Legal Commentary

Spreading Fear One More Time

By TChris

Fearing a loss of political influence if Barack Obama is elected, right wing religious leaders are spreading fear of Obama.

"Everyone uses fear in the last part of a campaign, but evangelicals are especially theologically prone to those sorts of arguments," said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University political scientist. "There's a long tradition of predicting doom and gloom."

Some of the gloom and doom predicted by Charisma magazine publisher Steve Strang doesn't seem all that awful.

Strang said gay rights and abortion rights would be strengthened in an Obama administration, taxes would rise and "people who hate Christianity will be emboldened to attack our freedoms."

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Protecting equal rights for gays and the right to choose for women might seem disastrous to Strang, but most Americans would welcome a government that protects rights after enduring an administration that violated privacy rights, shunned civil rights, and ignored the Constitution. And most Americans have a better understanding than Strang and Joe the Plumber of Obama's tax plan.

The fear of "emboldening" Christianity's enemies "to attack our freedoms" is ironic given Strang's attacks on freedom to choose and freedom to enjoy the equal rights and benefits of American citizenship. The religious right is blind to irony. It is only the message that matters: Obama must be feared.

Focus on the Family Action admits it is painting "a doomsday picture" (with the assurance that "it's a realistic picture") in an email predicting that the end of Obama's first term will bring

Nationalized health care with long lines for surgery and no access to hospitals for people over 80.

People over 80 will be chopped up and turned into Soylent Green during the Obama administration. It's on the campaign's website. Trust me.

The email also predicts unchecked Russian aggression, al Qaeda control of Iraq, terrorist attacks on American soil that kill hundreds, and gay Scoutmasters "sleeping in tents with young boys." Are you afraid yet?

The audience targeted by these emails wasn't planning to vote for a Democrat even if his middle name didn't happen to be Hussein, but getting out the religious right vote has been essential to Republican election victories in recent presidential races. Whether spreading fear of Obama will motivate the email recipients to turn out for McCain-Palin is unclear.

Sarah Palin is a hit with the religious right but John McCain has never been comfortable with the faith-based language that religious right voters want to hear. Older conservative evangelicals view McCain with suspicion. Younger evangelicals may just be getting tired of it all.

Margaret Feinberg, a Denver-area evangelical author, predicted [the email campaign's] failure.

"Young evangelicals are tired - like most people at this point in the election - and rhetoric which is fear-based, strong-arms the listener, and states opinion as fact will only polarize rather than further the informed, balanced discussion that younger voters are hungry for," she said.

Fear-based, stong-armed, opinion-stated-as-fact, polarizing rhetoric isn't winning the election this year. Imagine that.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on October 25, 2008 (boomark / email).