"Moral Values"

Apparently, a large portion of the electorate went to the polls last November with two words foremost in their minds. These words, somewhat surprisingly, were not "Iraq War", "Lost Jobs", "Supreme Court", "Budget Deficit", "Environmental Disasters", "Prescription Drugs" or even, "Moronic President". The words were "Moral Values". Although "morals" and "values" seem to be words that describe sort of the same thing (i.e. principles with respect to right and wrong), I'm beginning to think that "Moral Values" as used by the 30 to 40 million people who voted for Bush because of them is some sort of code for "If you don't share my particular, and many times peculiar, brand of religious faith, screw you".

I've read that Karl Rove, that chubby poindexter of power politics, was responsible for placing measures to ban gay marriage, a real "Moral Values" hot-button issue, on the ballots in various swing states. This, in turn, caused droves of "Born Again" Christians (or "Christian Fundamentalists", if you like) to storm to the many polling places available to them in their morally valuable neighborhoods (as opposed to the few that were available to those of us who live in amoral and valueless areas) to vote against gay people forming lifetime bonds with one another. Such a lifetime bond between two gay people is, for reasons I have been unable to locate in the whole of the New Testament (I went to Catholic school, so we might be working off a different text) morally repugnant to all "Born Again"Christians. While they were at the polls preventing gays from getting together, these "Born Again" Christians all voted for Bush because he shared their "Moral Values" and/or against Kerry because he, apparently, did not. I can't imagine that the only thing which those who cited "Moral Values" as the predominant issue bearing upon their choice for president shared with Bush was their obsessive desire to keep gay people living in sin together. So, in trying to break the "Moral Values" code, I will offer the following as other beliefs which they might secretly share with our Commander in Chief:

1. A belief that the Iraqis under Saddam had "nucular" weapons, although they didn't have any nuclear ones;

2. A belief that Osama bin Laden and Saddam are the same person, which explains why you never see them together;

3. A belief that if you cut taxes by 200 billion dollars and increase defense spending by 200 billion dollars, we are all better off by a figure of 800 billion dollars;

4. A belief that French people are all gay and, thus, have no "Moral Values" and should not be allowed to marry;

5. A belief that a fellow who persisted in reading a book about a goat to a room full of 8-year olds while we were under terrorist attack is more capable of protecting us from another terrorist attack than a fellow who reacted to his boat being attacked during a war by chasing down and killing the attacker;

6. And so on, and so on...

I earnestly invite any and all of you out there to add to this list of the secret beliefs shared by those who possess "Moral Values". We Democrats, if we are ever to regain the White House, must crack this code so that we can begin pandering to this key voting bloc. Or, as I suggested in my earlier post regarding "Southern Strategy", maybe we should just abandon this group of wingnuts and start being true to our own principles.

What do you think?