March 27, 2008
So now it seems that the critical Pennsylvania Democratic primary hinges on, of all things, the Catholic vote. As the AP reports: Understanding Pennsylvania’s rich Catholic tradition and responding to it is an article of faith for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama as the April 22 primary looms in the still unsettled and intense Democratic presidential race…. Pennsylvania has an estimated 3.8 million Catholics, or just over 30 percent of the state’s population, and the percentage among Democrats is estimated to be slightly higher…. “We found Catholic voters aren’t really a lot different in terms of many of their concerns than the average voter,” [Obama campaign operative former Indiana Rep. Tim] Roemer said.
To this, my inner Church Lady responds, “Well isn’t that special?” What a rich tradition it is, that yields citizens who think and vote… just about like everybody else. As the Borg might say, “You have been assimilated.” Submission accomplished.
Of course it’s appalling that millions of church-goers who claim to believe that abortion is murder are sitting around dithering over which pro-abortion Democrat, Reverend Ike or Margaret Sanger, will offer them more bleeding chunks of pork hacked off from their fellow taxpayers. I’d like to point out to the good Catholics of Pennsylvania that direct involvement in procuring an abortion results in automatic excommunication. What’s the proper punishment for indirect involvement”such as voting for candidates who support scooping out the brains of nearly newborn babies? Let’s leave that one to a higher authority, like the “fearsome judgment seat of Christ.”
But the question has become a lot less simple with this election, as I suggested in a previous column. This year is quite an ugly one for pro-life voters addicted to the two-party system, who narcissistically fret about “wasting their vote.” To this I respond that most votes are wasted, since your odds of changing the course of a national election by voting are much lower than of your being shot by a sniper on your way to the polls. Get over yourselves. Write in a decent candidate, or spend Election Day someplace wholesome, like a bar.
The worst candidate is undoubtedly Hillary Clinton, who pretends to oppose neocon interventionism when it suits her, but shows her true colors in her votes and in the things she doesn’t say (for instance, she won’t rule out attacking Iran). It’s telling that Ann Coulter”who knows a thing or two about sadism”reacted to McCain’s rise in the polls by promising to support Hillary Clinton, reasoning, “She’s better on the war. She’s better on torture, too.” Vote for Hillary, and you don’t just get Bill; you also get more pro-abortion votes on the Court, and more aggressive wars. Given her attempt to recruit Latinos to counterbalance the black vote, you can count on higher immigration totals, too. Hillary is the candidate of the unholy trinity: Warmongering, baby-killing, treason.
Among white voters, Obama is the “He sets such a good example” candidate. Honkies who want Obama secretly hope that electing a black president will make it safer for them to go to bank machines at night, encourage inner-city chastity, and subtly influence urban youths to turn down the subwoofers on their Humvees. This reminds me of the sports magazines which a few years back imagined that Tiger Woods would lead millions of young black men to turn to… er, golf. (Why not fox-hunting? Let’s dream big, people!) From a policy perspective, he’s probably the least damaging candidate. While his court appointments will be awful, they’ll be no worse than Hillary’s, and he’s much less likely (as Justin Raimondo points out) to try invading big, messy Islamic countries and bombing them into the Space Age. On immigration, he’s the most likely of the three to adopt more moderate policies. Sen. Obama cannot be unaware of the harsh impact immigration is having on black communities such as Los Angeles—or of the 40 year wage freeze on working class Americans (disproportionately black) which has come since the 1965 immigration act open the floodgates to unskilled labor.
McCain is the Erich Ludendorff of the race”the mentally unsound nationalist who helped us lose the last war, and promises to lose the next one on a vastly bigger scale. And I, for one, believe him. Although he claims to be “proudly pro-life,” you can almost hear him winking as he says it. Given his sabotage of Republican attempts to break Senate filibusters on judicial appointments, his obstructionism on pro-family issues, and his VP flirtations with Joe “Partial Birth” Lieberman, there is no reason to take this claim seriously. However, even if we grant that McCain would indeed appoint pro-life justices to the court, as I pointed out earlier this month, it’s unlikely that this would save a single unborn life. Overturning Roe v. Wade, while a very good thing, will merely serve to centralize the abortion industry in New York and California airports. (I’m surprised that Travelocity isn’t funding McCain.) Such an outcome is not enough to justify voting for a candidate who promises to wage aggressive wars. Of course, McCain is also the candidate of amnesty for illegal aliens, who’ll obstruct completion of a border fence, and do everything he can to make sure that if there’s a single low-skill job in America for which a citizen is qualified, there will be a recent immigrant who’ll do the job for less.
So that’s the 2008 run-down, good people of Pennsylvania, of America. Get out there and hold your noses, “put in your earplugs, put on your eyeshades…. You know where to put the cork.”
