This morning I listened to A Point of View on Radio 4, which today was Tim Egan talking about this weeks spectacular election results for the Democrats in the US mid-term elections. Part way through the programme he described the election as being ‘The Revenge of Ned Flanders‘, which I thought was an interesting description.
Like a lot of people outside the US, I was quite amazed that Bush was returned two years ago, which I think is a lot to do with how Bush is seen in the rest of the world, compared to how he was seen at that time by Americans. Egan highlights how Bush won re-election two years ago – the Republicans managed to mobilise a large group of mostly conservative Christians, who wouldn’t usually have voted, using the issue of moral values. This time around it was exactly the same issue that caused Bush to loose – indeed the issue came ahead of the war in Iraq as the number one issue. Since 2004 there have been a number of high profile news stories highlighting corrupt politicians. More than that, Reverend Ted Haggard, a well known Christian with a hotline to the White House – head of the National Association of Evangelicals, and widely credited with mobilising the Christian vote – had a rather spectacular fall from grace just days before the election. Essentially by courting the Christian vote as they did, the Republicans had set themselves up as a party of superior morality. Ted Haggard had previous said that if the evangelicals vote, they determine the election, which they did – both times. Having set themselves up as the party of morality, in barely two years the voters had discovered that they weren’t as superior as they were saying, and this was the backlash. Ironically right up until the end Bush was confident of victory, but ‘Ned Flanders’ voted for the other guy, all across the country. Having built a house on a foundation of morality, with that gone, the house, and the majorities just crumbled away.
What is interesting from my point of view is the idea that people will dutifully go an vote for whoever the Church tells them to vote for. Church of England clergy are generally supposed to not get involved in party politics. Indeed, I can think of only one priest who was politically active – telling his congregation that Jesus would vote Labour. However it didn’t seem to make much difference to the local result, people in the Church voted for who they believed they should vote for. It is much the same in our Church. We have the full spectrum of political affiliations, and even some members of the Church sitting on the Parish Council, but in our Church politics doesn’t really figure, indeed the British as a whole really don’t like it when the Church starts dabbling too deeply in politics.
I guess the real question will be whether the Republicans can turn it around in time for 2008 – can they bring the evangelical vote back on side? Maybe, but I am sure it won’t be the last time that the Republicans, or any other party in democracies across the world portrays itself as something to the voters, who then later discover that that’s not what they were at all.
You can read the full text of Tim Egans talk on the BBC News site here.
