Fr Jape has another tirade against the criticism of single issue voters (SIVs). At first, I was a bit upset, and went so far as to write a quick entry at my in-laws house right after Thanksgiving lunch. But then I thought I wasn’t really understanding the issue well enough. Perhaps I was being to critical of Fr. Jape and letting my distrust of all things Republican (and Democrat) cloud my thinking. In an effort to understand the issue at hand a bit better, I reread Jape’s first entry on the subject. Let me make this comment first:
I think at least a slight majority of all evangelical Christians who voted for Bush this past election aren’t really SIVs. That is, while they share the same ethusiasm for the SIV issues (abortion and gay marriage), they are truly on board with the current Republican/neo-conservative philosophy — they believe in limited government, they may be members of the NRA, they believe in the free market. While the media would like to portray them as SIVs (or “moral issue” voters — MIVs), they really aren’t. If abortion wasn’t such a political issue, they’d still be pulling the lever for George Bush.
That means that people like Dr. Eric Miller are truly in the minority. What Miller represents (and I’ve said this before) is truly a SIV. While his pro-life leanings led him to vote for George Bush, he didn’t feel comfortable with that decision because he wasn’t truly on board with the neo-conservative agenda. If abortion weren’t a political issue, he would not have pulled the lever for Bush. In fact, if I read his essay correctly, he may have even voted for John Kerry. But now, finally, we’re getting at the crux of my issue with this whole argument.
Most of the country only sees two answers.
Fr. Jape, Dr. Miller (to some extent), and Joel Betz fall into a typically Republican mindset — if you’re not for George Bush, you’re obviously a Democrat. Conservatives do really prefer to see things as simply black and white issues — you’re with us or you’re against us. I’m not advocating nuance here, but I am advocating, along with others, a better political choice. I am not, as Belz puts it, wobbling carelessly on the road. I am looking for a political group that isn’t playing nice with a political party that is not, at it’s very core, a Christian organization. Voting for George Bush because of moral issues, while noble and theologically defensible, is nothing more than, to paraphrase Matt, changing another flat tyre instead of sweeping the nails from the driveway. We aren’t fixing the problem — we’re only stopping the bleeding.
Posted on 26 November 2004