Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

The morning after the 2004 elections a new article of faith spread across the land.  The reason George Bush was back in the White House because "Value Voters" had blessed his presidency.  None of the pundits in the echo chamber seemed surprised they overlooked this critical demographic during the campaign.  Maybe people were too busy trying to swallow the notion that  "Security Moms" had replaced "Soccer Moms" as the hot new MILF of electoral demographics.

There is no question pandering to panic served the Republicans well during the campaign.  Everyone knows that people can be motivated by fear.  However, it's a fragile source of legitimacy. Republicans needed a better justification for their victory than "We scared the hell out of enough people" to win a hotly contested election rife with irregularities.

Faced with that dilemma, what better way to claim legitimacy than painting the electoral victory as a moral triumph? Thank God for Value Voters!  Never mind the fact this demographic label was nothing more than poorly defined statistical shorthand applied to a minority of voters in an exit poll taken after the fact.  That didn't stop self-serving zealots from hijacking this vague term and parading it around like a patron saint at the head of their Crusade.  Like jingoists who wrap themselves in the flag and call themselves patriots, zealots love to cloak their political aspirations in the raiment of faith and claim all manner of divinely inspired moral authority.

Here's why I bring all this to your attention: For those who think these zealots are a fringe group no one listens to, remember myths repeated often enough take on a life of their own. People routinely point to the Value Voter myth as justification for all the "pro-family" legislation that has been pushed across the country.   People now use that myth to defend "faith-based" [fill in the blank] policies.

It doesn't matter whether you are talking about invading Iraq, Iran or Syria, reconstructing the Gulf Coast, setting school standards, funding basic biological research, defining the legal limits of privacy, evaluating drugs for public consumption, or setting monetary policy.  When you have faith, you don't need facts.  This myth has spawned a new myth:

THE WAR ON CHRISTIANS AND VALUE VOTERS

That's a revelation!  Someone should introduce these refugees from the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority to the people controlling and staffing the White House, the Congress, the majority of state governorships, and the Supreme Court.  If they have a hard time getting an audience, maybe they can hire Tom Delay to lobby for them, Ralph Reed to do the fundraising, and Jeff Gannon to write about it.  At a minimum that could be viewed as a tax-deductible act of Christian charity.  They are all going to need work soon and Lord knows idle hands are the Devil's tools.

So next time you hear someone lauding "Value Voters" or indignant over the "War on Christians" take a moment to remind them George Bush's administration was the one that started a war they can't win, created a debt they can't tame, and built a bureaucracy they can't manage.  After all, when you have an administration with that sort of track record, treating the president like he walks on water is simply Mything the Point.

Outrage: The only thing Republicans seem interested in manufacturing domestically.