Bush victory NOT hinged on 'moral values'

Canada's Toronto Sun has taken a shine to Bush lately. This is the third positive article in the last few days about Bush.

When George Bush is sworn in as U.S. president for four more years on Thursday, expect the liberal punditocracy to once again attribute his victory to the rise of the Christian right in America.

The Democrats and their liberal shills in the media, both in the U.S. and Canada, have been singing this one-note song of woe ever since election night on Nov. 2.

The only difference is that we now know they were wrong.

Polling and analysis done by the Pew Research Centre and other experts since election night has shown that, in fact:

(a) Bush made relatively bigger gains with non-religious voters than religious ones.

(b) The percentage of voters who identified themselves as evangelicals, at 23%, was exactly the same in 2004 as in 2000.

And

In his article, "The Values-Vote Myth", New York Times columnist David Brooks explains how the liberal pundits blew it.

"Every election year, we in the commentariat come up with a storyline to explain the result, and the storyline has to have two features. First, it has to be completely wrong. Second, it has to reassure liberals that they are morally superior to the people who just defeated them ... This theory certainly flatters liberals, and it is certainly wrong ... (The) same insularity that caused many liberals to lose touch with the rest of the country now causes them to simplify, misunderstand and condescend to the people who voted for Bush."

He concludes with this:

But all that part of the poll showed was that when asked what was their top issue, voters narrowly chose "moral values" (22%) over the "economy" (20%), "terrorism" (19%) and "Iraq" (15%).

Never mind that the top three answers were all within the poll's margin of error, meaning any one of them could have been the real top concern. Never mind that no one was sure what the open-ended phrase "moral values" meant. Undeterred, the liberal punditocracy seized on "moral values" as the major (and sinister) reason behind Bush's win, since voters who identified "moral values" as their top concern favoured Bush by a margin of 4-1.

The liberal press don't "missunderstand" Bush or "get him wrong". They know exactly what they are doing, lying to the public.
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