The godly vote

The sinners throw the best parties anyway

There's a meme making its way round that is, I think, the most profound comment on the presidential election:

What would the Republicans have said about Obama had he featured his five children out of three different women?

Family values seem a dead GOP issue. 

Well, for me they always did. I grew up surrounded by Southern Baptists, Church of Christers and similar who were happy to tell me I couldn't be moral if I didn't accept their personal deity, although their own standards of morality were nothing to write home about. Just about all of them were racists, for example.

There has been a change for the worse, though. It began when political evangelicals wanted to vote for the racist Reagan over the antiracist Carter. This required a quick flip, because evangelicals had always said they opposed divorce, and even if their own divorce rates were comparatively high, they enforced the ban against politicians. Few could run successfully in heavily evangelical districts if they had been divorced. 

The flip was easily made. 1980 was the campaign year in which "born again" became a potent political slogan, but what was really newborn was the moral preeners' new enthusiasm for serial marriage. 

Since then, evangelical voters have managed to forgive and re-elect David Vitter despite his  diapered romps with whores and Scott Des Jarlais though he was exposed as having  forced women to have abortions.

Now their John the Baptist is a 4-times married, racist drug addict and their Christ is a philandering racist business cheat.

I think I'd rather hang out with publicans and sinners, like Jesus did (Matthew 9: 10).

For another view of godly politics, read Fivethirtyeight's analysis of the Catholic vote.