Protest vote turns the tide
A POINT OF VIEW
By Tim Egan

The mid-term elections have swept the Democrats to power in both houses of Congress. But the vote is a protest against the Republicans.

They're calling it a Blue Wave, a sweeping rejection for President Bush. A re-alignment of the political makeup of the United States. In handing power over from one party to the other, just what did American voters really say on Tuesday?

The War in Iraq - change course. The people who run the country in Washington - throw the bums out. The direction of the country - terrible.

As headlines go, all of the above are accurate. Yes the Republicans were routed from one coast to the other, losing control of the House of Representatives and the Senate as well.

But there was something consistent that rang out throughout the land, something oddly in alignment with what happened in the last presidential election.


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Two years ago, when President Bush narrowly won re-election, people were astonished to see the reason behind the victory. At the time, Republicans managed to get just a deciding margin of mostly conservative, church-going people who don't usually vote to show up and show their support for Mr Bush.

Polls of voters found that the number one issue was: moral values. How could this be, the pundits wondered? Moral values? What was that all about? What were people saying in 2004?

Now, fast forward to this November. In a huge turnout, voters threw Republicans out of office in the most unlikely of states. In Kansas, and Indiana. And even parts of the South, even Texas.

The exit polls showed people were overwhelming upset with the direction of the country, disgusted with President Bush and angry at the course of the war, which has now lasted longer than American involvement in World War II.

A majority that had given Mr. Bush the benefit of the doubt two years ago could only see warts and hubris and disaster this time. They wanted change. And they wanted it now.

Corruption calling

Looking deeper at the results, the polls showed the number one issue, slightly ahead of Iraq and the general referendum on the President was corruption.

Again, many pundits are left scratching their heads. Corruption? Did that issue cut deep enough to cause this revolution of sorts?

To be sure, there had been a persistent drumbeat of stories about members of congress taking bribes or other favours in return for passing some federal appropriation on behalf of a client.

The worst was the congressman who bought himself a private yacht on the Potomac River with its own gilded toilet seat. He is now in jail. At least a half-dozen other members of Congress were connected to a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff who spread wealth around the highest levels of power and got nearly everything he asked for in return.

But I think there is something larger in that voter sentiment about corruption.

If you win by moral values, you can also die by moral values. By courting conservative Christians with a family values agenda, Republicans set themselves up as the party of superior morality. And when their glass house started to crumble, the very voters they had worked so hard to become active participants in the democracy turned on them.

Perhaps, I can explain this better by sketching two anecdotes. One takes us to the mega-church in Colorado Springs, run by the Reverend Ted Haggard. The New Life Church is a veritable mall set up against the Rocky Mountains in the suburban sprawl well south of Denver.

Toothy Ted

People there live in big houses and drive big cars and attend big churches. This particular church has 14,000 members, and includes a food court and other shopping outlets, just like a real mall.

The man at the centre is a person known by his congregants as Reverend Ted. He has a big toothy smile, and until a week ago, he exuded an eerie sense of relentless optimism.

During the last presidential election, Reverend Ted was in regular contact with the White House. He confidently told me that Bush was going to win, and the evangelical vote was going to make the difference.

On election day back then, they bussed people from churches across America into the voting booths.

Reverend Ted delivered. "If the evangelicals vote," he said, "they determine the election."

As it turned out, that was the president's secret weapon. But this time, I believe it was their downfall.

Now a week ago, a large, burly male prostitute came forth and said he had been having paid sex with Reverend Ted for a number of years, and that they took the drug methamphetamine on a number of occasions to enhance it.

At first he denied it, smiling at a reporter while paused in his sports utility vehicle with his wife and two of their five children. He said he had just had a massage and bought the meth, but didn't use it.

Later, he admitted most of what the male prostitute said was true, and then he resigned as head of the national evangelical association.

Now as scandals go, this one could not have come at a worse time for Republicans.

The party had already been hit by the huge wave that came from Florida, revealing that conservative Republican Congressman Mark Foley, the head of the missing and exploited children's caucus, was using his position to pursue young men.

He resigned in disgrace and went into alcoholic rehab - a favoured retreat for moralists in trouble.

I heard people in Indiana and Ohio and North Carolina - all parts of the American Bible Belt - talk about how disgusted they were with Foley and the Republicans.

Many of them said they simply would not vote. Others said they were going to vote, but they were gong to send a message.

Reverend Ted had assailed homosexuality from the pulpit. "We don't have to debate what we should think about homosexuals," he once said in church. "It's written in the Bible."

Reverend's confession

On Sunday, two days before the election, a letter was read from Reverend Ted to his flock.

"I am a deceiver and a liar," he wrote. "There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life."

People in church wept - both men and women. Children looked at each other confused. What you saw in that mega-church on Sunday was how voters felt on Tuesday - at least those voters who had given their souls to the Republican party.

What's interesting is that all along, despite polls showing the coming Democratic wave, the President had predicted his side would hold.

"You have your numbers," said Karl Rove, looking confident, a few days before the election. "And I have mine."

But his numbers turned on him. I was in Montana during the closing days of the election, a state with less than six people per square mile, a state that Bush had won by 20 percentage-points two years ago.

I talked to people who said they were lifetime Republicans, churchgoers, conservative.

People in blue jeans and cowboy hats. They were Karl Rove's "numbers". And they said they were angry and they felt betrayed. They got their revenge by throwing out a long-serving Republican senator in Montana, and electing an organic grain farmers with a crew cut.

A friend of mine says this election was the revenge of Ned Flanders. You may know Flanders is a cheerful cartoon character in The Simpsons. His life revolves around the Bible and home-schooling his children, and he has a cheerful "hidey-ho, neighbour" response to anything Homer Simpson says.

A deeply religious streak has always run through the American electorate. And so has the literary archetype of the hypocrite. Everyone in this country knows about Elmer Gantry, from the 1927 novel by Sinclair Lewis.

He's a charmer, charismatic. But he is also as phoney as a wooden nickel, as the saying goes. Reverend Ted Haggard, leader of 30 million evangelicals, went almost overnight from preacher without a fault to Elmer Gantry for the mega-church age.

People in the bible belt are often stereotyped as being monolithic - just blindly following their leaders. But I think the stereotype is wrong. They voted Democratic in several presidential elections - helping both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter to become President.

Bush in check

What this dramatic shake-up will mean for the country is much harder to predict. Certainly, Mr. Bush has lost his base of power, and Congress will hold him in check for his remaining two years. The new speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, has called Mr. Bush a liar, an incompetent and an emperor without clothes. She can hold hearings on the war, or on what happened after Hurricane Katrina. And she controls the federal budget.

Clearly, it's a changed America. You could see it on President Bush's face in his news conference after the election, when announced the resignation of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He looked like a beaten man - contrite, much of the swagger now gone.

W.C. Fields once said, "I never vote for anyone. I always vote against."

In its simplest terms, that's what this election was all about - it was a vote against.

Add your comments on this story, using the form below.

Very good article. To go even farther--These are some of the reasons we voted against everything connected with the Bush "regime" We reject the role he has played in depriving us of Constitutional rights we hold most dear and of destroying our image of America and the principles of honesty and fairness. We have problems at home: healthcare, education, homelessness, etc. that need immediate attention. Our own freedoms are being eradicated while trying to achieve "freedom" & "democracy" for those who may not be ready for it.
Merry, Springfield, VA USA

The problem of the religious vote in the US and the world is their effort to define and legislate morality from immoral positions. In the US the idea that people vote on the non-issues of abortion and homosexuality is absurd and the drug war has been going on for much longer than Iraq with the same disastrous results. These issues are personal. Only those immediately involved in these problems know the true agony of the situation and they should be left to make their own decisions. Homosexuality? I already have the choice to join a homophobic church that condemns it and their marriage. And I have the freedom to associate with homophobic friends if it so offends and scares me. There are no laws that require me to get in bed someone I don't choose to, so no need to legislate here. Abortion has the greatest impact on the individuals involved and should be left to those individuals to resolve. It is not a social issue to be legislated such as the death penalty and political corruption and humans are not an endangered species that we need legislative protection to survive. Drugs are here. By criminalizing them we create artificial value way beyond their actual value. With such a huge profit margin they won't be stopped. Legalizing drugs will allow society to treat the addict and take the profit from the criminal. The proof is in the Liquor prohibition. Since it's legalization the gun battles have stopped and there are several support groups formed to treat the addition. Not to mention, the government makes enough off taxing it to support several lobbyists and their pork projects.
Riley Dunn, Delta USA

Your analysis is right on the mark!
Jan, Roslyn, WA USA