Beshear's Pander to Freakazoids Won't Gain Him Votes

If anything could make me stay home this November rather than donning my hazmat suit to vote for Steve Beshear, this would do it:

Peter Smith at the Courier-Journal:

So much for the God gap.

Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear is getting huge support from church-goers. And GOP challenger David Williams isn’t making up any ground among other categories of reliably Republican voters, such as opponents of abortion and gun control.

The "God gap" refers to the trend in recent elections, both in Kentucky and the nation, in which white voters who attend worship regularly tend to vote Republican.
This has been one of the best predictors of who’s voting for whom in recent elections. In fact, those who are both frequent attendees and Republicans represent "the hardest votes for the GOP to lose and the easiest to recover," researchers Mark Silk and John Green have written. In Ohio, for example, the church-going vote went in favor of a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2006 but against him in 2010.

The Courier-Journal Bluegrass / WHAS-TV Poll found that Beshear had the support of 51 percent of frequent worship attendees, compared with 32 percent supporting Republican opponent David Williams. The poll of 512 likely voters was taken by SurveyUSA in late July. Overall, Beshear holds a 52-28 percent lead.

Beshear is leading Williams among gun owners (47-31 percent) and virtually tied among pro-lifers (40-38 percent).

Williams, the Senate president, has long been an ally of religious conservatives, promoting legislation in favor of Ten Commandments postings and restrictions on abortion. But his negatives are high, according to the poll.

And Beshear has closely guarded his right flank — championing tax incentives for the Ark Encounter theme park, blasting federal regulations on coal and supporting a state law mandating that the Homeland Security office give credit to Almighty God for the state’s safety. The first words out of Beshear’s mouth in his first re-election campaign ad were: "I grew up here in Dawson Springs, where my dad and granddad were preachers." Whether President Obama snubbed Beshear or vice versa during the president’s recent Fort Campbell visit, Beshear certainly showed no public disappointment in the lack of a joint appearance with someone unpopular among Kentucky voters.

Beshear also led among frequent attendees when he was elected in 2007.

Yet the support he maintains among this generally conservative constituency is notable, particularly after more than two years of an anti-Obama backlash, one that swept libertarian Rand Paul into the Senate in a statewide vote.

Silk, responding to our query about the latest poll results, said he wasn’t surprised:

"Other conservative Southern Democratic governors have managed to get elected and stay popular by doing nothing to get evangelical activists’ noses out of joint. West Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas are recent cases in point. In general, partisanship matters less in gubernatorial races than in statewide federal ones, so it’s not uncommon for very blue states to elect GOP governors, very red states to elect Democratic governors. And especially in border and mid-South states where there continue to be majority Democratic registrations, it’s just not that odd to find conservative Democrats doing well among frequent church-goers. The real problem for them comes when they go for national office."

Beshear is likely to win re-election, barring some last-minute scandal, but he won't do it with freakazoid votes.

What that poll shows is freakazoid approval of Beshear's inexcusable pandering to the god-botherers: $40 million tax dollars the state doesn't have to the Flintstones Truther Park, the new I'm-a-fucking-moron "in god we trust" license plate, the constant invocation of an invisible sky wizard's influence on secular government.

Freakazoids never, ever vote for the Democratic candidate. They deplore any sign of respect for the separation of church and state and cheer all gestures toward Dominionism, but that's just to keep cowards like Beshear kow-towing to them.

Liberals support candidates who govern according to our secular state and U.S. Constitutions.