It's been months since I visited the "God-o-Meter," but it appears to give Barack Obama a higher rating on religious issues than it gives John McCain.It also had immediate reflections on the "godless" campaign commercial the Dole campaign has used recently.
Dan Gilgoff writes for the God-o-Meter that the rapid response ad produced by the campaign for Kay Hagan, Dole's opponent, "is a very post-2004 way for a Democrat to respond to a faith-based attack: quickly responding to the attack head-on and testifying unabashedly about one's faith commitment."
Hagan's tactic, Gilgoff says, is "a very 'Obama' way to respond to a faith-based attack, as opposed to the 'Kerry' way of responding: wringing one's hands and marrying each public pronouncement about one's faith to a reaffirmation of support for the complete separation of church and state."
As for Dole, Gilgoff observes, her commercial "is a stark reminder that faith-based attacks have been kept to a relative minimum in the presidential race."
Gilgoff goes on to point out that McCain has not used religion as a wedge issue in this campaign, not even using Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright to "skewer him for cozying up to a man of the cloth."
Although many voters have welcomed the de-emphasis of religion in the political debate, Gilgoff appears to draw the conclusion that refraining from "faith-based attacks" will cost McCain the election.
And he warns that could be the lesson Republicans take into the next presidential election cycle.
"[I]f [Sarah] Palin, Mike Huckabee, or another social conservative gets the nod in 2012, due to a post-McCain religious right uprising, we could be looking at more faith-based attacks at the presidential level," he writes.
Heaven forbid.
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