{"id":746,"date":"2008-07-29T14:10:18","date_gmt":"2008-07-29T14:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/07\/ted-stevens-indictment-another.html"},"modified":"2008-07-29T14:10:18","modified_gmt":"2008-07-29T14:10:18","slug":"ted-stevens-indictment-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/07\/ted-stevens-indictment-another.html","title":{"rendered":"Ted Stevens Indictment: Another Turn Off for Values Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"stevens.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/211\/import\/imgs\/stevens.jpg\" width=\"110\" height=\"135\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span>The Democrats succeeding in closing the gap among what Democratic National Committee pollster Cornell Belcher calls &#8220;values-first voters&#8221; from 30 points in 2004 to around 10 points in 2006. It was a major factor behind the Democrats&#8217; congressional takeover. True, the narrowing of the values gap coincided with the launch of the Democrats&#8217; myriad new faith outreach programs. But a much bigger factor was the wave of Republican scandals leading up to the &#8217;06 midterm elections.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/04\/03\/AR2006040301787.html\">Tom DeLay<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/07\/19\/us\/19georgia.html\">Ralph Reed<\/a>. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2006\/POLITICS\/09\/29\/congressman.e.mails\/index.html\">Mark Foley<\/a>. Even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/15536263\/\">Ted Haggard<\/a>.<br \/>\nThe scandals created a poisonous atmosphere for Republicans in 2006. Exit polls from Election Day of that year found that corruption and ethics in government was the most important issue for voters, overshadowing even the Iraq war. <a href=\"http:\/\/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com\/2008\/07\/29\/senator-ted-stevens-indicted-in-corruption-case\/?ref=us\">Today&#8217;s indictment of Ted Stevens<\/a> risks further tarnishing the GOP&#8217;s &#8220;morals and values&#8221; brand.<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s more bad news from McCain.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n4<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Democrats succeeding in closing the gap among what Democratic National Committee pollster Cornell Belcher calls &#8220;values-first voters&#8221; from 30 points in 2004 to around 10 points in 2006. It was a major factor behind the Democrats&#8217; congressional takeover. True, the narrowing of the values gap coincided with the launch of the Democrats&#8217; myriad new&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-john-mccain"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Ted Stevens Indictment: Another Turn Off for Values Voters - God-O-Meter<\/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\/godometer\/2008\/07\/ted-stevens-indictment-another.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ted Stevens Indictment: Another Turn Off for Values Voters - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Democrats succeeding in closing the gap among what Democratic National Committee pollster Cornell Belcher calls &#8220;values-first voters&#8221; from 30 points in 2004 to around 10 points in 2006. It was a major factor behind the Democrats&#8217; congressional takeover. True, the narrowing of the values gap coincided with the launch of the Democrats&#8217; myriad new&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/07\/ted-stevens-indictment-another.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-29T14:10:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/files\/import\/imgs\/stevens.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ted Stevens Indictment: Another Turn Off for Values Voters - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/07\/ted-stevens-indictment-another.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Ted Stevens Indictment: Another Turn Off for Values Voters - God-O-Meter","og_description":"The Democrats succeeding in closing the gap among what Democratic National Committee pollster Cornell Belcher calls &#8220;values-first voters&#8221; from 30 points in 2004 to around 10 points in 2006. 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