Ponnuru on McCain
Do you agree?I got an email a few weeks ago to which I have been meaning to respond:
Now that the primaries are over, I have slowly been coming around to McCain. I’m reassured by the fact that you’ve been such a strong supporter. Here’s the stumbling block I still have, and I’d be very interested in what you make of it. McCain came out and said that he doesn’t care much about the social issues. As the author of The Party of Death, doesn’t that bother you? It bothers me. I’ll vote for him, but I’m not enthusiastic. It’s the same way I’d feel if Giuliani were the nominee.
Good question. I hope you don't mind that it has taken me so long to get back to you, and that I have added two links to your email. Short answer: McCain needs 270 electoral votes, not 270 enthusiastic electoral votes; and pro-lifers need him to veto the Freedom of Choice Act, not to veto it enthusiastically.
For a longer answer, let me draw an analogy to the civil-rights movement. (I know pro-choice folks hate this analogy, but I’m not using it here to draw a moral equivalence.) John F. Kennedy does not seem to have cared much about the issue; it was a check-the-box question for him. (Bobby Kennedy was reportedly a different story.) It would nonetheless have been a setback for the civil-rights movement if the Democrats had nominated someone who wasn’t at least nominally committed to the cause. And one reason the civil-rights movement was able to get an ally as president was that it did not insist that the president had to have an emotional attachment to the cause.
Would I prefer it if McCain brought to the life issues the passion of Sam Brownback? Sure. But a country capable of electing a Brownback president wouldn’t need him.
posted by Matt Friedeman at
10:52 AM
1 Comments:
I think this underlines the fact that Evangelical Christians are on the path to compromising with what they perceive as evil.
Most evangelicals are so hung up on the abortion thing that they are willing to let other things slide. This item for example about Cidy McCain:
"As heiress to her father's stake in Hensley & Co. of Phoenix, Cindy McCain is an executive whose worth may exceed $100 million. Her beer earnings have afforded the GOP presidential nominee a wealthy lifestyle with a private jet and vacation homes at his disposal, and her connections helped him launch his political career — even if the millions remain in her name alone. Yet the arm's-length distance between McCain and his wife's assets also has helped shield him from conflict-of-interest problems."
So if BEER helped your next president to get in the White House, that's okay?
The last time Christians tried to mix church and state some pretty ugly things happened (remember the Middle Ages?).
How far will you compromise?
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