RSS Feed MenuCharles Johnson of Little Green Footballs took strenuous exception to Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Newsweek interview.
Tim Pawlenty, the very model of a modern GOP candidate, considered by many as a possible front runner for the Presidency in 2012: Anti-science and anti-gay.
Let me ask you about social issues your party has been dealing with. In her book, Palin claims that McCain’s handlers wanted her to be silent about her belief in creationism. How would you describe your view?
I can tell you how we handle it in Minnesota. We leave it to the local school districts. We don’t mandate a curriculum or an approach. We allow for something called “intelligent design” to be discussed as a comparative theory. It doesn’t have to be in science class.
Is this a kind of “moderate” creationism?
Well, Pawlenty is clearly trying to soft-pedal it, but no, there’s nothing “moderate” about this. The fact is that “intelligent design” has no validity whatsoever, as a “comparative theory” or any other kind of theory. ID is not a “theory” at all in the scientific sense — it’s a marketing ploy to repackage fundamentalist Christian creationism in a cheap pseudo-scientific suit.
Johnson’s comment seems to me radically unfair. Pawlenty is a model of sensible modern conservatism. His answers to Newsweek’s barbed questions indicate an instinct for practical compromise, even as he eschews any personal support for creationism.
That said, the interview – and Johnson’s reaction – bespeak a religious problem for Pawlenty that will require much tact on his part and that of his campaign team.
Pawlenty now attends an evangelical church, but he was born and raised a Roman Catholic. He changed denominations at marriage, accepting his wife’s evangelical faith.
Without pretending any insight into the souls of the Pawlenty family, I’d guess a trajectory along the following lines. A not especially religious man married a rather more religious woman. She wished the whole family to worship together, and since affiliation mattered more to her, the man followed his wife to the church of her family. Decisions like that must happen a million times a year in this multidenominational country.
But this decision contains two landmines.
1) How will Catholic voters feel about a candidate who left the church? In 1944, President Roosevelt ruled out South Carolina’s James F. Byrne as a running mate in large part because he feared Byrne’s departure from the church into which he was born (also for marital reasons) would offend Catholic voters.
2) How will evangelical voters feel about a man whose conversion narrative is so pragmatic?
Suggesting that Pawlenty’s reaffiliation was motivated by family concerns does not imply that the conversion is insincere. Far from it! It’s honorably and attractively American to suspect that most of the differences between religions are more or less decorative ethnocultural elements atop the deep stratum of moral and ethical truth we call the Judaeo-Christian tradition. I wonder if God regards our attempts at theology more or less the way a parent feels about the clay napkin rings the children fabricate at summer camp: the intention is much more attractive than the product. In which case, honoring your spouse pleases Him much more than guessing correctly which religious tradition is least flawed and distorted by human fallibility.
But that’s just one man’s view. And I don’t vote in Iowa.
anniemargret // Dec 24, 2009 at 12:28 am
The role of the President should be to govern. Period. Whether he or she goes to church or not should be of no concern to any citizen. Primarily because religion is a belief and it has no place or role on the Hill.
All this religious talk about politicians does absolutely no good. There is a wide variance in our country of believers and disbelievers, all manner of religions, all manner of beliefs. Karl Rove used religion was as a sword to cut a swathe between ‘the us vs them’ crowd. It worked for GWB and he got elected; many Christians voted for him because of his outward show of religion.
It will not work now. We are past that. This country is mired in a deep economic crisis and trying to win two wars and a looming China over us. We got plenty to worry about than yet another culture war dredged up by the Rovians in the Republican party.
Btw…I resent being called, ’secular left’ …..my entire family and many close friends are Democrats and we all believe in God. Enough already with the some-all fallacies. However, I do not care a whit whether Romney or Obama or Pawlenty or anyone else running for office wears their religion on their sleeve. The less God-talk in politics the better. We don’t look to our business leaders for their opinions on the Bible or religion or evolution or church…etc.. We do look to see if they are qualified to make rational and intelligent decisions. So we must do the same with potential elected leaders.
There are believers and non-believers everywhere…and I for one, am thankful we still live in a country where you can seek out your path through life whereever you choose – in the inside of a church, or not.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 24, 2009 at 12:33 am
anniemargaret wrote: “I resent being called, ’secular left’ …..my entire family and many close friends are Democrats and we all believe in God. Enough already with the some-all fallacies.”
Amen to that.
anniemargret // Dec 24, 2009 at 12:39 am
One more point….there are many people, and I include myself here as well, who do not like showy exhibitions of religion. Many politicians prefer to keep their religious beliefs, (or agnostic or atheism) under a hat. They should be able to. We getting to the point now where a politician must feel it imperative to speak about God or the Bible, etc. McCain is not an outwardly religious man. He may believe in God personally but frankly I was thankful he did not do the Palinesque on the election trail. That is the way it should be.
We are not electing preachers or priests. We are electing leaders. btw….Obama does not believe in same-sex marriage. He believes in civil unions not marriage. Both abortion and same sex marriage should be put down to state rights and be done with it. Evolution is a scientific fact, of which just enhances the idea of God to me, not lessen it. But evolution is not important as a substantive argument over whether or not a leader can lead. Let’s all get off the religious carousel.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 24, 2009 at 12:43 am
lowandslow wrote: “It probably shouldn’t have been but I never envisioned the economic collapse, bailouts, stimulus, deficits or the will of the Democratic leadership to continue with their unbelievably costly agenda after all that.”
With the exception of the Clinton years, this country has been racking up ever larger deficits since at least 1980. We’ve been bailing out large parts of the economy during that time as well (Chrysler, Continental Illinois Bank, the S&Ls and TARP) and we’ve enacted ever larger entitlements (Prescription Drug Benefit) without providing a way to pay for them. During this entire time many people have been very vocal about the country’s impending financial collapse.
It would not have taken a crystal ball to predict that Romney’s governing abilities would be more important than his religion. Don’t you think?
ShawninPHX // Dec 24, 2009 at 1:26 am
As someone who actually was born, and grew up, in Minnesota I can say there is no way Gov. Pawlenty will when. If you turn off even those of us from the state then you have truly turned off those who aren’t. It’s a shame. He had an opportunity as a common-sense Minnesotan, but he blew it trying to be Sarah Palin-lite.
Shame.
lowandslow // Dec 24, 2009 at 2:35 am
SpartacusIsNotDead : “It would not have taken a crystal ball to predict that Romney’s governing abilities would be more important than his religion. Don’t you think?”
What is it with the internet? Everybody’s has to crow about their perfect hindsight. Nobody expected the debt we racked up in just the last year and a half and to claim you did to just to substantiate your assertion that religion shouldn’t have been a been a factor in considering a Romney candidacy is just as disingenuous as your imagined clairvoyance.
What I wouldn’t give for just one political forum not infested with people enamored with their own superb perception.
CentristNYer // Dec 24, 2009 at 7:14 am
mpolito // Dec 23, 2009 at 11:06 pm
“Centrist NYer- those things which conservatives want –limits on abortion, the traditional definition of marriage, limits on biological technologies, etc– are all responses to left-wing assaults on the status quo.”
There was a time when I might have agreed with you, but I find your way of looking at things totally backwards, which, unfortunately, typifies why I’ve parted company with the modern GOP.
Same sex marriage is a perfect example of where social conservatives get it so wrong. To defend the status quo is really just a polite way of saying that you want to reserve special rights for heterosexuals, which is a far more radical concept in a nation that was founded on fundamental liberties and equal opportunity. It’s conservatives who have assaulted this basic idea, not liberals.
Furthermore, how can a party on one hand champion the idea of individual responsibility and then on the other oppose the rights of gay adults to marry whom they choose? It’s absurd in the extreme.
Defending the status quo does not make you the victim of liberal “aggressors” anymore so than were those who tried to retain slavery, prevent women from voting or prohibit interracial couples from marrying. If the GOP doesn’t grasp this — and quickly — it will find itself watching history rather than making it.
Zoe Brain // Dec 24, 2009 at 8:54 am
“Well, you know I’m an evangelical Christian. I believe that God created everything and that he is who he says he was. The Bible says that he created man and woman; it doesn’t say that he created an amoeba and then they evolved into man and woman. ”
Sounds like he’s not exactly eschewing Creationism to me.
“But there are a lot of theologians who say that the ideas of evolution and creationism aren’t necessarily inconsistent; that he could have “created” human beings over time.”
In other words, he has “two bob each way”. Pandering to the anti-science brigade that infests the GOP, while retaining plausible deniability. A Weasel.
You don’t mention his desire to remove long-standing human rights to trans people too. I’m Intersexed – born with a body neither wholly male or female (though more F than M). One of the ” few instances, not exactly like that (mythical cross-dressing schoolteacher), but similar.”
All Intersexed adults were Intersexed children once. So in order to “protect the children” from mythical dangers, he’s willing to remove human rights from actual children.
Good Gravy, we have a completely incompetent Chicago Machine politician in the White House, a Democrat-dominated Congress so corrupt that its approval rating is the lowest of all time, and all the GOP has to do is put up any candidate that has the slightest trace of rationality and integrity. One willing to say unequivocally that the Earth isn’t flat.
Instead, we get Pawlenty and his ilk. Ye Gods and Little Fishes.
sinz54 // Dec 24, 2009 at 9:18 am
DFL: And the defenders of Western Civilization must not be passive in defense of their beliefs.
Those beliefs used to include a passionate defense of science and free inquiry.
What is disturbing about this criticism of the Theory of Evolution and embrace of creationism, is that the conservative movement, and perhaps the GOP itself, is prepared to make a political issue out of a scientific theory. That’s happening with the theory of anthropogenic global warming too.
World history shows that those who politicize science often create disaster (the Nazi racial theories, Lysenkoism, etc.).
How our society chooses to implement the results of science is a valid political issue. But whether a scientific theory is true or false should not be.
Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » God didn’t make Little Green Footballs // Dec 24, 2009 at 10:47 am
[...] David Frum replies that “Pawlenty is a model of sensible modern conservatism” and goes on to say that Pawlenty will have trouble with the religious right anyway because they don’t view him as a real Jesus person (since he converted from Catholicism to evangelicalism when he got married). [...]
mpolito // Dec 24, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Centrist NYer- We all know very well what this nation was founded on, but that does not mean that every time somebody claims that they have a “right” to do something we have to grant it to them. The fight for same-sex marriage is actually a fight about positive liberty. It has nothing to do with the state intruding into the bedroom, because marriage is not about the bedroom, but about the public square. It is when you leave the bedroom and enter the public square demanding that the state recognize whatever relationship you want to engage in that there is a problem. Just because someone says they have a ‘right’ to do X does mean that they actually do. If this was the case, our Constitution would literally be meaningless. On your account, however, if I claim a right to something and anybody objects to it, they have “assaulted” a founding ideal of our country. This is extremely dubious.
I dislike the idea that history unfolds according to universal laws and that today must be better than yesterday. It is demonstrably ridiculous; which century, I ask you, was the deadliest in history? Was it the first? The second? Sometime during those dreadful Middle Ages? No. It was in our wonderful modern world. I am not opposed to modernity, but let’s remember that ‘modern’ does not mean ‘good.’
As for the issue of individual responsibility, conservatism has always had a sense of the importance of community too- we are not libertarians and excessive individualism is not something most conservatives are keen on. It should be noted that the Left does the same thing: they have their socialist-type economic policies and then lament the state “intrusion” into the bedroom, or into the womb, etc., after they do not mind it intruding into your car, food, thermometer, medicine, etc.
Sinz- will all due respect, politicization of science works both ways. Liberals act as if opposition to stem-cell research is rooted in antagonism towards science. This is so blatantly ridiculous: there are serious moral components to these debates; debates about research and public funding of research are fraught with moral elements.
sinz54 // Dec 24, 2009 at 12:14 pm
CentristNYer: To defend the status quo is really just a polite way of saying that you want to reserve special rights for heterosexuals, which is a far more radical concept in a nation that was founded on fundamental liberties and equal opportunity.
I agree with your conclusion,
but not your reasoning.
The fact that this country was ostensibly founded on “civil liberties and equal opportunity” did NOT mean that women were given the right to vote at the outset (they weren’t); or that black slavery would be ended at the outset (it wasn’t).
And the Framers never considered marriage a national issue, and nothing about marriage is in the Constitution. For many years, Southern states had laws against miscegenation.
So you can’t appeal to the Federalist Papers to find any rationale for same-sex marriage. That’s an issue that has to be decided using modern arguments.
sinz54 // Dec 24, 2009 at 12:18 pm
anniemargaret: Whether he or she goes to church or not should be of no concern to any citizen. Primarily because religion is a belief and it has no place or role on the Hill.
So even after what happened with Major Hasan, you would have no problem voting for a devout Muslim for President???
You should take a long look at what the Muslim officials who are even in the British Conservative Party advocate.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 24, 2009 at 1:07 pm
lowandslow wrote: “What I wouldn’t give for just one political forum not infested with people enamored with their own superb perception.”
I’m sorry you misread my posts as an expression of my “own superb perception” or “imagined clairvoyance.” That was not my intention at all. In fact, I had the exact opposite intention.
For those of us who were paying attention or not wedded to conservative dogma over the past 30 years, the deficits, bailouts and economic collapse did not require superb perception or clairvoyance. They only required common sense and a willingness to be guided by the empirical data. I’m not suprised that someone who once thought Romney’s religion was more important than his resume would be unable to do this.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 24, 2009 at 1:25 pm
Sinz wrote: “So you can’t appeal to the Federalist Papers to find any rationale for same-sex marriage. That’s an issue that has to be decided using modern arguments.”
Unless you consider the 14th Amendment to be a modern argument, you’re wrong. The 14th requires equal treatment for similarly situated individuals. As you know, it was the 14A that the Court relied on in reversing many of the injustices that conservatives defended throughout this country’s history.
The fact that the Founding Fathers did not personally live up to the standards of the Constitution or imagine that the Constitution would be used to protect the rights of women, racial minorities or homosexuals is not surprising or relevant since they were all dead before the 14A was even enacted.
Unless you’re making the arugment that the 14A is not part of the Constitution, what the drafters of the original version of the Constitution may have personally felt in their own minds or done in their personal lives is totally irrelevant to the equal protection clause.
ltoro1 // Dec 24, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Sinz, you ask a good question “would I hsave a problem voting for a devout Muslim.” I suppose it depends on what their definition of devout means as it relates to being the elected Administrator of a democratic republic. Obviously, I would not vote for Major Hasan, who made his views public, but I know a couple of Muslims personally that I would probably not object to. I’m not sure how devout they are, but as far as I know they have not called out for the damnation of the US like Obama’s pastor did.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Dec 24, 2009 at 1:27 pm
Sinz wrote: “So even after what happened with Major Hasan, you would have no problem voting for a devout Muslim for President???”
You’re kidding, right?
CentristNYer // Dec 24, 2009 at 2:08 pm
mpolito // Dec 24, 2009 at 12:09 pm
“Centrist NYer- We all know very well what this nation was founded on, but that does not mean that every time somebody claims that they have a “right” to do something we have to grant it to them.”
This is the kind of reasoning that is going to sideline the GOP for a long time. As long as the slippery slopers can scare up ridiculous scenarios (If we let men marry men, then we have to let men marry penguins), we need never acknowledge or address the fact that there are some people whose legitimate rights are being denied.
If the Republican party chooses to retreat into its “we’re just defending the status quo” defense and fight any and all reasonable change, it will cease to be a credible entity.
mpolito // Dec 24, 2009 at 3:51 pm
CentristNYer- I cannot tell if you are interested in truth or in success. Usually, you have to ignore one to obtain the other. There are people who have legitimate rights denied: the unborn, for example, who have a right to life, or businessmen who have the right to most of their earnings, or parents who have the right to educate their children as they want. The GOP should defend rights, but not everyone can agree on what these rights are. It’s a fools errand to try to argue when we will never agree.
Your arguments have been heard over and over again: lurch leftward on social issues! If you do not, you will forever be ’sidelined’! Um, did social issues lead to the major GOP losses in 2006? Did they lead to Obama’s win in 2008? They had almost nothing to do with either result. It usually is the case that the people who want the GOP to lurch to the left on social issues are socially liberal themselves. This is not an accident.
The GOP is not about opposing change. But is must also stand for truth, and affirming truths that stand the test of time. If our society thinks it can survive while detaching itself from truth, it has a big problem.
anniemargret // Dec 24, 2009 at 4:11 pm
What in God’s name does Major Hasan have to do with this, sinz? Lousy argument using the likes of him.
so……are you saying that there should be a *religious* litmus test for all presidential candidates? Major Hasan was not only mentally unstable, and many people around him for a long time knew that, he also was subscribing apparently to Muslim radicalism.
So my question to you is…. are you going to be comfortable only with Christian (Catholics too?) or Jewish candidates and not American Muslims? Are you also implying that every American Muslim is radical? Are you going to plead a religious litmus test for agnostics and atheists too?
I would assume that ANY candidate for the office of the Presidency would be thoroughly vetted, no? That his/her morality and intelligence on the issues would be primary consideration, not what religion or church they attend. And if there was any hint of radicalism and/or nefarious behavior, mental instability, etc…he/she would be immediately ousted as a serious candidate.
sinz54 // Dec 25, 2009 at 10:26 am
SpartacusIsNotDead: Unless you consider the 14th Amendment to be a modern argument
I should not have used the word “modern.” Sorry.
I simply meant that equal protection wasn’t part of the original Constitution. Many of the Framers feared popular democracy, because they feared it would degenerate into demagogic mob rule. Hence the original Constitution limited popular power. The Senate, you’ll recall, was originally elected by the state legislatures, not by the people.
BTW, the Supreme Court had an opportunity to hear a case on whether same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment: Baker v. Nelson. They refused to hear it on the grounds of a lack of a substantive federal question. That has become a legal precedent.
Until you liberals get a chance to pack the court like you did under FDR.
sinz54 // Dec 25, 2009 at 10:31 am
mpolito: Um, did social issues lead to the major GOP losses in 2006? Did they lead to Obama’s win in 2008?
Social issues certainly didn’t help.
The GOP base, whose largest bloc is evangelicals, turned out as always–but the GOP got swamped by defections from Independent voters.
That wasn’t true in 2000 and 2004.
In those years, the evangelicals turned out in sufficient numbers to deliver key states like Ohio to Bush.
So all we’re saying is that if the GOP doesn’t have a positive, winning message on those issues, it will lose Independent and swing voters to the point that it can’t count on massive turnout from evangelicals and social conservatives to win the day.
In the two big wins the GOP had recently–NJ and VA–the winning Republican candidate downplayed social issues and presented a positive economic message. (Ironically, it was the liberal Dem Corzine in NJ that emphasized social issues to try to compensate for the corruption and economic problems with his administration. And he lost.)
sinz54 // Dec 25, 2009 at 10:35 am
anniemargaret: I would assume that ANY candidate for the office of the Presidency would be thoroughly vetted, no?
Google for the name “Harry Dexter White” sometime.
anniemargret // Dec 25, 2009 at 2:39 pm
OK, sinz…. you made a point. I got a better one about being ‘vetted’ for the Presidency Sarah Palin.
Not vetted and was a heartbeat away if McCain had won. MyBad.
But the Hasan analogy just doesn’t work as a valid argument.