Conservative Christians should still pray for a McCain miracle
Hatchet
By Lucas Roebuck
In 2000 and 2004 the heads of many secular-progress/angry-left voters figuratively exploded when they realized that George W. Bush was going to (still) be president.
Bush didn't just represent Satan, he literally was Satan to the secular left. That's because generally secularists don't believe in a spiritual Satan, so Bush fit the bill for those who cannot "cling" to the supernatural. Which explains all the venom, outrage, hate and handwringing over Bush. Of course, they treated the Bush victory like it was the end of the world, because the hope of the secular progressive is rooted in man. And Bush wasn't their man.
Now, with the prospect of an Obama presidency looming, many traditional conservative Christians are speaking as if an Obama presidency is the end of the world — that all hope is lost should Sen. Barack Obama's strong lead in the polls become prophetic. I have one word of encouragement for my Christian friends in the event Obama gets elected.
Relax.
Either you believe God is in control or you don't. Either you believe that all things happen for a reason or you don't. If Obama becomes president, either God allowed it or God preordained it (depending on your theological persuasion). Yes, Obama has promised Planned Parenthood that he will work to virtually eliminate all restrictions on abortion (infanticide) as soon as he takes office. Yes, Obama's Supreme Court picks could curtail religious activity in the name of "separation of church and state." Yes, with Obama as commander in chief, the nation of Israel should not count on American support if attacked by hostile Islamic states.
Obama's promise to set back all the work social conservatives have done to fight the infanticide is especially horrific. Bush may be flawed, but he was probably the greatest advocate of the pro-life cause in the White House since Roe v. Wade.
When and if Obama's kingdom comes, social conservatives should have a pretty good idea of how secular-progressives felt when Bush became president. Fortunately, we don't have to lose any sleep like they did, because the political realities are not the ultimate realities for us. There is something greater than utopian government, than social engineering, than environmental preservation. There is eternity with a living, loving God.
To be Christian is to know that this world is temporary. Empires rise and empires fall. But our ultimate hope is not in our government making the world a better place, our hope is in Christ.
•••
This is not to say the Christians should ignore and disengage from the political process. Nor am I saying that any "real" Christian would never vote for Obama. (I would argue that a Christian who votes for Obama is misguided.) What is clear is that we are blessed to live in America, in a time when we have influence in the political process, and certainly we should use that influence to do what is right.
Even against the odds, social conservative Christians should not give up this fight for two reasons. The first is that Obama's secular-progressive allies will feel empowered with a mandate to push Obama and the Democrat controlled congress to adopt more extreme policies if Obama wins a popular and electoral vote landslide. The tone of the debate will be a lot different in 2009 if Obama wins 51-49 (by two points) than if he wins 55-45 (by ten points). The voices of moderation will have more sway the smaller the spread.
Radical abortion and anti-traditional family value policies will be retarded if Obama only wins by a slim margin.
The second reason social conservatives should not give up hope (and keep working to turn out the vote) is that miracles do happen. Pray that Sen. John McCain is on the receiving end of one Tuesday.
###30###
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Why worry? Obama can walk on water, right?
SARCASM WARNING
Hatchet
By Lucas Roebuck
Somebody must have told the glaciers that Sen. Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States. Maybe Obama wasn’t just having delusions of grandeur when he said back in June that his nomination would be the “ moment when the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and our planet will begin to heal. ”
I am one of the many who mocked the arrogant statement. Maybe I should have checked the ocean levels first. According to a report this week from the Anchorage Daily News, glaciers actually grew this year.
Here’s how the report leads: “ Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008... Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind of snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too. ”
When all it takes is Barack Obama having a commanding lead in the polls for GLOBAL WARMING to reverse course, you’d think even Sen. John McCain would step away and let Obama ascend to the thrown — I mean Oval Office.
(Please don’t tell us GLOBAL WARMING isn’t happening. The debate is over. Al Gore said so. At least, GLOBAL WARMING was happening until June of this year and Obama spoke those blessed words of healing. )
And then comes the economic crisis. I thought Obama was just being political when he said McCain going back to Washington to do his job as a senator was just a stunt. But after this week’s miraculous stock market recovery (as of this writing Tuesday night ), now I see what Obama was really saying. This was like when the Roman centurion told Jesus his daughter was ill (as recorded in Luke, Chapter 7 ), but Jesus didn’t even have to go to the centurion’s home. The centurion had faith, and his daughter was healed from a distance. How silly of us to think that Obama could not heal the economy from Chicago. Obviously, once the people had faith that Obama would win in November, the stock market supernaturally reversed its slide.
Of course, the evil ROVE / CHENEY / RACIST / FALWELL / BIGOIL / HOMOPHOBE / CHILDHATING conservatives can expect nothing but the judgment of pure oblivion from Obama if he takes office. Obama will have no need to give lip service to bipartisanship anymore.
Conservatives have just cause to be concerned. Barring some catastrophic turn of events at last night’s debate, the most liberal, most inexperienced man ever to run as a major party nominee will be in the driver’s seat of the most powerful nation in the world. Worse still for conservatives, both houses of Congress will be controlled by liberal Democrats (not even the centrists of Bill Clinton’s era, mind you ). The I’M-OK-YOU’RE-OK crowd can rejoice. Obama’s new order will put those simple-minded, right-is-right, wrong-is-wrong conservatives in their place. Another reason to breathe a sigh of relief: Obama plus a supermajority in Congress means the threat against infanticide in this nation made by the Bush administration has passed.
Baring the best October surprise ever or divine intervention, the perfect storm has crushed conservatives and their allies in the GOP. It’s a good thing for everyone else that Obama can walk on water, right ?
Hatchet
By Lucas Roebuck
Somebody must have told the glaciers that Sen. Barack Obama is going to be the next president of the United States. Maybe Obama wasn’t just having delusions of grandeur when he said back in June that his nomination would be the “ moment when the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and our planet will begin to heal. ”
I am one of the many who mocked the arrogant statement. Maybe I should have checked the ocean levels first. According to a report this week from the Anchorage Daily News, glaciers actually grew this year.
Here’s how the report leads: “ Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008... Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind of snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too. ”
When all it takes is Barack Obama having a commanding lead in the polls for GLOBAL WARMING to reverse course, you’d think even Sen. John McCain would step away and let Obama ascend to the thrown — I mean Oval Office.
(Please don’t tell us GLOBAL WARMING isn’t happening. The debate is over. Al Gore said so. At least, GLOBAL WARMING was happening until June of this year and Obama spoke those blessed words of healing. )
And then comes the economic crisis. I thought Obama was just being political when he said McCain going back to Washington to do his job as a senator was just a stunt. But after this week’s miraculous stock market recovery (as of this writing Tuesday night ), now I see what Obama was really saying. This was like when the Roman centurion told Jesus his daughter was ill (as recorded in Luke, Chapter 7 ), but Jesus didn’t even have to go to the centurion’s home. The centurion had faith, and his daughter was healed from a distance. How silly of us to think that Obama could not heal the economy from Chicago. Obviously, once the people had faith that Obama would win in November, the stock market supernaturally reversed its slide.
Of course, the evil ROVE / CHENEY / RACIST / FALWELL / BIGOIL / HOMOPHOBE / CHILDHATING conservatives can expect nothing but the judgment of pure oblivion from Obama if he takes office. Obama will have no need to give lip service to bipartisanship anymore.
Conservatives have just cause to be concerned. Barring some catastrophic turn of events at last night’s debate, the most liberal, most inexperienced man ever to run as a major party nominee will be in the driver’s seat of the most powerful nation in the world. Worse still for conservatives, both houses of Congress will be controlled by liberal Democrats (not even the centrists of Bill Clinton’s era, mind you ). The I’M-OK-YOU’RE-OK crowd can rejoice. Obama’s new order will put those simple-minded, right-is-right, wrong-is-wrong conservatives in their place. Another reason to breathe a sigh of relief: Obama plus a supermajority in Congress means the threat against infanticide in this nation made by the Bush administration has passed.
Baring the best October surprise ever or divine intervention, the perfect storm has crushed conservatives and their allies in the GOP. It’s a good thing for everyone else that Obama can walk on water, right ?
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Down, but not out, yet
Hatchet
By Lucas Roebuck
Things aren’t very pretty for the GOP right now. Many conservatives, evangelicals and people who claim both titles weren’t exactly thrilled when Sen. John McCain won the Republican presidential nomination this spring. Fiscal conservatives would have preferred Gov. Mitt Romney and the social conservatives had lined up behind Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Only the brilliant choice of Gov. Sarah Palin to round out the ticket solidified the conservatives for McCain. But the postconvention honeymoon is over. By almost any count the presidency is Sen. Barack Obama’s to lose, and in a series of extremely lame debates, we are reminded why McCain was the choice of so few of us.
That being said, McCain is still the superior choice over Obama to lead the country. I don’t want to think of it as the lesser of two evils because neither McCain nor Obama is evil in the Saddam-Hussein / Kim-Jong-Il sense of the word. However, Obama would ultimately lead America in a more communal direction, while McCain would lead us toward personal responsibility.
So with McCain sinking in the polls and Obama taking leads in almost all the swing states, can McCain still win ? The cliché “ anything can happen” comes to mind, but more specifically, if I was advising the McCain campaign, here is what I would suggest.
1. Respectfully remind us why Obama has disqualified himself to lead through poor choices. Obama’s association with Bill Ayers is disgusting. No person who wants to be the president of the United States should ever associate themselves with an unrepentant terrorist. Period. Obama should have said long ago that the fact Ayers got off on a technicality for taking part in domestic bombings was a travesty of justice. How is Ayers any different than Timothy McVeigh ? If McVeigh hadn’t been put to death, would Obama be okay sitting on a board with McVeigh no matter how pro-education that board was ?
Obama’s reckless and inexcusable comments as a sitting U. S. Senator that our military was just “ air raiding and killing civilians” in Afghanistan is another statement that calls into serious question Obama’s character qualifications.
McCain himself has to publicly denounce Obama on both of these two items, and perhaps several others. That is the only way these items are going to get any media play. Surrogates and likeminded nonaffiliated political groups attacking Obama on these points won’t change the narrative.
2. Remind Americans they like split government. McCain needs to sound the alarm loudly though TV advertising and to the national media: An Obama victory means the Democrats will have a monopoly on government, most assuredly meaning the Obama administration, unchecked, will rule from the extreme left, in keeping with his voting record, which earned him National Journal’s most liberal senator label.
The undecided, independent and moderate votes that are still up for grabs are probably the demographic that most values split government. Both parties sharing the power of the White House and Congress to keep one side from running the country by itself is the preferred state of government for the middle-of-the-road voters. Right now, no one seems to be reminding them that an Obama election means extreme, unchecked partisan governance.
3. Appeal to the American sense of personal responsibility. Americans, myself included, can often be lured by the siren song of a freebie. Tax breaks for me, but not for those evil rich guys, sound pretty good since I don’t think of myself as a rich guy. What’s that ? A bigger child credit ? I’m glad I have two kids. Free health care ?!? Sign me up.
But we have a spilt personality. We also have bred into us the ethic of personal responsibility, which represents our best selves. We are not all selfish, only-care-about-our-pocketbook people. I believe that our sense of personal responsibility trumps our selfishness. McCain should appeal to personal responsibility — or rather, that his policies will encourage people to be responsible individuals as opposed to Obama’s, which encourage personal irresponsibility.
Granted, the personal responsibility message is hard to package. But fundamentally, this value of the individual is what sets the GOP apart from Democrats.
By Lucas Roebuck
Things aren’t very pretty for the GOP right now. Many conservatives, evangelicals and people who claim both titles weren’t exactly thrilled when Sen. John McCain won the Republican presidential nomination this spring. Fiscal conservatives would have preferred Gov. Mitt Romney and the social conservatives had lined up behind Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Only the brilliant choice of Gov. Sarah Palin to round out the ticket solidified the conservatives for McCain. But the postconvention honeymoon is over. By almost any count the presidency is Sen. Barack Obama’s to lose, and in a series of extremely lame debates, we are reminded why McCain was the choice of so few of us.
That being said, McCain is still the superior choice over Obama to lead the country. I don’t want to think of it as the lesser of two evils because neither McCain nor Obama is evil in the Saddam-Hussein / Kim-Jong-Il sense of the word. However, Obama would ultimately lead America in a more communal direction, while McCain would lead us toward personal responsibility.
So with McCain sinking in the polls and Obama taking leads in almost all the swing states, can McCain still win ? The cliché “ anything can happen” comes to mind, but more specifically, if I was advising the McCain campaign, here is what I would suggest.
1. Respectfully remind us why Obama has disqualified himself to lead through poor choices. Obama’s association with Bill Ayers is disgusting. No person who wants to be the president of the United States should ever associate themselves with an unrepentant terrorist. Period. Obama should have said long ago that the fact Ayers got off on a technicality for taking part in domestic bombings was a travesty of justice. How is Ayers any different than Timothy McVeigh ? If McVeigh hadn’t been put to death, would Obama be okay sitting on a board with McVeigh no matter how pro-education that board was ?
Obama’s reckless and inexcusable comments as a sitting U. S. Senator that our military was just “ air raiding and killing civilians” in Afghanistan is another statement that calls into serious question Obama’s character qualifications.
McCain himself has to publicly denounce Obama on both of these two items, and perhaps several others. That is the only way these items are going to get any media play. Surrogates and likeminded nonaffiliated political groups attacking Obama on these points won’t change the narrative.
2. Remind Americans they like split government. McCain needs to sound the alarm loudly though TV advertising and to the national media: An Obama victory means the Democrats will have a monopoly on government, most assuredly meaning the Obama administration, unchecked, will rule from the extreme left, in keeping with his voting record, which earned him National Journal’s most liberal senator label.
The undecided, independent and moderate votes that are still up for grabs are probably the demographic that most values split government. Both parties sharing the power of the White House and Congress to keep one side from running the country by itself is the preferred state of government for the middle-of-the-road voters. Right now, no one seems to be reminding them that an Obama election means extreme, unchecked partisan governance.
3. Appeal to the American sense of personal responsibility. Americans, myself included, can often be lured by the siren song of a freebie. Tax breaks for me, but not for those evil rich guys, sound pretty good since I don’t think of myself as a rich guy. What’s that ? A bigger child credit ? I’m glad I have two kids. Free health care ?!? Sign me up.
But we have a spilt personality. We also have bred into us the ethic of personal responsibility, which represents our best selves. We are not all selfish, only-care-about-our-pocketbook people. I believe that our sense of personal responsibility trumps our selfishness. McCain should appeal to personal responsibility — or rather, that his policies will encourage people to be responsible individuals as opposed to Obama’s, which encourage personal irresponsibility.
Granted, the personal responsibility message is hard to package. But fundamentally, this value of the individual is what sets the GOP apart from Democrats.
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