Opinion: God-fearing cred: Hillary vs. Rudy
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After reading Kathleen Parker’s syndicated column today on Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani, I couldn’t help but think: Why didn’t Robertson throw in for Hillary? Seriously. Consider Parker’s opening paragraph:
WASHINGTON — When the founder of the Christian Coalition, who blames national disasters on abortion, gives his support to a thrice-married, pro-abortion, pro-gay-rights Catholic, does religion really matter anymore?
So Rudy should be DQ’d from the evangelical ballot, right? Not so — Parker goes on to note that Robertson’s endorsement was really all about showing evangelical Republicans that voting for the ex-New York mayor is OK since his candidacy is their best hope at keeping dreaded Clintons from re-entering the White House:
Michael Cromartie, director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, suggests Robertson’s endorsement shows a growing pragmatic streak among religious conservatives. Many have learned, Cromartie says, that ‘politics is the art of making choices between relative goods and lesser evils.’
Using that standard — ‘making choices between relative goods and lesser evils’ — the only reason Hillary could be considered more ‘evil’ than Rudy is because, well, she’s a Clinton! Otherwise, when you match up the two based on their traditional evangelical cred, it’s Rudy’s soul who would doubtless make St. Peter think twice at the pearly gates. Here’s a quick scorecard, based on the checklist in Parker’s aforementioned first paragraph.
Marriages: Hillary, 1. Rudy, 3. Evangelical edge goes to Hillary.
Abortion: Hillary, pro-choice. Rudy, pro-choice. Draw.
Gay rights: Hard to tell who’s stance is more objectionable, but I couldn’t find a picture of Hillary in drag (some hardcore Clinton-haters would disagree). Evangelical edge goes to Hillary.
And then there’s Hillary’s pre-Bill days, laced with Barry Goldwater activism and a burning desire to become a Methodist minister. She recently wrote of her decision to move from Washington to Arkansas to marry Bill Clinton in 1975, when the future president hadn’t yet won his first election to anything, ‘I chose to follow my heart instead of my head.’ The Economist wrote in its May 2007 candidate profile of Hillary:
As one of the most prominent female baby-boomers, Mrs Clinton is whatever people want to see in her. She is lionised by feminists and demonised by cookie-baking traditionalists. The reality is that she was never exactly the baby-boom radical of legend. She is actually a fairly strait-laced type (certainly when compared with her husband and the young wastrel who became George Bush), who once considered becoming a Methodist minister, and who dutifully followed her husband to Arkansas, subordinating her own career to his.
None of this is to say Hillary would be baking cookies if it weren’t for her political ambitions, but based on the qualities long used by Robertson’s evangelical followers as a litmus test, if the general election ends up Hillary vs. Rudy, well, Christian conservatives shouldn’t be blamed for taking a long, hard look at the senator from New York.
So, Pat, why not Hillary?