And another thing…

CRANMER reckons there are many reasons why Christians should vote Conservative. Well, of course he does: he’s a Christian, he’s a Tory, ergo, all Christians should be Tories.

I’ve come across this nonsense before, of course, many times, within the church. Shortly after the 1987 general election, I was visiting a friend who had been a member of the same “house church” as me back in our Ayshire days. She had now settled in Sale, Cheshire, with her husband. A Christian friend came round in the evening (with his guitar, natch; wouldn’t want to avoid any evangelical Christian clichés, now, would we?). “Did you vote for our man?” he asked my friend. “Our man”, it turned out, had been the local SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate a few weeks previously, who was also a member of my friend’s local church. Never mind the policies — so long as the person voting for them in the Commons shares your faith. Apparently.

Cranmer’s argument, naturally, is slightly more sophisticated, and it centres on abortion. If you’re a Christian, you’ll oppose abortion, and since David Cameron has apparently offered a free vote on reducing the upper limit, then Christians should vote for a Conservative government. Now, I don’t deny that this argument has a certain logic: more Tory MPs and candidates than Labour tend to be pro-life, so if that’s the most important issue for you, you’ll be tempted to vote accordingly.

But as I’ve argued before, abortion has always been decided on a free vote, and I assume always will be. My biggest problem with Cranmer’s argument (apart from the fact that he refers to himself in the third person; Tom has never been comfortable with that style of writing, which is why he gave up on Facebook) is that he’s trying to accomplish what others —such as Nadine — have tried to do before: make abortion a party political issue along the same lines as in the US.

This would be very bad for British politics and even worse, in the long term, for the Conservative Party. Yes, there was a time when the Republican Party successfully exploited the prejudices and intolerance of the Christian Right for electoral gain. But they paid the price for their 4G strategy (God, guns, gays and gynecology) at the last election and look as if they’ll ditch their fundamentalist allies in order to gain a foothold in the mid-terms next year.

There’s nothing wrong in promoting your own party to those of your own faith, of course. In 1988 I made an impassioned plea to my own church members that the poll tax should be resisted on the basis that a flat tax, with everyone paying the same amount regardless of income, was incompatible with the Biblical principle of tithing. Most members agreed, but it didn’t mean they voted Labour afterwards; I suspect most of them continued to vote Tory.

Tory-voting Christians all too often try to make this specious argument, that a single party (theirs, of course) most accurately represents “Christian values”. Labour-voting Christians, in my experience, tend not to, or at least, they do it less often. Perhaps that’s because they look across at the American political system and are repulsed by the stranglehold that the Christian Right have over Republican policy and don’t want to see the same thing happen here.

More likely, however, they simply recognise that it’s far too simplistic to claim any one party for God, that individuals should be trusted to make their own choice, and those choices respected.

The problem is that there are some vocal Tories out there who look across the Atlantic and actually like what they see. They see the intolerance and ignorance of the likes of Sarah Palin and think: “Yes, let’s have some of that over here!”

Very worrying indeed.

CONTINUING my lone crusade to convince someone — anyone, in fact — that David Cameron’s detoxification strategy has been 100 per cent cosmetic and zero per cent substance, here’s the latest piece of evidence.

Louise Bagshawe, the novelist and Tory candidate for Corby, has Twittered that Sarah Palin is her "heroine". And no, I don’t think she was being ironic, judging from some of her subsequent Tweets.

Bagshawe is one of the Tories’ most high profile candidates, frequently appearing, presumably at the request of Central Office, in media articles profiling the Tories’ "next generation".

And Sarah Palin is her heroine.

Sarah Palin, who made an international, as well as a national, laughing stock of last year’s Republican presidential campaign.

Sarah Palin, who the Alaskan state legislature concluded had abused her powers as governor by persecuting her sister’s ex-husband.

Sarah Palin, who actually believes  that dinosaurs and humans co-existed because she believes in the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Sarah Palin, whose good ol’ fashioned folksy charm just wasn’t enough to hide the fact that she was one of the least qualified vice-presidential candidates in modern political history. You betcha!

John McCain, by all accounts a decent and principled man, holed his own bid for the Whitehouse below the waterline by appointing her as his running mate, while simultaneously prompting the world to reassess whether he had the political judgment after all to be elected to his country’s highest office. After all, someone who thinks it a good idea to put Sarah Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency can hardly be trusted to make other, less important decisions in government.

As an Obama supporter, I obviously would like to see Palin become her party’s standard bearer in 2012. But even the Republican Party, I strongly suspect, don’t have that much of a death wish. They might opt for her if Obama looks like being unbeatable by then, in which case she’ll be rendered as harmless as Bob Dole was against Clinton in 1996. But if Obama’s looking remotely vulnerable, I expect the party will want to nominate a credible candidate instead.

The interesting question is: how many other Tory candidates and MPs actually take Palin seriously and want her to become president (other than Nadine, obviously)? An interesting survey of Tory candidates today at ConservativeHome reveals that as many supported Obama as opposed him. We know that Dave himself supported McCain (although his endorsement came before Palin’s nomination for VP).

Bagshawe has since Twittered that she doesn’t agree with Palin on gay rights but she does on abortion. Well, throw a stick into any Southern Baptist church in America and you’ll hit someone with the same views — surely Palin’s got more going for her than that? Apart from the glasses, of course, which I admit are very fetching.

Palin is an extremist. She is also a fool. I would question the political judgment, therefore, of anyone who describes her as their "heroine". 

UPDATE at 11.00 am, 4th July: Louise herself has replied by Twitter, suggesting that the accusation that Palin thinks dinosaurs and people walked the earth at the same time is a smear. If what I wrote above is untrue, then I apologise. But again, most people don’t believe this either and it doesn’t qualify them to be president. Can anyone provide a link to a direct quote by Palin denying the whole One Million years BC scenario?

EIGHT years ago Carolyn and I were fortunate enough to be invited to the Democrat election night party at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. 

When Florida was called for Gore, I shared the large crowds elation. When the networks changed their mind and put the state back into Bush’s column, I got depressed and went to bed, assuming the worst. Expecting to hear the confirmed result when I woke up, I was astounded to hear about events unfolding in Florida.

Naturally, we had expected to know who had won the election by the next day, and certainly by the time we caught the plane home. But the drama of the 2000 US election was to continue for far longer than our holiday.

The drama of that time, and the anger and frustration I felt at the final outcome, came back to me this evening when I watched the excellent HBO TV movie, Recount. I thought it an appropriate thing to watch while waiting to go to the election night party being organised by Glasgow South Labour Party tonight at Queen’s Park FC.

Watching the film has not put me in a good or an optimistic mood. How could a nation with such a proud democratic tradition allow a presidential election to be effectively stolen? The cynicism and duplicity of the Republican establishment was truly dispiriting. For me, the bottom line was always that while the Democrats thought every vote should be counted, the Republicans didn’t. That should tell you everything you need to know about the Bush campaign in 2000.

What will tonight bring? I’m hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. Friends mock me because I refuse to allow myself to believe that Obama has it in the bag. But you never know. We won’t have to wait too long to find out. And I certainly hope we won’t have to wait as long as we did in 2000.

There will be alcohol served this evening, hence my decision not to do a live blog. Iain Dale looks like his coverage will be entertaining, so I’ll be logging on there.

Speak with you tomorrow, when we’ll be facing either a bright new tomorrow or Sarah Palin as vice-president elect.

I STILL refuse to get my hopes up, but this makes very interesting reading and seems to indicate classic implosion behaviour by losing campaigns.

But I don’t see any overweight women practicing their scales just yet.

HAT-TIP to Scottish Unionist for unearthing these illuminating quotes which pretty much sum up nationalists’ views of anyone who disagrees with them. Seems I was being over-generous in comparing them to Sarah Palin’s true believers.

ARE Alex Salmond and Sarah Palin Facebook friends, I wonder?

The Alaskan governor and her hordes of hangers, gun nuts, homophobes, secessionists and government-haters constantly send out the message that any criticisim of their candidate or their party isn’t just wrong – it’s unpatriotic.

If you don’t support the Republicans – or more precisely, if you support the Democrats – then you must hate your country.

And then there’s Alex and his gang of supporters. Yes, they love Scotland, but they hate their opponents much, much more. And if anyone dares criticise the SNP, why, that’s because they hate Scotland, they think the Scottish people are too stupid to run their own country.

Listening to The World This Weekend today, I even heard nationalist lickspittle objective commentator Iain Macwhirter buy into this lie. He told the programme that in 2007 the Labour Party had told the Scottish electorate: 

“…you can’t stand up, you’re useless, your too wee…”

Really, Iain? Labour actually said that? I’d be interested to see the proof of that.

What he is doing, of course, is buying into Salmond-speak, or Palin-speak, if you like. Any rational criticism of the SNP/Republicans is twisted and deliberately misinterpreted so that it becomes an attack on Scotland/America itself. And if you’re a Labour/Democrat politician, that means you’re a Unionist/Liberal who can’t be trusted with the reigns of power.

Status update: Alex is smirking.

Status update: Sarah is gosh darnit, just lovin’ her country so much… etc..

HOW bad is John McCain doing when Christopher Hitchens says this about his campaign:

It therefore seems to me that the Republican Party has invited not just defeat but discredit this year, and that both its nominees for the highest offices in the land should be decisively repudiated, along with any senators, congressmen, and governors who endorse them.

Read the whole article here.

A PICTURE in this morning’s Times caught my eye. This is it.

Where do you start?

These people are trying to win the election for their candidate (Palin) by suggesting that Barack Obama should somehow be associated with Osama bin Laden… because their names sound a bit similar!

If that weren’t moronic and offensive enough, check out these intellectual musings (as reported in The Times) from the redneck tendency of the Republican Party:

“Obama and Biden will take this country far too far to the left. They’ll take away the freedoms I’ve spent 40 years defending,” said Dwayne Schnakenberg, 40, a Navy veteran.

Okay, I put that in just to expose the stupidity of someone who belives he’s been fighting for his country since the moment he was born. But there are others. Here’s my personal favourite:

“What turned me off was the way he wouldn’t put his hand over his heart for the Pledge of Allegiance or wear a flag pin. I don’t know how you can call yourself an American if you don’t do that,” Heather Zimerman, 39, a substitute teacher, said.

Uh-huh. Okay. Next!

“I don’t know what he was doing in Indonesia all those years — hanging around with Muslim terrorists?” Madeleine Willis, 60, a retired factory worker, asked.

And, depressingly, there’s more…

Mr Taylor complained about the trip to Europe that Mr Obama took in July: “I don’t think the president of the US should go around saying, ‘I’m a citizen of the world’.”

The report adds that “One beefy man wore a T-shirt proclaiming: ‘The difference between Obama and Osama is just a little B.S.’”

I’m not an anti-American. I genuinely love America and I think it’s been a great force for good in the world throughout its history. And I have a lot of respect for the US political process. Too many Brits sneer at the spectacle of primaries and conventions.

But this kind of mugwump, redneck ignorance is truly disturbing.

I almost expected one of the Republicans quoted to pick up his banjo and say: “You’ve got a purty mouth, boy…”

I DON’T often get to see Panorama these days, but after watching tonight’s programme, I don’t think I’m missing much.

“Obama and the Pitbull: An American Story” promised to be an in-depth analysis of the divergent characters of Senator Obama and Governor Palin. Instead it was a superficial rehash of opinion that’s been reported in almost every newspaper in the past few months. Curiously, while there were a few talking heads from Chicago critical of Obama’s motives and experience (or lack of it), the only person who talked about Palin was her hagiographer biographer, who clearly thought the governor represented the Second Coming in female form but didn’t say so because that would be, like, heresy…

And I got the distinct impression that Jeremy Vine’s intro was recorded long before the “Palin bounce” had dissipated, and certainly long before the more recent confirmation that she abused her office. So there were a few seemingly hastily-recorded add-ons in the voice-over that jarred completely with the programme’s central premise: that a down-to-earth “good ol’ girl” was running rings round the elitist intellectual senator.

Poor.

I WONDER how many British Tories will continue supporting Palin now that such support can no longer be extricated from tolerance of abuse of power. I expect their first line of defence will be “Well, NuLabour did it first,” or some such nonsense.

Bear in mind, of course, that abuse of power and an inescapably obvious lack of qualifications for office have not always stopped US politicians from being elected.