More preaching...

Nope. Just saying.

Ok, since you're going to chicken out, I'll preach on.

I find it very amusing that the NC Dems trot out Smith every other Fall. They don't seem to realize that a lot of people really don't like the guy. Sure, he was a great basketball coach, but not among the greatest, in my opinion (and in that of many others). He always tended to lower the bar on individual performance and play to the lowest common denominator. For better or worse, he will always be remembered for two things: recruiting Michael Jordan and forcing the NCAA to adopt a shot clock. That's a mixed bag on the old success-o-meter, to be sure.

I can't remember if they hit this from the "Democrats are Religious Too" angle before, though. What a silly notion and what a shallow understanding of how everyday Americans think.

"The way the Democratic and Republican parties have talked about religion made it seem like the Republican Party is the moral choice...We believe that's not true."

Bzzzzt. Sorry, wrong answer, Chip, but thanks for playing. Then again, Chip is a law student and synthesizing moral equivalences is what lawyers do, isn't it? The problem, Chip, is not with what Republicans say. Republicans are selling their snake oil in the way that seems best to them, but those whose moral compass steers them away from the Democrats didn't land in the GOP's tent because the pubbies did a good job of marketing.

People who choose their political affiliation on moral grounds bailed out on the Democrats when, from the 1970s on, the Democrats began to embrace every niche constituency that ranged from essentially hedonistic to outright perverse. The DNC has overseen the public deconstruction of what middle America considers its central moral foundation for the last three decades, ostensibly in the name of progressivism, but actually as a political strategy meant to capture segments of voters who they thought to be "disenfranchised."

Too late, the Dems seem to have fallen to the fact that crack whores, transexuals, and rock'n'roll zombies aren't reliable voters. Furthermore, the Democrats' embrace of feminism and abortion has pretty much assured them the loss of alpha males of a moral base and traditionalist females of the same base, a good sized segment of the reliable electorate.

For the last decade, the Democrats have been carping and sniping at some entity they name, "the religious right." There were (and are) a few handy bogeymen for this nefarious group, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others. By and large, though, they couldn't point to any organized group of people large enough to represent the consistent defeats they were seeing at the polls. Hillary's "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" hyperbole and the drumbeat of Democrats' vitriolic attacks on people of faith, among other things, have cost them the reins of power.

So now, the Dems are starting to awaken to the idea that those religious nuts who they spent the last ten years attacking are also consistent attendees at the polls. Uh oh. Ever vigilant for yet another opportunity to pander to some interest group, they have decided it's time to show that they are us and we can trust them with our morality.

But they still don't get it.

"When you think about the Bible, what we (Democrats) stand for is right on message with Christian values," said Jerry Meek, the state Democratic chairman, referring to such issues as poverty, health care and the environment.

As Ferrell Blount points out (in an uncharacteristically clear fashion), the Democrats' bleating about family values and morality rings a little hollow considering the national party's continued support for abortion-on-demand and homosexuality. You can't have it both ways, Jerry. You can try to appeal to the religious right-of-center or you can continue to pander to post-modern American society. These mouth-breathing, religious zealot Neanderthals are a lot smarter than you give them credit for, Jerry. You can wash your face and comb your hair, but your backside is still drawing flies.

As well, they don't seem to understand that the constituency they are chasing doesn't attend social justice churches in the People's Republic of Chapel Hill. The core Christian faithful know that the quasi-Marxism preached by Democrats as the cure for poverty is just another form of slavery. They know that the social justice warriors are not fighting to save the poor, but rather to empower their Marxist masters. And they know, above all, that charity enforced at the point of the government's guns will earn the perpetrators nothing but the words I quoted below.

When this maneuver fails, as it inevitably will, the anointed elite will blame the sullen masses for misunderstanding their message. Ironically, the truth will be that it is the elite who missed the message, painted in red ink as tall as the mind can comprehend.