What’cha Gonna Watch? One And Two
Couple of things on TV this weekend caught my eye…
Herein lies one of the most illuminating lessons of The Jesus Factor: If you have the conservative Christian vote in an American election, you can dispense with almost everyone else. Doug Wead, a Bush family friend and political consultant on matters concerning the religious right, estimates that evangelical Christians make up 25 percent of the nation, and that of those who vote, a solid two-thirds are Republican. But wooing this demographic is a delicate business, as evidenced by the 1992 Republican convention in Houston, where hate-mongering speeches by right-wing commentator Pat Buchanan and televangelist Pat Robertson turned many moderate Republicans off the party. And the impression that George Bush the elder was pandering to the religious right helped pave the way to a Clinton victory. But in contrast to his father’s colder, more elitist public persona, George W. Bush melded a folksy populism with genuine religious fervor and found a way to parlay these attributes into a second term as governor. Southern Baptist leader Richard Land recalls the afternoon of Bush’s second gubernatorial inauguration, when Bush gathered a few trusted colleagues in his office to announce, “God wants me to be president.”
And, quoting directly from Eric Alterman’s Altercation…
Eric will be debating media bias with the well known conservatives, Christopher Hitchens and Patrick Buchanan on Scarborough Country on MSNBC at Ten on Sunday Night, (following more trouble, no doubt, for Tony B).
This should be good. Granted, it probably won’t be the excruciating train wreck that Alterman’s appearance on the Dennis Miller show was, but nevertheless, this should be good.
