Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Even better than the real thing

Powerline's "Deacon" --

First, [Mike] Huckabee overlooks the fact that George W. Bush, though not a preacher, is a born-again Christian. If Republicans like [Rich] Lowry wanted to keep Christian conservatives at arms-length why did they support Bush so firmly?

George Bush is not a born-again Christian. He was raised Episcopalian (Anglican) and now occasionally attends a Methodist church in Washington. He lapsed from Episcopalian and resumed as Methodist. That's not "born-again". That's just after a while looking for a new church. Born-again should only refer to a profound experience -- essentially an awareness as an adult of the true meaning of the sacrament of baptism, which is of course lost on people at the age they normally receive it.

But the skill of the Bush campaign was to leave out there the statement that he was "born-again" without ever making any attempt to correct it, as a dog-whistle to evangelical voters. Powerline has thus proved Huckabee's point, in that this time the evangelicals want an actual evangelical candidate.

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