Blogs For Victory

Pretty stark:

A new Gallup Poll claims to show that registered voters who say religion is important in their lives tend to support presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain by a margin of 50 to 40 percent, while those who say religion is unimportant to their lives tend to support presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama by a margin of 55 to 36 percent.

About two-thirds of the registered voters surveyed by Gallup said that religion is important to them.

According to the Gallup Poll, which surveyed 95,000 registered voters from March through June 2008, the divide in voting preference is not confined to white Protestants but is manifested among non-Hispanic white Catholics as well.

Non-Hispanic white Catholics who say religion is important in their daily lives support McCain over Obama by 53 percent to 37 percent. Those who say religion is not important slightly favor Obama by a margin of 47 percent to 45 percent.

Hispanic Catholics, black non-Catholic Christians, and those who do not have a specific religious identity reportedly tend to support Barack Obama, but their support apparently is little affected by the importance of religion in their lives.

Hispanic Catholics who say religion is important in their lives support Obama over McCain 57 to 31, while those who say religion is not important support Obama by a margin of 63 to 30 percent.

Meanwhile, among the 12% of respondents who have no religious identity, Obama cleans up with 65% to McCain’s 26%. Obama will, of course, try to move some religious voters his way; McCain, meanwhile, will try to expand his appeal to religious voters…and the election may very well turn on just who shows up…believers, or unbelievers.

There is a sad note in this, however – we are, in many ways, a house divided against itself, just as we were in the 1850’s – and just as it was back then, we will not forever remain divided, but will become all one thing, or all the other. Our fervent hope, of course, is that the passions which divide us never lead us to view those who disagree as our enemies.

This election may settle a lot of things, one way or the other – an Obama Presidency would cement ultra-liberal control of the judiciary while the Obama plan to massively increase government may place such a large number of Americans on government dependency (in one form or another) that we’ll have an European style electorate wedded to welfare and unwilling – even at the cost of national destruction – to modify their demands. On the other hand, the election of McCain will cement a conservative majority in the judiciary, while McCain’s proposals to reign in government spending and end pork would get government further out of Americans’ lives, and thus retain in America that sense of independence which is one of the two mainstays of our national strength (the other is our continued strong religious belief, especially as relative to the rest of the western world).

It is a crucial election, and pettifogging complaints that the candidate isn’t pure on ideology are worse than stupid – for each side, to stand aside is to give up the fight, perhaps for good and all.