Dear Editor,
Your editorials “Primary Colours” (SN 11/01/08) and “The Party Faithful” (SN 17/01/08) are excellent synopses of the American Presidential contests for the two major parties to choose a candidate for the November elections. Among others, you hit on the role of faith in the campaign. Religion, unfortunately, has been exploited to lift the Democratic and Republican candidates.
On the Democratic side, Barack Obama’s religion became an issue with opponents making reference to his Muslim middle name (Hussein) to tie him with Islam supposedly with the expectation to turn away voters from him. But so far, any tie to Islam does not appear to hurt Obama as he has shown himself to be a strong, resilient candidate with almost all of his support coming from Christians. To her credit, Hillary Clinton has terminated the service of those in her camp who make reference to Obama’s faith. Obama has made it crystal clear he is not Muslim although he said his Kenyan relatives are Muslims (Obama’s father, who died in a car crash in Kenya, was Kenyan).
On the Republican side, reference has been made to Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith. Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, carried out a vile attack on Romney. In a recent campaign appearance, he rhetorically asked: “Isn’t it Mormonism that believes that Jesus is the brother of the devil?” A couple days later, Huckabee apologized to Romney and Mormons about that reference but the damage was done to Romney’s candidacy among Evangelicals. In the U.S, Evangelicals and Mormons (also known as the Church of Latter Day Saints in Guyana) don’t get along. During the election campaign, newspapers carried reports of how Evangelicals view Mormonism as a cult. The anti-Mormon crusade among Protestant (and born again) voters seems to have worked as it sank Romney’s candidacy in Iowa and New Hampshire.
It is surprising that the Republican candidates have not gone after Rudy Giuliani’s faith (Catholic) to sink his candidacy probably because Giuliani has sunk his own candidacy. It is no secret that Protestants and Catholics have no love for each other in America. In the 2000 campaign, Bush’s Evangelical supporters bashed Catholicism calling it a cult as widely reported in the media. The Evangelical-Catholic conflict was healed in the 2004 campaign as the two groups formed an unholy alliance to defeat John Kerry (who felt homosexuals should have equal rights with others – which religious figures used against him) for the Presidency.
The Catholic Church is not pleased with Giuliani’s three marriages and that has turned out to be a big problem for him. The negative publicity relating to his courtships, divorces, and marriages has contributed to the sinking of his poll numbers from first place (and unbeatable) to fifth place. For the record, only one American President was of the Catholic faith and that was John Kennedy whose Catholic faith figured prominently in the 1960 campaign. All the other Presidents were Protestants as are all the other Republican candidates in 2008. John McCain is not appealing to faith.
Although religion featured prominently in 2004 when the Bush campaign financed Christian churches to bring out the votes against Kerry, I don’t think voters will be so gullible now to fall for the religious morality appeal. It appears that the Democrats will win the Presidency if Clinton gets the nomination. The latest poll shows her beating McCain 46 to 42% while McCain beats Obama.
For the record, it was not Iowa that ended Kerry’s Presidential aspiration in 2004. It was Ohio where Christians voted solidly for Bush. I should note that the Ohio result was disputed. It is widely believed that the election was stolen and documentaries have been made exposing the fraud in Ohio where hundreds of thousands of Democrats (African Americans) were denied the right to vote. Many people believe that Kerry won the Presidency, not dissimilar to their belief that Al Gore won the Presidency in 2000.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
