{"id":325,"date":"2011-12-20T21:58:43","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T02:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=325"},"modified":"2011-12-20T21:58:43","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T02:58:43","slug":"political-mind-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/12\/political-mind-games.html","title":{"rendered":"Political Mind Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

During every presidential election season, Republican commentators can be counted upon to do three things.\u00a0 First, they assure us that this <\/em>is the most important election in our lifetime.\u00a0 Second, they continually remind us that \u201cthere is no ideal candidate.\u201d\u00a0 Third, they caution us against being \u201cone issue\u201d voters.<\/p>\n

By now, it is high time that Republican voters recognize these claims for the manipulative devices that they are.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That there is some ingredient of truth in each of them is undeniable.\u00a0 But whatever truth exists is comingled with a much greater degree of error.<\/p>\n

Each presidential election, like every national election, is indeed of great importance; after all, it is upon such elections that the fate of a nation depends.\u00a0 Yet when every such Election Day is said to be the most <\/em>important of all time, when each election is depicted as if it is our very last chance to save our country from self-destruction, it becomes difficult to avoid the impression that our commentators have taken a page from Chicken Little\u2019s book.<\/p>\n

Yes, there is no perfect candidate.\u00a0 But this should not be the pretext by which our \u201cconservative\u201d pundits try to convince us\u2014and themselves\u2014to vote for such thoroughly imperfect candidates.\u00a0 In a primary contest especially, when some candidate are less\u2014far less\u2014imperfect than others, it is particularly disingenuous to argue in favor of the more flawed candidate over the less flawed, for then voters have a choice.<\/p>\n

As a general rule, candidates should be judged according to a constellation of considerations, not their position on any one issue.\u00a0 But, first of all, this is a general <\/em>rule; it admits of exceptions.\u00a0 For example, if a candidate believes that \u201cnational security\u201d requires us to launch a full scale nuclear war the moment that he is inaugurated, then we should see to it that that candidate is never inaugurated.\u00a0 His position on this <\/em>one issue should be treated as a decisive<\/em> strike against him.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Secondly, those Republican commentators who chide, say, evangelical Christians for their refusal to endorse a candidate for his unacceptable stance on abortion are hypocritical.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t that the evangelical Christian is a stubborn \u201cone issue\u201d voter that disturbs these commentators; it is the fact that the evangelical Christian attaches paramount importance to this issue <\/em>that so incenses them.\u00a0 When it comes to the issue of \u201cnational security,\u201d however, these pundits whistle an entirely different tune: any candidate who isn\u2019t zealous about supporting Israel via American tax dollars and furthering the project to impose Democracy upon the planet they treat as persona non grata.<\/p>\n

There are still more ways in which Republican commentators seek to manipulate their audiences.<\/p>\n

Right now, the media would have us believe that the GOP\u2019s presidential primary race is a contest between two frontrunners, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.\u00a0 This may very well be true, although it is worth noting that as of the time that I write this, Ron Paul has come within a single percentage point of tying Gingrich inIowa.\u00a0 Paul is in third place in national polls, but at this time, national polling means virtually nothing.\u00a0 What matters is how each candidate places in the critical caucus states, and Paul is more than holding his own.\u00a0 At any rate, he is doing significantly better than the \u201cfrontrunners\u201d of this race\u2019s past: Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, not to mention Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain.<\/p>\n

And he continually leaves Rick Santorum and Jon Huntsman in the dust. Importantly, Paul does all of this in spite of <\/em>the mistreatment to which the media routinely subjects him.<\/p>\n

Still, let\u2019s just say that Romney and Gingrich are<\/em> our two front runners.\u00a0 As Congresswoman Bachmann astutely brought to our attention in the last debate, the two are for all intents and purposes ideologically indistinguishable from one another.\u00a0 Her moniker, \u201cNewt Romney,\u201d beautifully captured this truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although both Romney and Gingrich are equally <\/em>devoted to an ideology of Big Government, each seeks to show that he is more \u201cconservative\u201d than the other.\u00a0 Although each has a notorious reputation for \u201cflip flopping\u201d on a plethora of issues, each tries to show that he is less of a flip flopper than the other.\u00a0 Although both are establishment Republicans, each attempts to prove that it is the other who is the real <\/em>establishmentarian.<\/p>\n

These theatrics are laughable when it is politicians who engage in them.\u00a0 When, though, it is the members of the media who do so, it is at once irresponsible and pathetic.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recently, Mitt Romney said that he believes that Newt Gingrich should return all of the money (at least 1.2 million dollars) that he earned as a \u201cconsultant\u201d (read: lobbyist) for the quasi-governmental agency, Freddie Mac.\u00a0 In response, Gingrich fired back that Romney ought to return the money that he <\/em>earned shutting down businesses and laying off employees while running Bane Capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, it is true that there is no parity between Gingrich and Romney in this respect.\u00a0 As Charles Krauthammer and other Romney supporters have correctly noted, our free enterprise system\u2014what they insist on calling \u201ccapitalism\u201d\u2014consists in some businesses succeeding and <\/em>failing, and Romney was simply playing the role of \u201cthe capitalist\u201d in separating the chaff from the wheat, so to speak.\u00a0 Gingrich, in stark contrast, was a Big Government lobbyist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But for Romney\u2019s apologists to then remark that Gingrich\u2019s criticism of the former is something that only a \u201csocialist\u201d could have articulated, to suggest, that is, that Gingrich\u2019s comment is morally and politically indefensible because of its \u201csocialistic\u201d trappings, is just insincere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These same Republicans\u2014Krauthammer, Hugh Hewitt, and Romney himself\u2014are not now nor have they ever been the devoted \u201ccapitalists\u201d who they currently make themselves out to be.\u00a0 Anyone <\/em>who favors government subsidies, whether for \u201cpublic education,\u201d ethanol, banks, college and health care costs; anyone <\/em>who favors requiring Americans to purchase a private good (e.g. medical insurance); anyone <\/em>who favors a central bank and the printing of a currency unimpeded by any sort of standard, is no champion of the free market.\u00a0 To put it another way, if we want to call Gingrich a \u201csocialist\u201d\u2014and I have no objection to this at all\u2014then we have no logical option but to call Romney, Krauthammer, Hewitt, and all establishment or conventional Republicans the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Romney, we are now told by the likes of Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, and, of all people, Ann Coulter (!), is really <\/em>\u201cconservative.\u201d\u00a0 He just \u201cfooled\u201d (read: deceived) the voters ofMassachusetts while running for office there.\u00a0 Just two years ago Ann Coulter spoke to a CPAC convention.\u00a0 She pleaded with her audience to encourage Chris Christie to run for the presidency in 2012.\u00a0 If not, she said, Romney would be the nominee and we would surely lose to President Obama.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, all of that has suddenly changed as Coulter endorses Romney.<\/p>\n

So, Romney really is a \u201cconservative.\u201d\u00a0 What about Gingrich?\u00a0 Well, Gingrich is a real \u201cconservative\u201d also.\u00a0 Yes, he is a serial adulterer, and yes, he endorsed a leftist Republican in a relatively recent special election inNew York, supported health insurance mandates while Speaker of the House, and not long ago appeared in an ad with Nancy Pelosi as the latter sought to promote Cap-and-Trade.\u00a0 But Gingrich now admits to having been wrong about all of this.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The guy says that he is sorry.\u00a0 What more do you want?<\/p>\n

Liberty loving Americans have to become truth loving Americans as well.\u00a0 It is time that we begin to recognize this drivel for what it is. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n

originally published at The New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During every presidential election season, Republican commentators can be counted upon to do three things.\u00a0 First, they assure us that this is the most important election in our lifetime.\u00a0 Second, they continually remind us that \u201cthere is no ideal candidate.\u201d\u00a0 Third, they caution us against being \u201cone issue\u201d voters. By now, it is high time…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nPolitical Mind Games<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/12\/political-mind-games.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Political Mind Games\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"During every presidential election season, Republican commentators can be counted upon to do three things.\u00a0 First, they assure us that this is the most important election in our lifetime.\u00a0 Second, they continually remind us that \u201cthere is no ideal candidate.\u201d\u00a0 Third, they caution us against being \u201cone issue\u201d voters. 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