{"id":106,"date":"2010-11-04T13:43:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T13:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html"},"modified":"2010-11-04T13:43:02","modified_gmt":"2010-11-04T13:43:02","slug":"gop-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html","title":{"rendered":"GOP losers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Angle.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/Angle.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0pt 20px 20px 0pt\" width=\"102\" height=\"55\" \/><\/span><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/135\/import\/OD.jpg\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0pt 0pt 20px 20px\" width=\"106\" height=\"53\" \/><\/span>The most celebrated losers on the Republican side this election year were <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sharron_Angle\">Sharron Angle<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christine_O%27Donnell#cite_note-newest_darling-2\">Christine O&#8217;Donnell<\/a>, who in any previous cycle since 1980 would have been identified as paladins (paladines?) of the religious right. Angle is a Southern Baptist who ran a Christian school and was endorsed by the likes of Pat Boone and Phyllis Schlafly. <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christine_O%27Donnell#cite_note-newest_darling-2\">O&#8217;Donnell<\/a>, a Catholic-evangelical hybrid, was a former spokesperson for Concerned Women of America who made herself into minor moral values prophetess. <\/p>\n<p>I would submit that Angle and O&#8217;Donnell lost not because of radical Tea Partyism but because they smelled too much of the unwanted social conservatism of yesteryear. Yes, the Tea Party endorsed them. But their failure was, more than anything, a vindication of the Tea Party strategy of keeping the social issues off the table.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The most celebrated losers on the Republican side this election year were Sharron Angle and Christine O&#8217;Donnell, who in any previous cycle since 1980 would have been identified as paladins (paladines?) of the religious right. Angle is a Southern Baptist who ran a Christian school and was endorsed by the likes of Pat Boone and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>GOP losers - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk<\/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\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"GOP losers - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The most celebrated losers on the Republican side this election year were Sharron Angle and Christine O&#8217;Donnell, who in any previous cycle since 1980 would have been identified as paladins (paladines?) of the religious right. Angle is a Southern Baptist who ran a Christian school and was endorsed by the likes of Pat Boone and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-11-04T13:43:02+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/Angle.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"GOP losers - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","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\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"GOP losers - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"The most celebrated losers on the Republican side this election year were Sharron Angle and Christine O&#8217;Donnell, who in any previous cycle since 1980 would have been identified as paladins (paladines?) of the religious right. Angle is a Southern Baptist who ran a Christian school and was endorsed by the likes of Pat Boone and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html","og_site_name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-11-04T13:43:02+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/Angle.jpg"}],"author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html","name":"GOP losers - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/Angle.jpg","datePublished":"2010-11-04T13:43:02+00:00","dateModified":"2010-11-04T13:43:02+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/Angle.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/Angle.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/11\/gop-losers.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"GOP losers"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}