Despite his disagreements with Giuliani on the very issues that he has based his televangelist career on, Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani for president yesterday. The endorsement is believed to help Giuliani's efforts in courting Christian conservatives, with which he's had some difficulty.
I've been thinking about why Robertson would endorse someone like Giuliani. (I mean, if you know anything about Pat Roberston, you know he is one of the most socially conservative figures in American politics.) I've come up with two theories. One is simple: Robertson made a strategic political decision to associate himself with the likely-winner, even though doing so meant he had to foresake his core beliefs. The other is more complicated/interesting.
I think what motivates the leadership of the Christian Right is less the “values” they advocate, but more the basic desire to control people. Religion is just a convenient utility to that end. (In fact, this is probably the main reason religion was invented.) If this is the case, then Giuliani and Robertson have the same goal. They're both control freaks who want to increase the power of the government; they just have different ways of going about acquiring that power.
Rather than faith, Giuliani uses fear to control people. This is why every other word out of his mouth is "9/11". He uses that word so much because the very thought of it makes people feel scared and vulnerable. When people are vulnerable, that is they feel they can't properly protect themselves, they're eager to find someone who can. In civilized society they look to the government. Unfortunately, this protection comes at a price: individual liberty. The more scared you are, the higher price you're willing to pay. Giuliani knows this and he's just getting started.
Given Giuliani's stances, you'd think he'd have zero support from the Christian Right, but its his lust for power that attracts some of them. Seeing who does and doesn't support Giuliani will be a useful way of categorizing them.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Why Robertson Endorsed Rudy
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3 comments:
Pat endorsed Rudy because he can't stand to think he was not on the winning side. Forget his past diabtribes against abortion, gays, gun control, immigration. He has about as much moral authority as Chavez.
The GOP is reeling like a drunk. All except Paul support endless war, loss of liberty and invasion of privacy all in the name of the "War on Terror." The others have only a surface knowledge of economics, coinage, foreign policy and free trade. What kind of choice is Rudy vs Hillary?
A choice between slightly different brands of tyranny.
I think it has more to do with religious hatred; the Christians vs. the Muslims. As humans we have gang (tribal) mentalities, and those in the Christian gang (as well as some of those in the Republican gang) have established the Muslim terrorists as the external boogymen as a means of keeping their gang cohesive.
Pat Robertson either consciously, or intuitively realizes that as one of the leaders of the Christian gang, he benefits by his followers blindly hating enemies (bigger contributions to his church). Ron Paul would throw a monkey wrench into this by ending the conflict through a change in foreign policy. Ron Paul's opponents just want to keep the present setup going and going and going, so any of them would have been suitable to receive Pat Robertson's endorsement; Rudy just happened to currently be the brightest star for Pat to grab.
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