Secular Dem Candidates Off to Church

The Republican Party is the party of the religious, married, with children.  The Democratic Party is the party of the secular, the single, and the childless.  So much we know.

So then why does the Edwards campaign feel it necessary to separate from blogger Amanda Marcotte, whose blog, according to Mary Eberstadt, is full of

scatological Catholic-baiting rants about "theocracy" marked by leering references to the pope and liberal use of the F-word.

What do they expect from a “a bilious feminist with a potty mouth?”

After all, the whole of America left of center is railing about “theocracy” these days.  When trendspotter Kevin Phillips is out with American Theocracy, you know that there is good money to be made selling theocratic scare stories to book-buying liberals.

But then why are the Democratic presidential candidates crowding into church?

Here is Sen. Barack Obama in California’s Saddleback pulpit at the invitation of mega-selling pastor Rick Warren. There is Sen. Hillary Clinton with downcast eyes in Newsweek, praying before the cameras in New York’s Riverside Church. And there preaches John Edwards, also in Riverside Church, weaving his personal faith into everything from AIDS to the minimum wage.

The answer is, of course, that even though the liberal base is militantly and religiously anti-religious, most Americans are religious.  And the politicians know it.

Sophisticates and secularists have always titillated themselves by despising the Bible Belt. But professional Christian-bashers have never been as "embedded" in the liberal mainstream as they are today. And therein lies a problem for Democrats. More Amanda Marcottes are not what the party needs as it scrambles to re-establish its religious bona fides with wary red-staters. No wonder so many Democratic candidates are in church. Now they really have something to pray about.

So the presidential campaigners have become regular churchgoers.  Just don’t expect the liberal media to complain about the separation of church and state.  At least, not until Republican Mormon Mitt Romney decides to visit a temple of the Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints.