The Gaytheist Agenda

The results are official.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton powered to victory in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary Tuesday night in a startling upset, defeating Sen. Barack Obama and resurrecting her bid for the White House. Sen. John McCain defeated his Republican rivals to move back into contention for the GOP nomination.

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Her victory, after Obama won last week’s Iowa caucuses, raised the possibility of a prolonged battle for the party nomination between the most viable black candidate in history and the former first lady, seeking to become the first woman to occupy the Oval Office.

Exit polls results help explain some of the differences between the two states, and some speculation is offered:

Against predictions of a second straight defeat to Obama, Clinton won because:

• Women rallied to her side. She won the female vote by more than 10 percentage points, according to exit polls, after losing among women in Iowa.

• The youth vote did not lift Obama as it did in Iowa. He won 51 percent of votes cast by people under 30, compared with 57 percent in Iowa.

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First, New Hampshire has a history of putting the brakes on surging candidacies, and the Clintons spoke to that sense of prudence by suggesting that Obama was not ready for the White House.

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Second, the Clintons went negative on Obama’s record to say he has not been consistent on a host of issues, including the Iraq war. Obama constantly trumpets his early opposition to the war without informing voters that, like Clinton, he later voted to pay for it.

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Third, aides had urged her to show more passion and emotion, and, coincidentally or not, she did so by nearly breaking down during a restaurant appearance. Eyes welling up and voice quavering, she declared the campaign “is very personal for me. It’s not just political.”

There’s another potential factor that hasn’t been mentioned thus far. New Hampshire (and New England in general) simply doesn’t go for the Bible Banging in the same way that Iowa does. Hence the way Huckabee went down in flames, having won Iowa with 34.3% but receiving only 11% of the vote in NH.

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, rates a ten (out of a possible ten) on BeliefNet’s God-o-meter. Their observations:

When God-o-Meter went to the Parker’s Maple Barn in Mason, New Hampshire yesterday, it observed that everyone present was an evangelical or a frequent churchgoer, raising doubts that Huckabee is breaking out of his Christian Right base after winning Iowa last week almost solely on the backs of evangelicals. And tonight’s results and exit polls out of New Hampshire confirm those doubts. Even among those who attend church multiple times each week, Huckabee took just third of the vote, with Mitt Romney and John McCain doing almost as well. And among the much bigger chunk of weekly churchgoers–nearly a quarter of the vote in New Hampshire– Huckabee came in third, bested by McCain and Romney. …..

Granted, John McCain scores just one point below Huckabee on the God-o-Meter at eight. However evidence suggests his God-talk is more a facade than genuine. He was, remember, the person who denounced the Religious Right as agents of intolerance some seven years ago.

As to Barack Obama, who once promised his supporters a Kingdom right here on Earth, he rates a nine on the God-o-Meter.Obama has certainly done enough pandering to evangelicals and infused his campaign speeches with plenty of religious rhetoric. Then of course there’s the Embrace the Homophobia Change gospel concert tour. That was the grand finale to his 40-Days-of-Faith-and-Family , a massive effort to woo religious voters in SC away from Hillary Clinton . But when Obama lost to Huckabee in Iowa he decided to go for broke preaching–for Hope and Change.

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Stopping by a packed Barack Obama rally last night in Rochester, New Hampshire, God-o-Meter noticed that fans standing behind the candidate on stage waved homemade poster board signs proclaiming “In Obama We Trust” and “Believe.” The local activist who introduced Obama said, “What I really like is his ability to uplift people.” And Obama opened his stump speech this way: “Over the next 20 minutes or so, you’re going to see a light shine down the from the ceiling… you’re going to have an epiphany.”

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Indeed, God-o-Meter would go so far to say that Obama, peddling his message that hope matters more than experience, has become the Democrats’ secular preacher, his party’s rough equivalent to Huckabee, who’s been criticized for campaigning to be “pastor-in-chief.”

There are blatant religious overtones to Obama’s campaign. Jim Wallis calls him “virtually a public theologian… articulating the relationship between faith and politics.” During last night’s rally in Rochester, Obama opened his speech with an anecdote about his stint organizing churches in Chicago to respond to the closing of steel mills there.

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The Obama faithful don’t seem to mind. When God-o-Meter asked a dozen attendees at last night’s rally why they supported Obama, none mentioned a specific issue—or even a general one. At a Huckabee event earlier that morning, by contrast, supporters mentioned the former Arkansas governor’s pro-life views or his promise to help the middle class as secondary reasons for supporting him, even while acknowledging Huckabee’s “Christian values” as the prime reason.

On her way out of last night’s event, 41-year-old Sandy Becker said she backs Obama because “he gives us something to hope for.” Asked if there were any specific issues undergirding her support, the Montessori school owner said that “Obama can cut across all issues.”

Obama himself wouldn’t disagree. “Let me talk about hope,” he said near the end of last night’s speech. “I’ve been talking about hope so much I’ve been derided for it. Lately some folks have said Obama is so idealist, so naïve—he’s a hopemonger.”

Hopemonger. Isn’t that just another name for minister?

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Ironically that’s the same problem I’ve had when confronting Obama supporters elsewhere. Hope for what? What sort of change? Nobody has the answers. Essentially Obama is an empty suit hidden behind fluffy feel-good slogans–similar to many religions.

Hillary Clinton, by stark contrast, rates a six on the God-o-Meter (though she previously stood at seven). A recent campaign insisting that she is more Pro-choice than Obama is apparently the reason for the drop in score. She had scored six previously when she joined the War on Christmas by saying “Happy Holidays” in her holiday campaign advertisement.

It will be most interesting to see how the upcoming primaries in NV, MI, SC and FL shape the face of the election.