Tennessee GOP Gubernatorial candidate Zach Wamp has a simple message for voters: if you love God, vote for me.
I have been a critic in prior columns of the increasing use of faith-based politics by both Republicans and Democrats, including President Obama. Few, however, are quite as direct as Wamp:
And here’s my heart. I believe God is the center of the universe. He made us to serve him and to serve others. We must restore America to its Judeo-Christian heritage and our constitution.
Let me try putting a positive spin on this:
1. It’s nice that after years of “being in the closet” about their fundamentalist religious basis, these politicians are “outing” themselves and living openly. “Fundy pride parade” anyone?
2. After centuries of overt Antisemitism, it’s nice that right-wing fundamentalist “Christians” (cough) are paying lip service to Jewish people. (Until, as they believe, Armageddon comes and the Jewish people who remain true to their faith are all massacred in a second Holocaust…)
This is classic 1855 fear-mongering which has now been transported in time to 2010. There is ZERO place for this kind of complete trash to be introduced in our global dialogue. People and groups with perspectives this polluted should be encouraged to wander off in the desert together. Forever.
Lottakatz: It’s a mystery to me, too. I think religion plays a great part in it. These people were frighteningly poor and mostly illiterate. Your family sounds a lot like my family — my paternal grandmother rejected signing up for Social Security benefits because she was afraid of taking the Mark of the Beast.
Likewise, my great-grandmother had only enough education to be able to sign her name, so her exegetical skills with the bible were rather limited. But, she could read enough to get the idea that fear was a good thing; and she got more than her share, helped no doubt, by the hard life she endured for so many years.
Of course, both these women and their families gained much from the FDR years. I never heard them say a word about him, and in what little opinion they expressed about the matter, both were conservative in their politics. I have always been fascinated that FDR, an American aristocrat if there ever was one, appeared to care so deeply about the fortunes of the poor and displaced.
This is a striking contrast to the “tough shit” attitude of many politicians today, who seem quite oblivious to the idea that real people will have to live with the consequences of their legislation. Roosevelt may have been faking it, but it worked, and I wish some of the hacks in Washington would at least try to fake some degree of concern for the plight of those among us who are now suffering.
C-Street house is ultimate proof there is no God. No supreme being would tolerate such a disgrace to represent it.
amati1684, My mothers family lived in Tennessee and what little of it is left still does and they were all, and are now Democrats. My last living maternal aunt is now 90 and she remembers clearly what growing up as the child of a subsistence farmer was like, as well as growing up in a depression.
She and her parents became Roosevelt Democrats and still are. They lived without medical care (couldn’t afford it even when a doctor moved close enough to be seen regularly), any kind of a social safety net, no electricity until the TVA finally got to their county (and they could afford it, which was much later) and city services like indoor plumbing and busses that would save their children a 5 mile walk to school were nonexistent. The programs and progress that benefited them were all Democratic initiatives.
It has always perplexed me that a State that has benefited so greatly from Democratic programs so many people are Republican. Though, the Democrats were Dixicrats and that aspect of the political equation IMO can’t be factored out by any means.
I will assume that most of those responding here do not live in Tennessee. I do, and it’s all I can do to not throw my TV out the window. For months we have been subjected to saturation bombing by all the right-wing candidates: The Darlin family has come to town and they won’t leave.
Like the stifling air outside, the temperature in these ads has risen. Then last week, with fresh mud flying through the air, Zach’s God-slinging commercial hit the airways. The first time I saw it I “like to throwed up.” To my happy surprise, criticism from both sides has been fast and stinging. For now, thank you , Jesus, Haslam’s camp has wisely resisted the urge to tell us how often Bill and the Lord go fishing together.
In the years since Bro. Wamp forgot his pledge to serve only two terms, the Third District has been positively drowning in pork, and I’m sure Zach thought that all his work on our behalf would make this race a cakewalk. But, now that he’s trailing Haslam by a scary margin, the ol’ boy appears to be losing his cool. He released agitated comments in the paper this morning calling his images in a new flyer from the Haslam campaign “sinister” and “Middle Eastern.” There goes the Muslim vote…
For once in this religion-marinated state, a Republican candidate may pay a price for playing the God card. It’s about time.
Mike Appleton:
and by extension whatever he (Wamp) wants to do as governor. Pretty scary if you ask me.