Poll: Evangelicals abandon GOP in droves; Updated by an evangelical

posted at 7:20 pm on October 19, 2006 by Allahpundit
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“Conservative voters likely to stay home,” says the WashTimes. Kurtz breezes through a checklist of reasons why in a column titled “Apocalypse Now?” The LA Times and WaPo independently report Democratic gains in the heartland, including within the left’s favorite sociology laboratory. And then, of course, there’s Iraq.

And now this, from Pew:

There’s plenty more at the link and very little of it appears attributable to the Kuo effect, if there even is such a thing. This has, it seems, been building for awhile, and the rate at which support is eroding outstrips the rate among even non-religious voters. Anyone have any theories why? Evangelical Christian opinions welcome!

Between that and this, I’d say it’s time to hit the panic button. Assuming there’s anything left once Moran and Mary K are done pounding on it.

Update (Bryan–Hot Air’s resident evangelical): For me, the article’s last couple of sentences are key.

The most important unknown in the final weeks of the 2006 election campaign is how motivated evangelicals will be to turn out to vote. Despite discussion about the possibility that turnout among evangelicals might be depressed this year, Pew’s latest poll finds evangelicals no more or less enthusiastic about voting than other groups in the electorate, and they are no different from registered voters as a whole in their overall likelihood of voting.

So what does this mean? Well, speaking for myself, the more outrageous the Democrats and the nutroots get, the more motivated I get to vote against them. The weaker the left gets on the war, while at the same time ramping up the hate against Bush and the Republicans and their supporters and promising to investigate our way toward defeat in the war, the more motivated I get to vote against them. Which means voting for the Republicans, where I have cast most of my votes my entire adult life. I can’t imagine pulling a lever for the Democrats again for as long as I live.

There’s a bottom line relationship I see evangelicals such as myself having with the GOP that’s just impossible to have with the Democrats. That bottom line is, that while the GOP isn’t perfect, at least it’s not actively hostile toward and intolerant of my faith. The Democrats as a party tend to be hostile to traditional and evangelical conservatives. You only have to be an evangelical and strike up a conversation about religion with most liberals to understand what I mean by that. Their hate for evangelicals can heat up a good sized room. The Kuo book that Allah mentions above is in my mind an attempt to paint the GOP as, internally, actively hostile to evangelicals, but when you peel away the layers Kuo seems to be shocked that politicians see government programs in political terms. Well, color me unshocked by that. It certainly doesn’t make me take a second look at the Democrats. And color me unmoved to punish the GOP for the Foley scandal, which is awful but still looks to me to be the result of the actions and predilections of one man, not the whole party. And it’s not like Barney Frank’s Democrats have the moral highground anyway. If you’re going to work scandalous behavior and how each party deals with such in its own ranks into your calculations, the imperfect Republicans still do quite a bit better than the Democrats at cleaning up their own messes. In fact, when was the last time the Democrats actually cleaned up one of their own messes? I guess you could say they did impeach Judge Alcee Hastings on bribery charges a while back, but lookie there, if that isn’t Mr. Hastings in Congress, an elected Democrat in good standing and preparing to take over the Armed Services Committee if the Democrats win in November. That clean-up obviously didn’t take. Democrat clean-ups never do.

So while this evangelical is all too aware that the Republicans have fumbled on their own goal line during this entire election season, in the binary choice facing us in November it’s not even a close call for me. I’ll vote Republican, proudly. The Democrats have themselves, their unhinged activist base, their open hostility toward evangelicals, their promise to raise taxes, their weakness and lies about our country in the face of America’s enemies, and their own corrupt and amoral personnel in Congress to thank for that. I’m not thrilled with the Republicans, but I strongly dislike and actively oppose the Democrats.

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