“Here’s What You Ought to Do” said the Fox to the Chicken

Written by Micah Clark, AFA of Indiana

Scores of commentators have been rehashing the results of the November 6th election and advising the GOP on what it ought to do.  Let me say this to Republicans: only a party of fools would now take advice from the same media establishment that worked around the clock to ensure your defeat.  Instead of listening to the “talking heads” appearing on TV, both Republicans and Democrats would be wise to look at some amazing voter data from some truly large voting blocs.  They represent half of the American electorate, and their voting patterns have now been analyzed.

I don’t like breaking Americans into racial or ethnic classes, as I believe values of family, freedom and prosperity are universal virtues, not ethnic ones.  Still, there has been a lot of attention paid to the Hispanic vote. However, it consisted of just 10 percent of the vote total. (Seventy-two percent of the vote was white, but the media makes it sound like a small demographic.).  Far less attention has been paid to the votes cast by evangelical Christians who made up 26 percent of the total vote or 30 million out of 117 million votes.

Of those 30 million voters who identified as evangelical “born-again” Christians, 6.4 million of them voted for Barack Obama, who won by 2.4 million votes.  Twenty-one percent of these evangelical Christians voted to support the most pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-religious liberty, and anti-Israel administration in history.

Another huge multi-million bloc of voters were Catholics, who account for an additional 25 percent of the electorate.  Amazingly, after nearly two years of unprecedented hostility toward Catholic institutions and religious teachings on contraception, abortion, and marriage, an astonishing 50 percent of Catholics still voted for President Obama. Yet, it is a decline of 4 points since 2008.   (Obama received 42 percent of the votes of “practicing” Catholics.)

This double-mindedness is not unusual. It could be said that those most hurt by the worst economy since the 1930’s heavily voted to continue the policies of the Obama administration rather than change them.   Yet, what does it say about those people who identify as Christ-followers, but vote more like Atheists in the privacy of a voting booth?

The huge voting bloc of evangelicals and Catholics could still create enormous change for their issues, but only if they vote consistently with their faith.  By the way, the same number of evangelicals and fewer Catholics voted in 2012 than did in 2008. Just a few million more evangelicals and Catholics voting for pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-religious liberty candidates could offset other demographics that are becoming more liberal and have garnered the fascination of the media.

It is estimated that there were 35 million evangelical Christians who did not even vote! If just 10 percent of them went to the polls and voted their values, it would have turned last week’s results into a large Mitt Romney win.

Life Site News notes that the same disconnect could be said of pro-life voters.  You may not know by the media and political talk lately, but this summer Gallup Polling found that the number of Americans who support abortion had dropped to an all-time low (41 percent) and the number who are pro-life was at a record high of 51 percent.   Yet, last Tuesday, exit polls found that 59 percent of voters expressed a pro-abortion position.  Either pro-lifers didn’t show up, or many of them voted for the most pro-abortion administration in history.

This news is a result of the mile-wide, inch deep Christianity that fails to disciple its followers to turn Biblical views into public action. It is also a reminder that millions upon millions of people of faith are choosing to listen to and think like the culture around them rather than applying God’s instructions to their hearts and minds.  Moreover, it is not enough to tell people in the pews every other October to “vote your values” if those values are not being taught regularly on Sundays and lived out on Mondays.

This flat turnout data and voter schizophrenia should also confirm that if either the Republican Party or the Democrat Party wants the bulk of the large evangelical and Catholic vote bloc, it needs to have candidates with strong credentials on values issues.

As for the media’s advice, it is nothing new.  Here is a remarkable two-minute clip from Ronald Reagan back in 1975 talking about this.  Even during the Presidency of Gerald Ford, a moderate’s moderate, the establishment was calling for the party to moderate its views following the defeat of 1974.