Sarah Palin and the Deafening of Evangelicals
In his single act of choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain quieted the evangelical wing of the Republican Party. Palin has now deafened them. As a consequence, McCain can be himself without worrying that he will offend the religious right by being insufficiently religious. That, rather than any energy expertise or supposed foreign policy chops, may be Palin’s biggest contribution.
McCain’s speech accepting the Republican Party’s nomination to be president of the United States suggests just how little he needs to do to keep the evangelical wing of the Republican Party happy in the wake of choosing Palin. The day after Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech electrified the delegates in St. Paul, John McCain spoke. In his speech, he reminded the assemblage of his five-plus years of POW captivity. He did so to explain his love of and devotion to the United States. During the speech, he explained that when faced death, he turned to his country to sustain him. Under normal circumstances, many evangelicals might have panned McCain as a secularist, suggesting that when a man of faith faces death he puts his trust in God or Jesus Christ. Luckily for McCain, the Republican evangelicals could see his lips moving but could not hear him. They could not hear him because Sarah Palin’s speech from the night before was still ringing in their ears.
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