Rolling Stone Quotes Yoest, Carville; New Media in Presidential Politics

Rolling Stone
always provocative Rolling Stone has an excellent analysis on the God-fearing voter effect on presidential politics.

Evangelicals in Exile; The Christian right is reeling from its biggest electoral defeat in a quarter century - and now they're talking about abandoning the GOP byline ROBERT DREYFUSS,

"To ensure that Republicans get the message in 2008, the religious right is redoubling its efforts to mobilize its political machine -- including tens of thousands of churches, hundreds of radio stations and two national television networks."

The liberal thinking is that the Jesus-God-fearing voter votes as one. One candidate; one block.

O that we would. 30% of Evangelicals voted for Clinton. Gary Bauer at one time encouraged John McCain. Liberal democratTIC candidates still get some Catholics.

Robert Dreyfuss continues,

The Family Research Council, a leading lobby for the Christian right, is planning a huge expansion on the Internet, including videos and podcasts, to reach millions in next year's election. "We want to be sure that the lessons of the last election have been learned, and that the Republicans understand that we are not a lock for the GOP," says Charmaine Yoest, the council's vice president of communications. "When you're looking at razor-thin margins, you better pay attention to your base."

New Media is key. A percentage point or less, will win. Jim Ceaser, who sat on Charmaine's dissertation committee, made this clear in his book The Perfect Tie (list price: $69.00).

The other James, Carville, agrees,

"It's not like you have to win 'em," says James Carville, the Democratic strategist who engineered Bill Clinton's rise to power. "You just have to do better. Even if you go up five points, it's a big deal."

Dreyfuss quotes Charmaine, who gets it right (of course...)

The swing certainly got the attention of the Christian right. "Man, a couple of points difference -- that's what the political consultants get paid the big bucks to deliver," says Yoest of the Family Research Council. "In a divided electorate, that's significant."

Dreyfuss warns,


Rolling Stone

The group fired an early shot across the GOP's bow in January, when it delivered a videotaped response to President Bush's State of the Union speech. "The president failed to draw a line in the sand on behalf of life," charged Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council.

Dreyfuss quotes Perkins,

"What will become of the culture of life, of the defense of marriage?" The council displayed a chart [above] on which it noted the number of times the president mentioned the Christian right's core issues: marriage, 0; abortion, 0; stem cells, 0; cloning, 0; abstinence, 0; and values, 0.

Be sure to bookmark and track Family Research Council's New Media advances at the FRCBlog. (Unpaid link.)

Thank you (foot)notes:

See Charmaine's work at The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: Religious Voters and the Midterm Elections

Also mentioned in the Rolling Stone article were,

Communications expert Genevieve Wood from Heritage, Dick Armey, James Dobson, David Kuo, Ted Haggard, Phill Kline, Curtis Gans, Don Wildmon.

Get (warring) religion on Rein's Religion Blog.

Posted at 8:01 AM
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