culture wars

Terry Mattingly looks at the most recent battles, from the left and the right:

If you could erase one moment from Sen. Barack Obama’s White House campaign, which would you choose?

That’s an easy question for evangelicals, Catholics and other religious believers who back Obama. Most would happily erase all evidence of his speech last spring to a circle of insiders behind closed doors in San Francisco. For those who have ignored national news in 2008, Obama talked about meeting voters in rural Pennsylvania, where hard times have crushed hopes and fueled resentments.

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter,” he said, that “they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them … to explain their frustrations.”

Welcome back to the “culture wars,” all you politicos who hoped and prayed that talk about “values voters” and “pew gaps” would disappear. Instead, Republicans have been chanting this mantra — “bitter,” “cling,” “God” and “guns” — for months.

Read “Culture wars 2008” on Terry Mattingly’s Web site.