So, as Ambinder makes abundantly clear, the distance between the Republican platform and what John McCain himself supports with respect to the "life" issues is now on full display. Worse than that, it's evident just how distant the "hard-core prolifer" (as Palin called herself) position embodied in the platform is from what even the likes of George W. Bush professed when running for president. So as if the $150k shopping spree and the freebies for the kids and the ongoing troopergate investigations and the continued failure to grasp the duties of vice president weren't enough, McCain may actually have to address himself directly to where he stands on the issues of moment to his so-called base. Then there was that rather cogent Al Qaeda endorsement, which left the McCain surrogates in a position of claiming that the terrorists meant the opposite of what they said, which would of course go for that Hamas endorsement of Obama as well. Bye bye, that talking point. Meanwhile, as the stock market continues to tank and gas prices slip down to a point where "drill, baby, drill" seems like yesterday's news, Obama's stock was back on the rise. Altogether, it was the story of John and Sarah's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.

Here's the Crunchy Con a month and a half ago:

If the GOP was the party only of Mitt Romney, of Rudy Giuliani, of George W. Bush and, indeed, of John McCain, who could blame disillusioned conservatives for sitting out this race? The Republicans deserve to lose this year.

But now we know that it's also the party of Sarah Palin, the kind of conservative that Barack Obama pitied earlier this year as "clinging" to her God, her guns and her traditions because she doesn't know any better. In her convention speech, Ms. Palin threw his condescension back in his face.

She's a fighter, this one. And worth fighting for. Come what may in November, we now know what the future of the GOP and the conservative movement looks like.

Palin chats with Dobson. GOP Platform Good. MSM Bad. Dobson reports a morning conference call with lots of people praying "for a miracle with regard to the election this year." He's been reading the polls.

A couple of days ago, Matt Sutton (a young American religious historian who's knows from American Pentecostalism) argued on the History News Network that, whatever reasons one might have for being concerned about Sarah Palin in high national office, her religion should not be one of them. (He assumes, by the way, that she is in fact a prophecy believing, speaking-in-tongues Pentecostal.)

If Palin’s beliefs are cause for alarm, then we should never have elected John F. Kennedy. After all, the Roman Catholic Church of 1960 wanted to bring down the wall of separation between church and state. Shouldn’t we have kept him out of the White House?

And what about Barack Obama? This guy should make the average American tremble. After all, he is very serious about the social ethics of the New Testament, especially Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Doesn’t that mean that if terrorists attack the United States, Obama will ask us to love our enemies as ourselves and to turn the other cheek?

How about Joe Biden? The Catholic Church forbids the use of contraceptives. If we elect him, isn’t he going to take away all of our condoms? Is the Vatican going to be writing the sex-ed curriculum for our schools?

No, no, and no. Obama is not going to turn the other cheek, Biden will not outlaw contraception, and Palin is not going to call down the Apocalypse. These men and women are politicians, not preachers, and they are certainly not prophets. Each has a serious and abiding faith. But it is one that has been deeply influenced by American civil religion—that mealy-mouthed creed of God (but not too much God) and country that has been the hallmark of our leaders since George Washington. The one thing that we can always count on is that our politicians never take their faiths too seriously. If they did they wouldn’t be able to stomach the world of American politics.

I certainly don't think a Pentecostal who accepts the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including the gift of tongues, should therefore be disqualified from holding public office. But I fail to see why there is no reason to be concerned about the conduct of foreign policy--particularly with respect to the Middle East--on the part of a president who makes a practice of scrutinizing the signs of the times for indications of a coming Tribulation. Prophecy belief really has affected American evangelicals' views on, for example, the establishment of the State of Israel. It seems to me contemptuous of all politicians' faith to wave away such beliefs as so much spiritual window dressing. If Sarah Palin's faith has led her to oppose abortion and same-sex marriage, why is it out of bounds to suppose--and be concerned about--how she looks at the world?

Here are the religion cross tabs from Pew's latest, which shows the biggest lead Obama's ever had: 14 points. (Too big a margin, perhaps, but the sample was a huge 2,600 and cell phones as well as land lines were surveyed.)

The points of major note:

1. Mainline Protestants and White Catholics have flipped by large margins from McCain to Obama.
2. The God Gap has shrunk from 18 to 6 points among frequent attenders, while ballooning to 26 points among the less frequent.
3. White evangelicals are hanging tight with McCain (-Palin).

Not to be outdone by the Jews, the Greeks have come up with a less genteel take.

Glossary:
mavro = black guy
malaka = limp dick

The poll of Latino Protestants released last week by Faith in Public Life showed the biggest see-saw I've ever seen by a faith community in presidential preference: from 68-32 for Gore in 2000 to 63-37 for Bush in 2004 to 50.4 to 33.6 for Obama now. The authors properly point to anti-immigrant hostility that took over the Republican Party.in 2006 as a major cause for the shift back to the Democrats. In this regard, it's worth noting that (as John Green informs me) Latino Protestants in that year preferred Democrats running for Congress to Republicans by 53.2 percent to 46.8 percent. Thanks, in short, to Dobbsian ideology, Republicans managed to kick away a significant religious constituency that George Bush had enlisted powerfully on their side.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, John McCain ran a very different kind of campaign. Take a look.

Mike Huckabee is circulating a petition supporting "the sanctity of life" and hopes to have 100,000 signatures by election day.

Bill Donohue believes he's caught Joe Biden in a logical contradiction. As the press release from the Catholic League intones:

On today’s episode of “Ellen,” Joe Biden told Ellen DeGeneres “that if I lived in California, I would vote against Proposition 8.” This initiative reads, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Yet in his debate with Sarah Palin on October 2, Biden said that “Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue weighed in on this today:

“Proposition 8 is a civil initiative that would secure marriage as an institution that is exclusively between a man and a woman, and Joe Biden told Ellen DeGeneres that he is opposed to that measure. In other words, Biden did not tell the truth in his debate with Sarah Palin. He cannot logically be opposed to both gay marriage and Proposition 8, but that is exactly what he is trying to get away with. More important, Biden is openly defying both the pope and the bishops.

Too cute? Of course. Let Biden clarify. And what about those pesky Catholic hierarchs? Before they go after his hypothetical Prop. 8 vote, maybe they first should excommunicate half the Massachusetts legislature--all those Catholic elected officials who a couple of years ago actually voted in favor of keeping gay marriage on the books of the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, when are the hierarchs of the Internal Revenue Service going to recognize Donohue's partisanship politicking for what it is and lift the Catholic League's 501 (c) 3 tax deduction?

Beleifnet comments on Colin Powell's criticism of rumors that have spread around senior members of the GOP calling Obama a Muslim, as if his allegiance would be to something other than America's best interest, if the rumors were even true. On Meet the Press Powell said yesterday, "This is not the way we should be doing it in America."
In another related article the God-O-Meter covers the "widening chasm in the GOP between religious conservatives and the traditional party establishment" with the latest addition of Powell's dissolution with Palin, saying that her succession would move the GOP even further to the right than it already is. This doesn't sit well with Powell who says: "I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that's what we'd be looking at in a McCain administration."

ABC has an interview in which Florida Democratic Senator Tim Mahoney comes clean about the truth of his extra-marital affairs and his attempts to cover them up. While his honesty and self-reproach appeals to the, "I'm only human, I make mistakes" defense, his admission surely dissolves the family values platform on which he ran during his campaign. He absolves himself from violating campaign finance laws to pay off Patricia Allen answering. : [I] couldn't have, because they [the $120,000 total] came out of my personal bank account." This cuts him a little slack as far as impeachment is concerned, but ultimately we will have to wait to see just how betrayed his constituents feel or how "fair" they really are.

Brody got his 20 minutes with Sarah Palin, and this is the best he could do?

Brody: There have been some shots taken at you…regarding your Christian faith…The Pentecostal stuff, the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Do you want to clear up exactly what you believe in and so that the record can be set straight a little bit? Because there have been some editorials and others taking shots at you regarding --

Palin: Yeah, and I think the saddest part of that is that faith, not just my faith, faith and God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart and that is unfair for others who share a faith in God and chose to worship our Lord in whatever private manner that they deem fit and my faith has always been pretty personal. I haven't really worn it on my sleeve. I haven't been out there preaching it. I've always been of the mind that you walk the walk. You just don't have to be talking the talk about your beliefs, so just wanting maybe my life to be able to reflect my faith.

C'mon, David.

A big new study by Steven Cohen et al. suggests that Jews will be voting for Obama by something like the hefty margins that they support most Democratic presidential candidates. The survey of nearly 1,600 was done right after the Republican convention, when the race was even among white voters generally. Throwing out the undecideds, Jews broke 67-33 for Obama. Given that Obama has pulled ahead since then, the authors estimate that the Jewish vote will end up being 75-25 for Obama. That's in the territory of Kerry-Bush (76-24) and Gore-Bush (79-19). To me it seems a little high, but after the Great Schlep, who knows?

Besides the numbers, the authors have a couple of important analytic points to make. First, while those Jewish voters who rate Israel tend more toward McCain, Israel ranks in the top three issues for only 15 percent of them. And second, the reason why Jewish voters prefer Democrats so strongly is that they are, well, strong Democrats. That is to say, when you do the regressions, party loyalty is the key factor explaining (to the tune of 80 percent) why Jews are supporting Obama. (As opposed to income, education, policy preferences, etc.) Other white voters who identify with the Democratic party are almost as likely as Jews to prefer Obama. This does not, of course, explain why Jews should continue to identify so much more strongly as Democrats than other whites. This, I believe, has something to do with the extent to which the GOP has connected itself to the religious right. But there's no regression analysis to show that here.

So should it come as a surprise that, as reporteth Jane Mayer, some of that very conservative punditocracy that is now dissing Sarah Palin and her running mate for choosing her should have been part of the vetting party that pushed her into John McCain's arms? Nah. For all the pious chatter about readiness for the job, vice presidential selections are usually about electoral calculation, and what the cruising cons--neo, paleo, and pseudo--saw was a pretty face who could pray with the best of them:

Before the meal, Palin delivered a lengthy grace. Simpson, who was at the luncheon, said, “I told a girlfriend afterwards, ‘That was some grace!’ It really set the tone.” Joe Balash, Palin’s assistant, who was also present, said, “There are not many politicians who will say grace with the conviction of faith she has. It’s a daily part of her life.”

Here's what Teddy Roosevelt had to say about it, in his famous "New Nationalism" speech of 1910.

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of service rendered--not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective--a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

In his Meet the Press endorsement of Barack Obama, Colin Powell became the latest Republican wise head to jump the McCain-Palin ship. Powell cited various factors in his decision, but the most important was what he characterized as his party's shift to the right, as emblemized by his old buddy John McCain's choice of That Woman. I'm inclined to think that this reflects a kind of time warp on Powell's part, as if the party of his youth, of Eisenhower and Rockefeller, has really survived amidst the politics of Atwater and Rove. His defection is, in any event, of a piece with the Betrayal of the Republican Clerks, outlined by Patricia Cohen in today's NYT Week in Review, which usefully contrasts this defecting class with the party rank and file, using Rice University political scientist Alan Matusow as academic expert.

Even as some within the Republican camp — including those who support Mr. McCain — have warned of substantial disaffection among party members and seem girded for a disappointing loss on Nov. 4, others insist that the despair is premature. This, in turn, may point to yet another emerging schism on the right — between rank-and-file conservatives and the movement’s own “media elite.”

“The migration or desertion of the intellectuals does not reflect the base,” said Mr. Matusow.

Charlie Savage reports in today's NYT that the Justice Department has posted on its website a fabled but hitherto secret memo permitting religiously based hiring discrimination on the part of an evangelical organization that received a $1.5 million grant to help at-risk youth. This question lies at the heart of the contention over the president's faith-based initiative. By permitting World Vision to hire only its own religious kind with public money, the administration did by fiat what Congress refused to let it do legislatively. The memo relies on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), passed by Congress to reverse the Supreme Court's Smith decision, which limited the rights of those seeking constitutional protection for religious free exercise. The Court overturned RFRA with respect to the states, but it still applies to actions by the federal government. I'll leave it to the lawyers to sort out the details, but the nub of the matter is disclosed in following paragraph from a defense of faith-based hiring by Carl Esbeck, the law professor who deserves to be considered the intellectual father of Charitable Choice.

RFRA protects religious practices from substantial burdens that are imposed by the federal government. Religious charities have an interest in maintaining their religious character, and that character in turn is modeled to the poor and needy through its employees. The White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives published a booklet in June 2003 arguing that secular organizations receiving government grants freely hire based on their core mission, such as Planned Parenthood requiring that employees be pro-choice or Sierra Club asking applicants their view of global warming. Religious groups likewise cannot remain true to their founding purposes unless employees are aligned with the energizing core of the mission.

World Vision states that it has done so in order to “maintain [its] identity and strength, which [are] at the core of [its] success,” id. at 3, and because it “can only remain true to [its] vision if [it] ha[s] the freedom to select like-minded staff, which includes staffing on a religious basis.” Sept. 23 Letter at 1. World Vision states that the work of the Vision Youth program is “very staff intensive.” Id. at 2. Its staff—all of whom “share a faith, passion and commitment to [World Vision’s] mission”—works closely with local volunteers and churches to meet the needs of at-risk youth. Id.2

The Danville paper has an editorial today reviewing the circumstances surrounding Rep. Virgil Goode's being listed in the credits at the end of Eden's Curve, a gay coming-of-age film being described in some quarters as gay porn. It's not entirely clear what the point of the editorial is; you can try to figure it out for yourself. But leaving that aside, it seems probable that Goode, whom the paper describes as "one of the least gay-friendly members of Congress," is nowhere near as gay unfriendly as he holds himself out to be. As the Mark Foley affair made clear, there is no shortage of conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill who happily play the gay card on the stump even as they employ gay staffers and extend to their "lifestyle" the respect that it deserves. This has its antecedents in the readiness of some old time Southern politicians to play the race card for all it was worth but always with a wink and a nod to their black constituents--and, in some cases, family members. Remember Strom Thurmond? La Rochefoucauld famously called hypocrisy the tribute vice pays to virtue, but in these cases, it's more like the tribute virtue pays, in places like Virginia's fifth congressional district, to vice.

Ambinder has gotten hold of a memo from Obama's South Carolina Faith Team that, he thinks, is close to crossing the church-state separation line. It's got an endorsement letter from Rep. James Clyburne. It says Obama's people will be reading the stuff every Sunday and sharing with others. It says nothing about pastors doing endorsements from the pulpits. So yes, the campaign is working the faith-based crowd. But putting churches' tax exemption in jeopardy? Not unless a pastor did something stupid.

In today's Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan puzzles over Sarah Palin:

But we have seen Mrs. Palin on the national stage for seven weeks now, and there is little sign that she has the tools, the equipment, the knowledge or the philosophical grounding one hopes for, and expects, in a holder of high office. She is a person of great ambition, but the question remains: What is the purpose of the ambition? She wants to rise, but what for? For seven weeks I've listened to her, trying to understand if she is Bushian or Reaganite—a spender, to speak briefly, whose political decisions seem untethered to a political philosophy, and whose foreign policy is shaped by a certain emotionalism, or a conservative whose principles are rooted in philosophy, and whose foreign policy leans more toward what might be called romantic realism, and that is speak truth, know America, be America, move diplomatically, respect public opinion, and move within an awareness and appreciation of reality.

But it's unclear whether she is Bushian or Reaganite. She doesn't think aloud. She just . . . says things.

Answering Rick Warren's question on abortion at Saddleback last August, Barack Obama got off on the wrong foot by quipping that it was above his pay grade to determine at what point a baby gets human rights. Last night, he got another bite at that apple and there was nothing about pay grades. Most of what he had to say tracked what he said at Saddleback in policy terms. But he also managed to convey some moral conviction about the desirability of reducing the number of abortion. As in:

The last point I want to make on the issue of abortion. This is an issue that — look, it divides us. And in some ways, it may be difficult to — to reconcile the two views.

But there surely is some common ground when both those who believe in choice and those who are opposed to abortion can come together and say, “We should try to prevent unintended pregnancies by providing appropriate education to our youth, communicating that sexuality is sacred and that they should not be engaged in cavalier activity, and providing options for adoption, and helping single mothers if they want to choose to keep the baby.”

Those are all things that we put in the Democratic platform for the first time this year, and I think that’s where we can find some common ground, because nobody’s pro-abortion. I think it’s always a tragic situation.

In his response, John McCain dismissed Obama's recourse to a "health of the mother" exception as just another case of his opponent's "eloquence" (which, in his lexicon, seems to mean rhetorical flimflam):

Just again, the example of the eloquence of Sen. Obama. He’s health for the mother. You know, that’s been stretched by the pro-abortion movement in America to mean almost anything.

That’s the extreme pro-abortion position, quote, “health.” But, look, Cindy and I are adoptive parents. We know what a treasure and joy it is to have an adopted child in our lives. We’ll do everything we can to improve adoption in this country.

But that does not mean that we will cease to protect the rights of the unborn. Of course, we have to come together. Of course, we have to work together, and, of course, it’s vital that we do so and help these young women who are facing such a difficult decision, with a compassion, that we’ll help them with the adoptive services, with the courage to bring that child into this world and we’ll help take care of it.

9:03. Something we haven't heard. What could that be? The plans.
9:04. McC. Nancy in hospital. Angry, angry angry. Fannie, Freddie to blame. Homeowners first. Not country?
9:05 O. Fundamentals not good, remember John?
9:07: Joe Wurzelburger in Ohio didn't want O's tax plan. O against American Dream. McC going for Joe the Plumber's vote.
9:09. O. Joe the Plumber.
9:11. McC. Joe the Plumber. No class warfare. Joe the Plumber.
9:12. Warren Buffet pays, Joe the Plumber doesn't.
9:14. O cuts subsidies to insurance companies. Any objections? Pay now, save later.
9:16. McC back to homeownership. That's a cut? Nuclear power. Wind tide solar offshore drilling. Millions of jobs. Across the board spending freeze. First hatchet, then scalpel. Bam! Slice! Ethanol bad. No tariff on Brazil sugar ethanol. Iowa's gone anyway.
9:20. O on Bush deficits. McC is not Pres. Bush. Hatchet and scalpel.
9:22. What's up with McC's little interruptions?
9:23. McC. I got the scars to prove my disagreements.
9:25. Bad, bad campaigns. Fess up. McC. Wouldn't be bad if there were town meetings. I think we've heard that before. But I regret John Lewis. I've repudiated everything on my side. He's more negative. Public financing.
9:27. O tough is tough. Let's talk policy.
9:30. McC you're running more negative ads.
9:31. Your running mate didn't stop the shouts.
9:33. McC I'm proud of people who come to our rallies. A few bad apples. Don't attack my people.
9:34. Smirking's the answer?
9:35. Ayers! ACORN!
9:36. O's Ayers story. ACORN story.
9:39. McC We need all the facts, but not O's facts. But my campaign's not about that.
9:40. Running mates. Uh oh. O Biden the best. Knows it all, knows where he comes from. For the little guy.
9:42. McC Palin a role model and reformer. Money back to taxpayers. Fresh of Breath Air. Understand special needs.
9:44. Palin qualified to be president? O doesn't say. Biden? McC yes but he's been wrong a lot. I guess Troopergate goes by the boards.
9:47. Oil. McC Nukes. Wind Tide Solar Natural Gas Cleancoal.
9:48. O ten years the time frame. Solar Wind Biodiesal.
9:51. Drill baby drill. Colombia.
9:54. Fuel efficient cars.
9:55. Colombia again. O as Hoover again!
9:56. Health care.
9:59. McC Obesity. 5K. Joe the Plumber again. Joe doesn't want to pay O's fine.
10:00. O Small businesses exempted from having to pay into a kitty. Stick a fork in the McC health plan.
10:03. McC Joe you're rich. Huh? Benefits taxed, yes; but you'll get 5k on top of that. Senator Govt.
10:06. Abortion and the Court. McC no litmus test. I'm a federalist.
10:09. O no litmus test either. Thinks Roe rightly decided. Right to privacy is in Constitution. Fat in fire. PIvots to equal pay case. Pretty good move.
10:11. McC O very very bad on abortion. And on voting present.
10:14. O common ground on abortion. What he should have said at Saddleback.
10:15. McC The Eloquence of Obama. Eloquence bad.
10:16. Education. O big deal. More money and reform. Parents need to belly up.
10:18. Civil rights issue of the 21st century. Choice baby choice. Charter baby charter.
10:20. O Local control good, feds help. No money left behind. Charter schools good. Teacher accountability. Vouchers not so good. Somebody's got to pay for good stuff.
10:24. Autism bad. Vouch baby vouch.
10:25. McCain can't control himself.
10:27. Final Statements. McC I Am Reform.
10:28. McC Choice baby choice. Country first. McCains do that.
10:29. O Biggest risk is same old same old. Brighter days ahead. No quick and easy. Over and out.

Steve Waldman had a good post yesterday on how, for all the endless chatter about evangelicals, it's with mainline Protestants that Obama is really making hay. All I'd add directly to what he says is that mainliners have been trending in a Democratic direction for a few election cycles now--and, indeed, it does seem directly related to evangelicals. The more evangelical the GOP seems--as in the selection of Sarah Palin--the more they head in the other direction. They're kind of like Jews that way.

More generally, it does seem to me that there's been a good deal too much attention devoted to taking the partisan temperature of evangelicals this election cycle. Between the wishful thinking of an Amy Sullivan and the insistence of a Jim Wallis that yes, Virginia, there are progressive evangelicals--not to mention the decades' old liberal hope that the religious right would just go away--we've been mesmerized by the prospect of white evangelicals switching sides. Real politics means focusing on big groups that are evenly balanced, and which therefore are actually likely to swing one way or another--and that means mainliners and white Catholics. OK, and maybe evangelicals in the Midwest, some significant number of whom just might be prepared to cross party lines and vote this year for a liberal mainliner who hails from their part of country.

Followers of this blog know that we've been following the race in Virginia's fifth congressional district, where up-and-coming progressive Catholic Tom Perriello, who has his campaign workers tithing their time for community service, is trying to unseat that goodest of Virginia good ol' boys, Virgil Goode, who made a bit of a name for himself denouncing the first Muslim member of Congress a couple of years back. According to the polls, Perriello has been closing the gap--to as little as eight points (48-42) last week.

Now comes a story from that not exactly liberal rag, the Danville (Va.) Register & Bee, associating Goode with the making of what might be considered a pro-gay film called Eden's Curve. Nothing wrong with that, of course, except for maybe a little hypocrisy problem. Here's the lede:

Though he actively opposes any rights for homosexuals, a film exploring homosexuality, thanks Congressman Virgil Goode in the credits.
A 2003 film that has been described as a gay coming of age story at a posh Virginia college involves Goode’s press secretary Linwood Duncan and Jerry Meadors, director of a project Goode has supported with Federal dollars in the past. In the closing credits, the film thanks Goode himself.

In 2003, the same year the movie was produced, Congressman Goode earmarked $150,000 Federal taxpayer dollars to Danville’s North Theater, where Meadors serves as artistic director.
The Danville Register & Bee at the time questioned Goode’s perceived favoritism with these projects because Duncan and Goode’s wife Lucy are both on the board of the North Theater
In 2003, Duncan told the Register & Bee he didn’t see any conflict with the earmarked dollars. “I don’t even know how a question of a conflict even arises,” he said.

We've got Values Voting. What about Ethics Voting? Sure, the economy is melting down and the conviction is taking hold that Obama is a lock for November 4. But doesn't it still matter that an official investigation found that John McCain's running mate violated state ethics law by using her gubernatorial office to pursue a family vendetta? If Bob Schieffer does not raise the issue tonight, it will be a disgrace.

What's the big question that's raised about Catholic voters and abortion? That's easy. It's whether it's permissible to vote for a candidate who is pro-choice. Some bishops all but say no. The position of the U.S. bishops conference is more nuanced. When a prominent conservative like Douglas Kmiec argues that a vote for Barack Obama is warranted despite his pro-choice views, he is greeted with a storm of protest. So under the circumstances, you'd think that the Knights of Columbus, in their massive new survey of Catholic opinion, would pop a question like this: "Would you definitely vote for, vote for but with reservations, or would you definitely not vote for a candidate who supports a woman's right to have an abortion?"

And actually, I believe that Marist, which conducted the poll, did ask such a question. But in the detailed report of the survey results here's what we're told the question was: "Would you definitely vote for, vote for but with reservations, or would you definitely not vote for a candidate who would do each of the following: a candidate who would maintain that life begins at conception?" That's it. We learn, not very surprisingly, that 14 percent of practicing Catholics and 29 percent of non-practicing (attend church less than once a month) Catholics would not vote for a life-begins-at-conception candidate. But what about the other items promised by the phrase "each of the following"? I'll bet this week's salary that the results were such as the Knights didn't want to report--like, that a very large proportion of even practicing Catholics are prepared, despite reservations, to vote for pro-choice candidates. That, of course, would have been the headline of every story about the survey, which is otherwise not very interesting.

I could be wrong, of course. Hey Marist, what's the deal?

If you believe the new NYT/CBS poll, then in accounting for his 14-point national lead, Obama has, in only a week, cut McCain's lead among white evangelicals from 55 points (75-20) to 36 (63-27). At that rate, he would pick up a good 30 percent of their vote come November 4--outperforming both Gore and Kerry. On the other hand, the new LAT/Bloomberg poll, which has Obama up by 11, has white evangelicals supporting McCain 69-20, which is more like the usual margin, so who knows?

Appears to be working.

Quinnipiac's latest on CO, MI, MN, and WI disclose a few salient points on religious voting blocs.
1. In Michigan, where all Catholics barely split for Kerry 50-49, white Catholics are now backing Obama 55-37. Meanwhile, white evangelicals have gone from supporting Bush 2004 76-24, to preferring McCain 58-32. No wonder McCain kissed the state goodbye.
2. White evangelicals in Dobsonland are hard core. In Colorado they went 74-26 for Bush in 2004. Now they back McCain 78-18.
3. White evangelicals in MN and WI go for McCain 65-29 and 57-38 respectively. All told, Midwestern evangelicals do seem to be softening up for the GOP.

CT Gov. Jodi Rell can relax. Here in the Land of Steady Habits, the populace supports its Supreme Court's ruling on gay marriage. Rell thought we didn't, but we do. Maybe she was just thinking of her fellow Republicans, who don't. But they're more or less a dying breed in this state. Everyone else does--Democrats by 3-1, Independents by 52-44--just a little less than than the overall 53-42 margin. All this courtesy of a weekend poll by UConn's Center for Survey Research and Analysis.

It's worth noting that the survey results mirror last week's 4-3 ruling, suggesting that, like other American appellate courts in other times and places, the Connecticut Supreme Court is better attuned to public opinion than critics of Legislating From The Bench tend to claim. As for the presidential campaigns, the rest of the country, whatever is (as the Hartford Courant now says) Beyond CT, the news seems to have hit with all the force of a zephyr on a summer's day. Nice.

I've been looking at the crosstabs (premium access, I'm afraid) for yesterday's Rasmussen polls of five battleground states won by Bush in 2004 (VA, FL, OH, MO, and NC), and the news about religious blocs is this. Catholics in the South have shifted significantly toward Obama, most importantly in Florida, where Obama has turned what was a three-point deficit for Kerry into a 15-point advantage. And white evangelicals in Ohio, who backed Bush in 2004 by 75-25, now prefer McCain by only 65-33. If they had voted that way four years ago, Kerry would have carried Ohio by over 100,000 votes and been president for the past four years. Likewise with the Catholics in Florida, by a few hundred thousand votes.

SUSA's new Missouri poll has Obama up by eight points, 51-43. That's a 13-point turnaround from SUSA's end-of-July poll, when McCain led 49-44. Looking at worship attendance, Obama improved his standing with all SUSA categories--regular and occasional attenders, and those who almost never darken a house of worship's door. But not at the same rate. The swing with the regulars was 13 points; with occasionals, 11 points; and with the almost nevers, 20. In short, Obama has done best with the folks most likely to vote his way most everywhere--but who, in Missouri, in July, were a bit less inclined toward him than the occasional attenders. For what it's worth.

While we're on the subject of Catholics, here's some late breaking data from our new American Religious Identification Survey--ARIS 2008. Since the 2001 ARIS, the gap between Catholics who prefer Democrats and those who prefer Republicans has nearly doubled, from eight to 15 points. Overall, Catholics are essentially tracking national trends, just a few points more on the Democratic side.

Actually, there are three data points available, beginning with the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identity (NSRI). All three surveys are based on very large samples--120,000 for NSRI, 60,000 for ARIS 2001, and ARIS 2008 still in the field at 42,000 and counting. So here's the way it looks over the three surveys:

For all adults, it's Republicans 30-31-25; Democrats 34-31-34.
For adult Catholics, it's Republicans 27-28-24; Democrats 38-36-39.

I just heard Cokie Roberts on Morning Edition claiming that the only bright spot in the polls for McCain is white Catholics, who, she said, according to the latest ABC (WaPo) poll favor him by 11 points. I can't verify this, since the version of the poll published in WaPo doesn't provide that crosstab. As noted below, the almost simultaneous Newsweek poll, which shows Obama ahead by 11 (as opposed to ABC/WaPo's 10), has white Catholics breaking for Obama by a single point. So go figure.

Update: Irish Americans for Obama Biden--a relevant blog.

Further update: OK, here's the ABC crosstab--showing McCain up a full 13 points among white Catholics. And leading 70-26 among white evangelicals. Both margins seem too large to me.

Last week it was take the gloves off. This week it's put the gloves on. How about: Start praying.

Check out Rabbi Schweitzer's collection.

Last Thursday at a GOP rally in Waukesha, WI, McCain said that, on the issue of abortion, "Sen. Obama has a clear radical, far-left, pro-abortion record." Yesterday, Palin at a rally in Johnstown, PA, continued with this line of criticism, proclaiming that she and McCain will be "defenders of the culture of life" and slamming Obama with a multitude of comments like, "In short, Sen. Obama is a politician who has long since left behind even the middle ground on the issue of life. He's fighting with those who won't protect a child born alive."

Palin approved her own character by reference to her commitment to birthing her down syndrome child, Trig: "As for our beautiful baby boy, for Todd and me, he is only more precious because he is vulnerable."
"Yes, every innocent life matters. Everyone belongs in the circle of protection. Every child has something to contribute to the world, if we give them that chance. There are the world’s standards of perfection … and then there are God’s, and these are the final measure. Every child is beautiful before God, and dear to Him for their own sake."

Brody provides an extensive transcript of Palin's pro-life/anti-Obama comments here.

Yesterday, Rev. Arnold Conrad, past pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport, Iowa, prayed the following at a McCain rally in Davenport:

I would also pray, Lord, that your reputation is involved in all that happens between now and November, because there are millions of people around this world praying to their god - whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah - that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons.

And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day.

While we understand the important role that faith plays in informing the votes of Iowans, questions about the religious background of the candidates only serve to distract from the real questions in this race about Barack Obama’s judgment, policies and readiness to lead as commander in chief.

But it's fair to say that the McCain campaign got the point: namely, that the pastor was implying that, notwithstanding his claims to be a Christian, Obama is really one of those paynim; and that he is their standard bearer against the Christians in this campaign. The Evangelical Free Church of America is a small premillenialist denomination that makes no bones about dividing the world into sheep and goats. How many other Americans share the pastor's views?

Well, you've got Rev. Robert Jeffress of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, who recently told religion newswriters (i.e. he was not just speaking in church):

I believe we should always support a Christian over a non-Christian. The value of electing a Christian goes beyond public policies....Christians are uniquely favored by God, [while] Mormons, Hindus and Muslims worship a false god. The eternal consequences outweigh political ones. It is worse to legitimize a faith that would lead people to a separation from God.

Because of his name, because of his antecedents, because of his color, and because of hate-mongering, Barack Obama has ratcheted up the faith-based anxieties of an undetermined, but not insignificant number of, let's call them Judeo-Christian Americans. There's a lot of ugly stuff out there, and it violates the spirit of the Constitution's ban on religious tests for office. It would be nice if the McCain campaign took the next step and came out forthrightly and said so.

New Newsweek poll, showing Obama ahead by 11, has Obama up by a point among white Catholics, 48-47. Bear in mind that Bush carried white Catholics 52-45 in 2000 and 56-43 in 2004. It appears to be time to retire the idea that Obama has a white Catholic problem.

Iowans definitely seem to be in Barack Obama's camp--by 54-41, according to the latest SUSA poll. On abortion, Iowans split 53 percent pro-choice versus 45 percent pro-life. But whereas one-third of the pro-lifers prefer Obama, less than one-quarter of pro-choicers prefer McCain.

My state of Connecticut, source of some of the most important First Amendment cases in American jurisprudence, is now the source of another: Kerrigan, under which the State Supreme Court determined that that state's ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution's equal protection clause. Never before has a final appellate ruling come right out and said that.

GoM suggests that the McCain-Palin ticket is not well situated to respond to the ruling, squeezed between its own federalist inclination to leave same-same marriage to the states and its need to keep the religious right in enthusiasm mode. My guess it that there will be a boilerplate denunciation of the ruling as a usurpation of popular sovereignty and that will be that--at least for general public consumption. Whatever the case, on November 4 we will not be seeing the kind of "moral values" voting that we saw four years ago.

Meanwhile, in a lament over the implications of the decision, Rod ("Crunchy Con") Dreher cites Marc Stern's worries that in the process of recognizing same-sex marriage, courts and legislatures will trample on the rights of religious citizens and bodies to conduct their affairs according to their own lights. It's worth emphasizing (as Dreher does not), that Stern, general counsel for the American Jewish Congress, actually thinks there's a compelling case for same-sex marriage. As he put it in an LAT op-ed last summer:

The case for same-sex marriage, reduced to its essentials, is an attractive one. It is that the government in a liberal democracy ought not to impose any one moral vision on its citizens; moral decisions ought to be, as much as possible, a matter of private choice and not law.

The new issue of Religion in the News is now online. My editor's column deals with region and the campaign but otherwise, we've taken a break from electoral politics. Particularly worthy of note is Ron Kiener's cover story on Agriprocessors, the kosher meatpacking plant raided by the feds, and Gene Gallaher's article on the Fundamentalist Mormon compound raided by the Texans. Andrew Walsh's account of the twilight of the religion beat is must reading for all who care about such things. Tomorrow I'll be down in Washington for the religious freedom conference, so enjoy!

Robert Thurman of Columbia University has his own grievance with Palin's Religion. In his mind, what sets the Palin-Muthee connection apart from that of Obama and Wright is that she has gone beyond association and incorporated church teachings into her political addresses and policies. From this he intuits that Pailn might well make life changing decisions for Americans (like a nuclear fallout, for instance) based on "avowedly non-rational religious beliefs."

In response to why journalists are not questioning Palin on her faith he posits: "Journalists are wrongly held back by thinking that this would violate some sort of privacy boundary, which boundary is a vestige of the previously long-respected conventional notion that church and state should be kept apart in American public life. But this boundary is violated by candidates being chosen not for their qualifications and competencies, but precisely for their extremist religious beliefs, under the reasoning that they will mobilize support from a 'base' that shares those beliefs."

And for those of you not observing Yom Kippur, take a look at "The Young and the Faithful," a new survey released today by Faith in Public Life. Among the notable findings: Young evangelicals don't seem to be swept away by Obama. Young Catholics are. and young Catholics are way liberal. Bear in mind that the survey was taken during what may turn out to have been the McCain campaign's high water mark. A pre-debate snapshot.

It's the 10th anniversary of the International Religious Freedom Act, and on Friday I'll be participating in a day-long panel at Georgetown University discussing what is one of the lesser known but more consequential accomplishments of the Clinton era with respect to religion in public life. Those of you in the D.C. area might want to check it out:

THE FUTURE OF U.S. INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM POLICY:
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION

October 10, 2008 |
8:45-3:45
Copley Formal Lounge, Georgetown University

I think we all can stipulate this. Sarah Palin's religious identity has been a major, if not the major, source of both the enthusiasm and the antipathy that she's generated. The evangelical base of the Republican Party recognizes her as one of its own. The secularist base of the Democratic Party recognizes her as the religious right made vice presidential flesh. And so, in an era when candidates for national office are expected to sit down and chat about how their religious backgrounds shape their worldviews and public service, why have none of the handful of journalistic interlocutors who've gotten a whack at her ventured into this territory?

At the moment, there's some Jewish unhappiness, including in the higher reaches of Jewish Republicanism, about Palin's lack of responsiveness in addressing the "Jews for Jesus" question that arose when it emerged that she had been in the congregation when that organization's head showed up and declared that Palestinian violence against Israelis was God's judgment on the Israelis for not having embraced Jesus.

While a spokesman for Palin has said that the Republican running mate rejects this view, the McCain-Palin campaign has declined to say whether she shares her pastor’s general support for Jews for Jesus -- a group that Jewish organizations accuse of using deceptive tactics because it tells people they can embrace Jesus and still remain true to Judaism.

Asked this week whether the Alaska governor would condemn the missionary group, McCain-Palin campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb told JTA that “vice-presidential candidates cannot be in the business of condemning religious groups who do not commit violence” in a country that guarantees "freedom of religion."

Goldfarb added that it is “extremely inappropriate for any elected official” to comment “on any religious group” and its mission. “That's a fundamental breach of the separation of church and state,” he said.

There are, of course, any number of faith-based questions to be tossed in Palin's direction. But the general expectation is that she is not going to be engaging in any more tetes-a-tete with MSM types until Nov. 5 or thereabouts. And so, like the prisoners in Plato's cave, we seem to be condemned to knowing little more of Palin's faith than the shadows cast on the wall in front of us by the flickering light of YouTube.

He is that one!

9:02. A long list of excellent question, if I do say so myself.
9:03. Smiley faces.
9:08. Warren Buffet as Secy of Treasury! Or maybe Meg Whitman could auction off all those bad mortgages on EBay!
9:15. You love Fannie. No you love Fannie.
9:17. I wrote a letter. No I wrote a letter.
9:20. Blame to go around, but the GOP deserves a lot more.
9:21. OMG McC mentioned campaign finance reform!
9:23. McC won't do priorities. He will reach across the aisle to Joe Lieberman. The bus aisle?
9:25. O will prioritize. Energy, health care, education.
9:28. Sacrifices? Will McC name something to eliminate? Something in defense, unspecified. And earmarks, even good ones! Especially O's Chicago projector. That's the one specific.
9:30. When the going gets tough, the tough don't go shopping? Energy conservation at home. That's a species of sacrifice. Service.
9:33. More sacrificing from O.
9:35. O as Herbert Hoover--wow.
9:40. Social security not that tough. Medicare needs a commission.
9:43. I'm green. Nuclear power is the greenest. Hey, Nevada!
9:45. Not just nuclear, say O.
9:49. Drill, baby, drill.
9:51. Uh-oh. The Chamber of Commerce doesn't like McC's health care plan.
9:53. Will McC admit that he will tax health benefits? Kinda. Choice, baby, choice.
9:55. McC won't say health care is a right. It's a responsibility--of someone.
9:56. O says it should be a right. You will have to get your children insured. Whomps McC with the dereg stick.
9:59. Force for Good. That's US. I think he's serving O a softball.
10:01. Yes. $700B already in Iraq, which we didn't need to.
10:04. Obama Doctrine? Moral imperatives count, not just security interests. But limited resources. So it's working with others.
10:06. When I hear "My Friends," I reach for my gun. McCain doctrine? Bringing troops home with victory and honor.
10:08. Pakistan, here we come? Yes, if we can get Osama.
10:11. McC will too, but won't announce it. LIke during this debate. Work with the rough trade in Waziristan.
10:13. O followup--McCain doesn't speak softly. Kinda true, Barbara Ann.
10:15. McC followup--just joking.. I'll get Osama but I won't telegraph my punches.
10:18. Surgathon, Afghani style.
10:19. No cold war redux, saith McC. Ukraine. Moral support must be forthcoming. Hope for leverage.
10:21. Russia resurgens. Evil or not. O: evil behavior. McC: maybe.
10:25. Iran attacks Israel. We wait on UN? McC no. League of Extraordinary Democracies v. Iran. Never Again. O: no Persian nukes. No military options off the table. Prevent Defense best. Direct talks ok.
10:29. The first Zen question. What don't you know, and how will you learn it? O: Zen answer: it's what the president doesn't know that will happen, and we don't know what we don't know. On to the restoration of the American dream. McC: we don't know what will happen, or where it will happen. His father was all at sea. I know tough times. Country first. Bye.

The latest poll shows Californians may be turning in favor of Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage. It is, of course, supported by the state's Catholic bishops. But then there's this priest...

My friend Doug Todd, the prizewinning religion writer for the Vancounver Sun, has been catching holy hell for blogging in a less than positive way about his gubernatorial neighbor to the north, Sarah Palin. As in:

I work closely with evangelicals, but I'm always been bothered by the way a minority of evangelicals, especially American evangelicals, overplay the persecution card. Palin seems to be one of them, as displayed by her willingness to call critics "haters." Why that kind of moralistic rebuttal?

As a somewhat amusing aside, if Americans who like Palin don't want to see Obama as their president, maybe B.C. should adopt him. A recent Ipsos-Reid poll showed 80 per cent of British Columbians would vote for him as president. Talk about overwhelming - the difference between B.C. and much of the rest of North America.

(The strange thing is that some of those British Columbians who are ready to vote for Obama must be the same ones who are planning to cast a prime minisetrial vote for Conservative Stephen Harper, an evangelical who would be closer to Palin than Obama in his theology and politics. Harper's support in B.C. is well above 35 per cent. Go figure.)

Obama's all but erased the God Gap in Pennsylvania too. But remember, this is only with respect to regular worship attenders. For the less than regular--call it the Godless Gap--the Democratic (i.e. Obama) margin is huge: nearly 30 points. So if by religion gap (a term I prefer, despite the lack of poetry) we mean the tendency of the American electorate to bifurcate between the two parties based on worship attendance, that's very much intact in the Keystone State, and everywhere else you look.

Update: Wisconsin too.

The ever-enjoyable Hartford Courant columnist Susan Campbell, who comes from so far back in the woods of southwest Missouri that even the Episcopalians handle snakes (OK, that's a joke), offers a useful little primer on fundamentalism today for a readership that for the most part has never seen it up close and personal. Her point, in so many words, is that Sarah Palin is "is no more a fundamentalist than Barack Obama is a Muslim." But while it takes one to know one, and Susan used to be one, I'm not so sure the parallel holds. Obama, who has tenuous Muslim antecedents through his father and stepfather, made a public profession of faith in a United Church of Christ church, which he attended until the events of this past Spring led him to sever his membership.

About Sarah Palin's actual religious beliefs we know precious little. By the criteria of orthodoxy laid out in the early 20th-century pamphlets,"The Fundamentals," she may be a fundamentalist. On the other hand, if you think that Pentecostals, with their focus on the works of the Holy Spirit, cannot be fundamentalists, then her more than three-decades' association with the Wasilla Assembly of God would presumably preclude her from being one. She now mostly attends, but says she does not belong to, the Wasilla Bible Church--but are there no fundamentalists in non-denominationalist Bible churches?

As a general term of opprobrium, "fundamentalist" is used today to tar hard-core believers of all sorts. But some of the latter--such as the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--wear the badge with honor. Sam Hill, the grand old man of Southern religious history, likes to distinguish fundamentalism from evangelicalism as head religion vs. heart religion. Since I've really got no idea what's in Sarah Palin's head doctrinally, or how important it is to her, on the question of her fundamentalism I'm calling myself agnostic.

Remember Mike Huckabee? A year ago he was the cynosure of the MSM, the new face of evangelical politics who wanted to do right by not-so-legal immigrants (or at least their kids) and was happy to tweak the free-market fundamentalist Club for Growth as the "Club for Greed." Now he's got got his own show on Fox and, while nominally supporting John McCain, is ramping up populist rage against the financial bailout in a way that avoids any thought that deregulation policy might have gone a bit too far. As in:

The problem, we’re told, is with the regulators. Actually, that’s not true. The problem is that you failed to regulate the regulators…Getting rid of capital gains taxes, changing the mark to market accounting rules that created some of the artificial devaluation of assets, and insuring bad loans instead of actually buying them are all ways that the situation would be addressed without such a huge risk.

The conservative Catholic group, Fidelis, put out this new video, which stresses that the most important topics in this election are anti-abortion/pro-life and anti-gay marriage/pro-(?) issues. Beliefnet reports that "Catholic churches across the country" have posted the video on their websites. The video certainly seems to have had a high production budget.

A SUSA poll of likely Virginia voters released today shows Obama up by 10 points, 53-43. I thought it might be interesting see where Obama's new votes have come from, in terms of religious attendance. And so it turned out to be. Since SUSA's late June Virginia poll, in which Obama led by only two points (49-47), the numbers for occasional attenders and those who say they almost never attend have hardly changed at all. (Obama lost one point off his margin with the occasionals, gained one with the almost nevers.) Virtually the entire change has come from a shift among regular attenders, who constitute half of Virginia's likely voters. In June, McCain was leading among them 55-42. Now Obama's better than even, 49-47.

Who are Obama's new regulars? Since June he's picked up four points worth of white voters and 21 points worth of black ones--which, given that African Americans make up just under one-fifth of Virginia voters, means about the same number of both. Which means that about half of the new regulars are white and half are African American.

Is this funny? Yes, in the following sense.

Get it?

Yesterday's NYT article by David Kirkpatrick on intra-Catholic fighting over abortion and the political campaign is a must read, but I'm not sure he's got the thing calibrated quite right. Here's the nut:

In a departure from previous elections, Democrats and liberal Catholic groups are waging a fight within the church, arguing that the Democratic Party better reflects the full spectrum of church teachings.

As Michigan goes, so goes Ohio? The big (2,262 likely voters) Columbus Dispatch Ohio poll, showing Obama up 49-42, has Buckeye Catholics flipping from 55-44 for Bush in 2004 to 49-44 for Obama. Protestants are just about where they were four years ago; unfortunately, the poll does not break out evangelicals. Jews prefer Obama 66-31--within hailing distance of the 70 percent mark I'm predicting. And note this. Among the 10 percent of Ohio voters who profess no religion, Bush dropped nine percentage points from 2000 to 2004, to 29 percent. McCain now stands 15 points below that. Other than African Americans (also 10 percent of the voting population), no voting bloc is more pro-Obama.

From today's WaPo story on Michigan, one of those shifting Midwestern evangelicals I've been talking about:

At the modern split-level house with the Obama sign: Derek Forney, age 40, an account manager for a benefits company. "What Bush and his party have failed to deliver on is inclusiveness," says Forney, an evangelical Christian who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. "I'm very interested in bringing people together. I have a young daughter. I don't want her to grow up in a divided country."

Eleanor Clift's latest Newsweek piece is "Palin Reignites the Culture War," and there's no doubt that the Alaska governor has been like catnip to both the religious right and its foes. But contrary to conventional wisdom, when it comes to party politics, the culture war has been bubbling along quite nicely, thank you. Take Tom Davis's word for it. In Peter Baker's profile of the retiring onetime GOP wundercongressman from Virginia in tomorrow's New York Times Magazine, Davis makes it clear that his own deviation from the norms of social conservatism cost him as he sought to climb the greasy leadership poll: "The party leadership has kind of signaled that since I was not a hard-core social conservative, any advancement was going to be over them, not with them.” Davis contrasts the current situation with his congressional salad days of the mid-1990s, when (he says) Speaker Gingrich and President Clinton worked together. That is not exactly the received view of that era, but in fact Gingrich is not and has never been one of the hard-core social conservatives. During his speakership they were a strong but not the controlling force in the Republican coalition (and in any case he recognized after the failed government shutdown of 1995 that it would be necessary for the GOP House leadership to work with the Democratic administration). The point, however, is that from the Lewinsky Affair until today, the social conservatives have had the whip hand in the party, and come election time have never been hesitant to use it. It isn't that Sarah Palin has brought us the culture war but the other way around.

They didn't tithe.

Palin has not had much luck with feminists at home, but her meeting with a flirtatious Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, last week has resulted in an unlikely union between a Pakistani hard-line conservative mosque and Pakistani feminists. Zadari who was more than happy to see Palin, as you can see from the above video, offered her the following compliments "You are more gorgeous than you are on [television]...Now I see why the whole of America is crazy about you...if he [Zadari's aide] insists, I might hug you."

Nice for Palin, too bad for Zadari, who now has a fatwa issued against him by Islamabad prayer leader Lal Masjid. According to Amir Mir of the Indian site DNA, Lal Masjid regarded Zadari's gestures as "indecent...filthy remarks...unbecoming of a head of state of a Muslim country." Whereas, Lal Masjid issued the fatwa because, in his eyes, he saw Zadari flirting with the enemy, Pakistani feminists are more concerned about the fact that Zadari's compliments were innapropriate for a widower and for a political setting. Time's Omar Wariach quotes a leading Pakistani woman's rights activist saying, "I feel it's absolutely shameful and a disgrace, it is against diplomatic protocol. And he is supposed to be mourning the loss of his illustrious and so-called beloved wife. Instead, he's flirting with [Palin] in public. He should apologize to her and to Pakistanis."

Does Jackie Mason have a sense of humor?

OK, I know this is above my pay grade, but why did the McCain campaign think that the recipe for Palin last night was "Let Sarah be Sarah!" rather than "Get her to act like a plausible occupant of the Oval Office"? I've no doubt, what with all the laying on of winks and the laying off of g's, that she was laying it on thick, the way George W. Bush does with the Texas drawl when he wants to stir up the down-home folks. But surely the object of this exercise was not to remind the conservative base how much they love her. Why double down on spunk and folksiness (fauxiness?) when there are wars to fight and end and the economy's going to hell in a handbasket?

A new Saint Anselm College New Hampshire poll, showing Obama up by 12 points, has him leading among Protestants by seven and among Catholics by four. No white Catholic problem for him there. The poll turned up 70 born-again/evangelical Christians, who broke 54-29 for McCain--providing some more confirmation for my hypothesis that evangelicals in the North are significantly more likely to prefer Obama than their co-religionists in Dixie.

Last night, Sarah Palin used "bless" and its cognates three times, in three distinctly different ways. From last to first:

3. "I've been there. I know what the hurts are. I know what the challenges are. And, thank God, I know what the joys are, too, of living in America. We are so blessed. And I've always been proud to be an American." This is the standard acknowledgment of God's blessings, straight out of church.

2. "You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?" This is "God bless" in the sense of "I couldn't do that in a million years."

1."And that's why Tillerson at Exxon and Mulva at ConocoPhillips, bless their hearts, they're doing what they need to do, as corporate CEOs, but they're not my biggest fans, because what I had to do up there in Alaska was to break up a monopoly up there and say, you know, the people are going to come first and we're going to make sure that we have value given to the people of Alaska with those resources." This is the classic evangelical woman's way of signaling a put-down of a third party; as in: "That Sarah, bless her heart, she couldn't tell the truth if her life depended on it."

9:05. Hear that, soccer moms?
9:10. And hockey moms?
9:14. Is it good to say you won't answer the questions?
9:26. Splitting Palin and McCain on windfall profits tax...not bad.
9:27. Palin's really really against greed. And bad guys rearing their heads.
9:30. Climate change is real, she says. Doesn't want to argue about the causes, but emphasizes cleaning up the planet. Conservation. Whatever.
9:36. Biden absolutely supports same-sex benefits as they do in Alaska. Does Palin support what her own state does? Not clear. She doesn't want to export Alaska's rules to the rest of the country. She's very very tolerant though.
9:38. They agree on gay equal rights for gays, and gay marriage! I guess.
9:42. A white flag of surrender!
9:47. Israel invoked. Back to preconditions to talk.
9:49. Women's rights!
9:50. A McCain-Palin administration! Cool!
9:54. We both love Israel!
9:56. Nuclear weapons would be the be-all and end-all!
10:06. John McCain knows what evil is.
10:09. I will drill, baby, drill in ANWR if, heaven forbid, the old guy kicks off.
10:11. Palin recycles Reagan. There she goes again.
10:16. She seems to take the Cheney line on the vice presidency--a lot of flexibility in there.
10:17. Biden not so much.
10:18. It's about my experience as an ordinary person. Oy, the city on a hill is back. A perfect idyll, or is that ideal?
10:20. John McCain "is the man we need to leave." Whoops.
10:29. She's happy to be here without the filter of the MSM.
10:32. B: May God bless all of you...and may God protect our troops.

This election season I've been struck by the fading force of gay marriage as a political rallying cry. WaPo reports today that the gay marriage ban is losing out badly in the polls even as its proponents have raised more money than the other side. John McCain got his "from conception" licks in at Saddleback, but Pastor Rick had nary a word to say on the value issue of the moment facing Golden State voters. Here's the Palin campaign dodging the issue. I don't say the religious right has folded their tent on this one, but man, it seems like they've recognized that, for the American public at large, it's rapidly turning into a loser. Since Massachusetts, Chicken Little, the sky has not fallen, and everyone knows it. What a difference four years makes.

I certainly can't complain that the Getreligionistas have ignored my little call-out, either in commenting on my earlier post or in their own purlieu. I don't think coverage of Palin's religion has been as bad as they do (though it's been far from perfect), and "not terribly open about her religious views" (as Mollie puts it) does not exactly capture the pattern of evasion that I laid out. I do agree that the primary question that should concern us is what impact, if any, a candidate's religious views might have on her conduct in office. And here, there can be little doubt that Palin, in public office, has been a movement evangelical--interested in limiting abortion, backing the teaching of creationism, looking into the possibility of removing books from the library. In the interviews she's given over the past few weeks, she's addressed these issues with, let us say, less than clarity. But then, that's always been the approach for politicians in her position: rouse the base while doing as much as you can not to scare the moderates.

Few would dispute the legitimacy of inquiring how Sarah Palin's faith affects her stands on the social issues. And I'd say that no one should be concerned about whether she prays with her arms in the air, speaks in tongues, or believes that only Bible-believing Christians are going to heaven. I confess, however, that I'm not sure what to do about a vice presidential candidate who might be a premillennial dispensationalist. Could looking at current events through a premillennialist lens, seeing developments in the Middle East or Russia as portending the End Times, affect your judgment about how to conduct foreign policy? Is it fair for us to ask Palin if she looks at the world that way? Would she tell us the truth if we did?

That said, I think it might be instructive if Gwen Ifill were to ask both candidates tonight in what ways if any their religious faith has affected their conduct in public office, and how it might do so in the future.

In case you missed this, under-30 evangelicals are more likely to prefer Obama than their over-30 coreligionists. By the same amount as it's looking like Midwestern evangelicals do. 1-2 rather than 1-3.

Today's Pew poll, which shows Obama's lead growing from two to seven points over two weeks ago, has him losing considerable ground among white Catholics, from seven to 13 points down to McCain. I don't get that. More comprehensible is Obama's turnaround among white Mainline Protestants, from 10 points down to one point up.

Today's Quinnipiac polls of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania show big margins for Obama: 51-43 in Florida, 50-42 in Ohio, and 54-39 in Pennsylvania. He trails by five points among white voters in both Florida and Ohio, but is up by four in Pennsylvania. White Catholics split for McCain 51-44 in Florida, 48-47 and 47-45 in Ohio and Pennsylvania respectively. Nothing much of note there. But the difference between the South and the North when it comes to white evangelicals is striking. McCain leads among them in Florida by the normal (for Republican candidates nationwide) 3-1 margin of 71-24. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, however, it's 2-1: 62-30 and 62-35 respectively. (By contrast, in 2004 white evangelicals in Ohio went for Bush 75-25 in Ohio, 77-23 in Georgia.) This provides some more evidence that, in contrast to the last few election cycles, the white evangelical vote is going to bifurcate--to the benefit of Obama in the swing states north of the Mason-Dixon line.

A month ago, Sarah Palin identified herself to Time as a "Bible-believing Christian" and, asked what church she attends, replied:

A non-denominational Bible church. I was baptized Catholic as a newborn and then my family started going to non-denominational churches throughout our life.

Fast forward to now. Palin tells Katie Couric she's not a member of any church, a position she reiterates in the following exchange on Hugh Hewitt's radio show yesterday:

HH: Do you think the mainstream media and the left understands your religious faith, Governor Palin?

SP: I think that there’s a lot of mocking of my personal faith, and my personal faith is very, very simple. I don’t belong to any church. I do have a strong belief in God, and I believe that I’m a heck of a lot better off putting my life in God’s hands, and saying hey, you know, guide me. What else do we have but guidance that we would seek from a Creator? That’s about as simple as it gets with my faith, and I think that there is a lot of mocking of that. And you know, so bet it, though I do have respect for those who have differing views than I do on faith, on religion. I’m not going to mock them, and I would hope that they would kind of I guess give me the same courtesy through this of not mocking a person’s faith, but maybe perhaps even trying to understand a little bit of it.

Be that as it may, however, it's nonsense to claim that she has been mocked for "putting my life in God's hands." Mockery there's been, some of it based on ignorance and anti-evangelical prejudice, but it has had to do with specific beliefs and practices that Palin is now disavowing, such as (see here) making a place for teaching creationism in the public schools. Simple avowals of trust in God do not elicit mockery in American culture, beyond the small world of Christopher Hitchens and company. Personally, I'd like to see Palin bearing true witness to her faith, and to see some of her blogospheric defenders--yo, Getreligionistas!--acknowledge that she isn't.