By Adam Fogle | Thu, Jan 3, 2008 - 9:53 pm | Posted in Democrats, Republicans
Here are the final totals:
REPUBLICANS
- Mike Huckabee - 34%
- Mitt Romney - 25%
- Fred Thompson - 13%
- John McCain - 13%
- Ron Paul - 10%
- Rudy Giuliani - 4%
- Duncan Hunter - 1%
DEMOCRATS
- Barack Obama - 38%
- John Edwards - 30%
- Hillary Clinton - 29%
- Bill Richardson - 2%
- Joe Biden - 1%
Since everyone in the country will be reporting on this and analyzing the results every which way from yesterday, I’m going to defer commenting for now. In the meantime, it’s off to New Hampshire Tuesday.
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“This campaign is not just about people who have religious fervor,” Huckabee said as he made the rounds of morning talk shows this morning (Friday). Unfortunately, it is largely about people who have religious fervor. A country governed by religious zealots is disastrous.
If theocracy in Iran and the dominance of religion in the governments of other states is to be abhorred, American voters should also guard against the dangerous corruption of democracy by religion. America’s seeming insistence on Christian leadership not only threatens the constitutional separation of church and state but smacks of theocracy.
The current field of Republican party presidential candidates woos voters in primary contests based largely on who is the most Christian, rather than who will best get the U.S. out of Iraq with honor, who will best repair damage to the country’s broken economy and domestic infrastructure and who will best restore its foreign relationships. One of the candidates has to assure voters that his religion, Mormonism, is Christian.
On the Democratic side, the presidential candidates actively present their Christian bona fides to voters. One of the candidates, whose name sounds Middle Eastern and who spent part of his childhood in an Islamic country, has to convince voters that he is not a Muslim but is a Christian.
The U.S. is straying from the wise counsel of its founding fathers. Too many voters demand that politicians be, or at least profess to be, Christians. Would a majority of voters not also elect men and women to office who are, or who profess to be, atheists, agnostics or deists? Would the U.S. not elect Thomas Jefferson to office today?
Americans seem to believe that the more Christian their president, senators and representatives, the more divinely inspired their governance will be. When the policy directions and the missteps of the current Christian-based administration are considered, even the most ardent Christian would not admit to seeing the hand of Jesus or inspiration by the Holy Trinity.
Presidents and politicians may pray for divine inspiration, intervention and special blessing, but voters shouldn’t insist that they do so. Too much time spent in prayer might take time away from the rational consideration of the issues that confront the nation.
When voting for a change in course of the ship of state, the electorate should minimize, if not eliminate from its calculations, the importance of a politician’s religion.