I think some evangelical commentators are
overinterpreting the election. No doubt it was a setback for social
conservatives.
However, this wasn’t a
referendum on social conservatism. Romney’s not a culture warrior. He’s
uncomfortable in that role. He didn’t run on the social issues. In a sense, he
ran away from them.
Had Rick Santorum or Mike
Huckabee been the nominee, that would have made it more of a
referendum on social conservatism.
But even then, it’s hard to
overestimate the superficiality of many voters. They’re driven by fads. Peer
pressure. The last thing they heard. Whether a candidate is telegenic. Whether
he projects empathy. They get their "news" from political satirists like Jon Stewart or SNL skits.
One particular issue that conservatives misjudged was Obama's appeal to women that the government should be paying for their contraceptives and abortions. We conservatives assumed that many women would not vote solely on this issue. We were wrong.
ReplyDeleteThis reality that a vast number of women care more about the government paying their contraceptives than considering the state of the economy is something we must accept. Yes, it is cultural rot and appalling. But a large portion of the electorate do not have perspective of what is important.
I think that is largely a symptom of the broader moral decline. Not fearing God in any recognizable way leads to this kind of off-balance thinking. When you do not love children much at all, how can you possibly think about having a job to take care of them more than getting free birth control so that you never have to deal with them?
DeleteI've seen reports that voter turnout was down by a significant amount. In Pennsylvania, for example, in Philadelphia and Allegheny (Pittsburgh) counties, Obama did not have as many votes here in 2012 as he did in 2008. But Romney had far fewer votes than even McCain did. It seems as if social Republicans again took a snooze because it was Romney.
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