{"id":3158,"date":"2008-10-31T08:35:47","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T15:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/10\/31\/elizabeth-doles-last-stand\/"},"modified":"2008-10-31T08:35:47","modified_gmt":"2008-10-31T15:35:47","slug":"elizabeth-doles-last-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2008\/10\/31\/elizabeth-doles-last-stand\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Dole’s Last Stand."},"content":{"rendered":"

Dear “Godless Americans PAC<\/a>“:<\/p>\n

Understand, this is\u00c2\u00a0a nation where you can count on the number of elected Atheists to the federal government on\u00c2\u00a0a single hypothetical\u00c2\u00a0hand\u00c2\u00a0that has\u00c2\u00a0four fingers missing, and a hearty “hello” to Representative Pete Stark.\u00c2\u00a0 It is also a nation where Atheists rank higher than any other group in polls as a disqualifier to elected office, particular the presidency.\u00c2\u00a0 As such an organization designed to be confrontational, as suggested by the name “Godless Americans”, makes sense if you have no pretense for immediate political gratification — keep up the fight in the culture, court challenges, this or that law, intellectual rigours, whatever.\u00c2\u00a0 A “PAC”, meant to elect people into office, with that name does not make sense, and would become politically toxic through most of the country.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0You can be one or the other, but you cannot be both.\u00c2\u00a0 If you want to be a pac, your battle-lines would best be drawn with the inclusive lines of suggesting not a godless America, but either a secular government or a pluralistic society.<\/p>\n

Well, live and learn, I suppose.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t think Dole really wanted to run this ad — ruins reputations and such — but had it in her ready if things got really tough.\u00c2\u00a0 The “need to check President Obama” card seemed to not move the numbers, so this card has been played, and it’s either working or backfiring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear “Godless Americans PAC“: Understand, this is\u00c2\u00a0a nation where you can count on the number of elected Atheists to the federal government on\u00c2\u00a0a single hypothetical\u00c2\u00a0hand\u00c2\u00a0that has\u00c2\u00a0four fingers missing, and a hearty “hello” to Representative Pete Stark.\u00c2\u00a0 It is also a nation where Atheists rank higher than any other group in polls as a disqualifier to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}