I spotted this on Julian Sanchez’s blog, via an Instapundit link:
I think you’re giving too much credit to religious folks. For one, this whole religious-tactic is only being discussed within the blogsphere – it hasn’t made it’s way into the mainstream yet. Hell, I doubt most Southern churchgoers evey know who Dean is… Consider the demographic Dean’s trying to target: White, conservative, religious Southerners… it’s not exactly a group that’s known for it’s smarts.
On the lower end of this group’s income spectrum you’ve actually got people who vote Republican when it runs counter to everything they actually need (welfare, aid, education) from an elected official. This was Dean’s whole point with the confederate flag comment – that he wants to reach out and grab a group who vote with their bibles and not their brains… based upon just a few issues. If he can sway them it will be a windfall.
Yes, as the Washington Post famously reported, we evangelicals are poorly educated and easily led. I look forward to hearing how this joker – Will, by name – plans to explain it after these poor ignorant folk too stupid to see that they’re being used see through Mr. Dean’s transparent ruse and fail to deliver him a single Southern state in the general election. Assuming, of course, that this doesn’t blow up so badly in his face that he doesn’t make it that far. Don’t get me wrong, Dean has the right idea if he wants to have any chance of winning, it’s just that his execution is appallingly clumsy.
The first irony is that there are quite possibly more evangelical bloggers than there are arrogant left-wing cretins like Will. Which is why it is being discussed in the blogosphere. One of my favorite studies a few years back showed that members of the Christian Coalition were significantly more likely to own computers and modems than the average American. Let them keep underestimating us; they’ve been doing it since the days of Nero.