Stolen, with permission from the incomparable, original Moxie:
Maybe it's because I've been out of the loop due to the holidays, but I didn't see a lot of blog commentary on the Dean flip flop on religion, first saying southerners should stop voting based on "race, guns, God, and gays", then telling the Boston Globe that he expects to increasingly include references to Jesus and God in his speeches as he stumps in the South.
Because Jesus is cool to talk about if He can get you some votes, right?
Frontpage sums it up nicely in Howard Dean's Politics of Bad Faith:
Dean made it clear, however, that he would be discussing his Christian faith only in Southern states, the states he stereotyped two months ago as being full of rednecks with Confederate flags on their pickup trucks.The reasons for Dean’s hypocritical flip-flop are obvious. A recent ABC/Washington Post poll showed that 46 percent of Southerners said a president should rely on his religious beliefs when making policy decisions. Forty percent of people nationwide share this view, but only 28 percent of Easterners agree. Dean stuck his wetted finger into the Southern breeze and is now reversing his rhetorical sails to gain votes by professing beliefs he mocked only weeks ago.
Um Howard, those pickup people vote, you see, and they believe in God, you see, so what we need you to do in the South........
What is missing from Dean’s picture? To devout Christians, Jesus Christ is infinitely more than a social worker or political activist. Christ is a loving God who became human, delivered the Creator’s message and example of divine love to humankind, and willingly became the sacrificial lamb of a new Passover whose crucifixion and resurrection saves those who believe in Him from the fear of death.The Jesus envisioned by Howard Dean is godless.
Dean’s Jesus is nothing more than a gee-whiz fictional superhero who is “pretty inspiring,” who liberally heals the consequences of sin but never violates Political Correctness by saying, “Repent and sin no more.” Howard Dean’s Jesus tells people to love their neighbor but never asks them also to love God.
See it's just so much easier if you make up your own God and put Him in that special box where you get to decide which traits you want to keep and which are inconvenient to your own set of beliefs.
And here's a bit I hadn't heard before.............
Howard Dean also served as a Board Member of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England. And around the time of his three-year residency at a teaching facility called the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont (now the Fletcher Allen Hospital) in Burlington, Dean reportedly in 1978 or 1979 served as an intern in an OB/GYN rotation at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Burlington. Dean reportedly continued as a physician at this Planned Parenthood clinic after his internship, “providing routine GYN care and medical consults.”Howard Dean, M.D., has avoided answering questions about whether he ever performed an abortion – or how many he might have performed. He strongly opposed the recently passed bill to ban partial-birth abortion, and he has favored allowing girls to get abortions without parental notification or permission. But if the Jesus of his United Church of Christ is pro-abortion, then why has Dean avoided answering whether he himself has performed abortions?
Has Howard Dean performed abortions? Has the leading Democratic presidential candidate been an abortion provider? Surely if it we needed to know boxers or briefs, this is pertinent? Inquiring minds want to know.
Great summary of the dichotomy!
I find the whole "I'm going to talk about God and Jesus" more in the south thing to be a huge contradiction to his opposition to the partial-birth abortion ban.
"I love God but it's okay to vacuum out the brains of babies that are being born"
How does he justify that?!
Granted, I know not *all* religious people are pro-life but it's still pandering...
Posted by: Moxie | January 02, 2004 at 06:24 AM
Hi Moxie,
Thanks for stopping by! Which reminds me, as I was falling asleep last night I thought, I forgot to ping Moxie! You know how those blog things just pop into your head. Well, you're pinged now.
Even though we follow politics pretty closely, I hadn't heard about the Planned Parenthood stint. In my mind there's a huge difference in believing in abortion rights, and actually participating in killing an inncoent child in the womb.
If Dean isn't answering the question, it makes me think he probably has performed abortions.
Will the electorate make the same distinction? Will the press have the balls to make him answer the question?
DC
Posted by: DC | January 02, 2004 at 01:15 PM
Bush thinks all of us that don't believe in christ jesus are doomed to eternal damnation.
i wish somebody would ask him about that.
Posted by: Rob | January 03, 2004 at 04:43 PM