Hopefully what I’ve said above doesn’t constitute either “maligning a Christian brother or calling a large section of the population foolish”; if it is perceived that way, I apologize to all involved.

For clarification on the “maligning” point, all I can say is that I think there’s a difference between that and legitimate criticism, and that since our system of government depends on the expression of dissenting opinions when we feel our leadership is not leading us well, then it’s occasionally our obligation to participate in that kind of speech. Their faith affiliations shouldn’t give them a free pass on that. I do realize there is a line there, though, and I hope I haven’t crossed it.

On the “calling the population foolish” point, I didn’t intend to do that either. I believe it was you who added the adjective “gullible” to the phrase “tools”, not I; and I didn’t ever mean to imply that the people who were manipulated were in any way foolish. Politicians can be pretty good at convincing / manipulating people, and when they need extra help, they hire people specifically like Karl Rove - that’s what he does for a living. So I don’t fault anyone who was successfully swayed by their efforts. If anything, it’s a compliment to the administration in succeeding in that task.

Also, I wasn’t projecting any opinions on you. I was asking questions because I didn’t understand the relevance of the points. Peace.

That’s just my opinion and I know you disagree with that part of it, and I’m not going to try and convince you otherwise. I just hope that we can respectfully disagree about things that we actually say or believe, rather than positions that we project onto each other (referencing this comment above).

That being said, I would certainly agree that this whole story is nowhere near as bad as it originally was presented to be. If Rove weren’t a Christian, then the manipulation would definitely be more despicable.

Here’s where we may disagree again, but I still have an issue with the manipulation even if he is a Christian, because I feel like that expression of faith (or its affiliation with their party) was exploited for political gain, without backing it up in their actual policy. If it were consistent with their actual actions and words, I probably wouldn’t have a problem with it.

Obviously, if you disagree (and I’m guessing you do) with my assessment of that consistency (or lack thereof) then integrating that into their campaign would not be as bad a thing as I am making it out to be.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt that he’s being honest now, then obviously the parts that were specific to Rove were invalid (as I already mentioned), but I still believe that there was a concerted effort as part of their campaign to position their candidate as the right choice for “Christians” (based on more than just this individual story), and it seemed to have been successful in achieving that goal, to a large degree.

In this context your premise that Christians were tricked into thinking that the “that the Republican party was somehow more closely aligned with Christian values,” no longer makes any sense, and I can’t see how your points in the last couple exchanges help support that idea in any way. Your logic just doesn’t make sense to me.

We all have a tendency to comb through stories to find ones that support our view of the world. Jonathan Schwarz admitted as much in the original commentary. I think this is what happened here but now that story has been discredited, I would expect at least a little modification of the view you expressed earlier. Even if you wanted to throw in some probably maybe and seems in there. It would have helped me believe you still have respect for reality with regards the Bush administration.