Finally, Analysis That Sees the Obvious!

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/29/what-the-palin-pick-means-for-evangelicals.aspx

Alan Wolfe is saying in a wider forum something i don't see acknowledged or understood by Democratic Party folk much, that "Evangelicals are a complex bunch of multiple audiences, and they aren't all that lock-step . . . except in regards to abortion." I keep seeing Obama partisans dismiss all evangelicals too often as "easily led" because there's an assumption that the Pro-Life movement is all about "Bubba bait for boobs" and it's only an every four year conditioned reflex.

Ironically, looking at Palin may help Democrats to stop making those blanket assumptions, and figure out how to reach the lower hanging branches of evangelicalism, while acknowledging (as Bill & Hillary always quietly but persistently did) that anti-abortion folks might have a sincerely held position of their own, and not just signals through their back teeth fillings from Jim Dobson.

Most worrisome about Palin is that she's pro-"Intelligent Design," but she and her husband are home-schoolers in the town at the beginning of the Iditarod, so it doesn't exactly surprise. Would she push for requiring the teaching of it? Hard to tell, because she's of the libertarian side of the conservative equation (see the TNR link!) and doesn't like to tell people what to do -- she refused to sign a bill, effectively vetoing it, that banned civil unions for gay and lesbians in Alaska, saying it was "unwarranted intrusion into private matters." This is going to be a fascinating political season with the old molds all thrown out the window!