Catholic Kaine Wins in Virginia
Virginians elected Democrat Timothy Kaine last Tuesday as the state's next governor. His opposition, Jerry Kilgore, campaigned heavily on the premise that Kaine is "too liberal for the conservative state" (Shear). Kaine, on the other hand, took a much different approach on the campaign trail. Kaine broke away from traditional Democratic tactics and often discussed his Catholic faith. He regularly mentioned his work as a missionary and many of his television and radio ads highlighted his religion. One ad in particular stated: "the Bible teaches we can accomplish great things when we work together."
By taking a seemingly "un-Democratic" approach to this election, Kaine made he appealing to both the liberals and the religious--two groups that generally do not vote together. So what drove Kaine to make one of his strongest stances about God? Many he truly believes that religion should help determine the outcome of an election, but, more likely, he realized that, just as President Bush did in the last election, he had to put faith at the forefront of his campaign in order to win. In a state like Virginal, historically conservative, this is no exception. This election, however, makes me wonder. In our increasingly religious country does a candidate set him/herself up for failure if he/she does not glorify religion in his/her campaign? Now more than ever, because religious tactics have crossed party lines, this seems to be the new reality. Religion draws voters from both sides and it will be interesting to see how many candidates, Democrats and Republicans, use their faith as a platform in the next election.
1 Comments:
Well, religion has always been a part of American politics, this isn't particularly new. What is new is the way people relate their religion to their politics. That's something interesting to explore from here. It was not too long ago that being Catholic was a liability, as anti-catholic sentiment was still rife in this country. How did that die? What I also see is how much politicians now represent their moral position as coming out of a religious framework. I think, in the past, politicians wanted to make sure that people knew they were religious. But now, they want to show their politics as directly related to that religion. This is happening more and more on the left--and not just the moderate left. Take a look at Street Prophets to get a sense of this growing radical religious left.
But what happens if religion simply becomes a signifier everyone uses? The ability of the religious right to use "religion" as a particular referent for their politics disintegrates, but so does the ability to have "religion" mean anything politically. In other words, if more people on both the right and the left invoke religion successfully, identifying with religion becomes less useful for projecting a particular political position. This may ultimately place religion in the position of ideological ornament, something a politician must make sure to wear, like a suit jacket, but which means very little beyond that jacket. What do you think?
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