Luntz has Spoken

I know I should try not to be so obnoxious to swing voters. I am working on it. I need to stop making references to animals like monkeys and flatworms.

These individuals may not be giant brains, but I’m sure that many, many of them are fine people. You don’t have to be brilliant to be a good person. People sometimes criticize Christianity because you don’t have to be very smart to be a Christian. Judaism, for example, is much more cerebral. For a long time, I’ve believed that the accessibility of Christianity is part of its design and one of its great virtues. I think it bolsters the argument that Christianity is God’s creation.

Surely, there are a lot of people out there who don’t understand debates, yet who are morally superior to me. I am going to try to keep that in mind. Really.

I’m not saying it will be easy.

With those prefatory remarks, let me direct you to Frank Luntz’s swing voter focus group.

You know what this proves? It proves Sarah Palin won the debate. Overwhelmingly. The debate wasn’t a test to see who knew the facts better, or whose reasoning skills were better. It was a test to see who could make people want to vote for them. By that standard, there can be no doubt. Sarah Palin won.

I see Sarah Palin as a champion provided by God. Sort of like David. She’s not merely religious; she is part of a very sincere Christian movement. We’re not talking about a Catholic who goes to mass twice a year, or a Baptist who has forgotten the way to the church. Sarah Palin appears to be about as devout as politicians get. I see Obama as a huge threat to Christian values, and I think his judges and executive appointees will be hostile to the church. I think God brought us Sarah Palin as an antidote to Obama. As I have said before, and as others have said, Sarah Palin truly is what Barack Obama only pretends to be. A fresh-faced, sincere Washington outsider who will govern with a conscience and try to bring reform.

The Bible says God chooses our leaders. So when I see a candidate I can approve of, I pray for that candidate to succeed. And I prayed before the debate. When it was over, I thought things had gone badly, and I reminded myself that sometimes we get the leader we deserve, instead of a leader who will be a blessing to us. We are becoming a nation of perverts, self-worshipers, and pagans. We celebrate greed and selfish ambition and empty fame. I can’t say we deserve a good President or Vice President. Many of us would simply turn on a person like that, the way the BDS crowd turned on George Bush. The way the PDS crowd has already turned on Sarah Palin, her husband, and her children.

Oddly, I now find that my prayers were answered. I am sure tens of millions of Americans were praying for Sarah Palin last night, and clearly, we were heard. Never criticize God’s patience to my face. It’s not that you’ll make me angry. I just don’t want to be standing near a person when he says something that ungrateful and offensive. I don’t want people to think we agree. Hundreds of thousands of convenience abortions every year, an official policy of slicing Israel up and selling her to her enemies, a judiciary which seems bent on eradicating all public mention of God, churches which tell us Jesus was just a philosopher, churches which tell us the Jews are no longer God’s people…there are plenty of reasons to abandon us and let us rot. But we have not been scrapped yet.

It’s funny that this happened during the Days of Awe, which include Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the days between them. At this time of the Jewish year, Jews are supposed to reflect and repent. These things still matter, regardless of whether Christians are required to observe the Jewish holidays. They still have significance. The Jewish holidays were never abolished. We ought to be thinking about the way we act, at this sensitive, pivotal moment. It may not be mandatory, but it certainly can’t hurt.

I wish Governor Palin hadn’t agreed that the “two-state solution” is the answer to Israel’s problems. I don’t like the use of the word “solution” in the context of Jewish issues; see if you can guess why. And it isn’t a solution; it’s a concession to the Arab strategy of whittling Israel down until there is nothing left. But unless she is a very strange or superficial representative of modern, Bible-believing Christians, Sarah Palin is not happy about giving away Jewish land, and she will work hard to minimize the damage. Contrast this with Obama, who favors dividing Jerusalem. One day he said Jerusalem should be undivided. The very next day, he said he didn’t mean it wouldn’t be portioned out and governed by different authorities. I.e., that it wouldn’t be…divided. And remember, Palin belongs to a movement known for its unwavering, fanatical support of Jewish Israel, while Obama spent twenty years in an openly anti-Semitic church, becoming so close to the pastor that he chose the pastor to officiate at his wedding.

I think she answered that way because there was no way to avoid it. And “two-state solution” is pretty vague. It leaves her a lot of wiggle room to exploit. In any case, she’s a better choice than a close associate of a prominent anti-Semite.

Increasingly, conservatives dismiss religious issues as inconsequential and tangential. That’s wrong, and it will hinder us in the long run. In fact, the things that happen in the natural world are just reflections of what goes on in the spiritual world. The natural is like a tree, and the supernatural is like the roots. Bad things that happen there eventually produce bad consequences here.

No candidate is perfect, but McCain and Palin are clearly the least offensive choice, by a wide measure. I hope we are not so far gone that we will not be permitted to put them in the White House.

Funny how Obama is still running against McCain’s Vice Presidential pick. But then Goliath was killed by David, not Saul.