What Bush really thinks of principled Christians

I have the understanding that columnist Robert Novak is what’s called a “neo-conservative,” but his work this morning deserves much attention (and has already gotten some from Open Book, whence I found this): pointing out the White House snub of visiting Italian dignitary Rocco Buttiglione, whose nomination to serve as Justice Minister in the European Union was rejected on account of his public affirmations, consistent with his Catholic Faith, against sodomites (and feminoids also, I think).

This, in fact, is disgustingly consistent with the Bush White House’s real (and always manifest) attitude towards those who take the principles of Christian religion (even in heretical form) seriously enough to insist on them being implemented in the sociopolitical realm: utter disdain. This makes all the more galling the hypocrisy of whatever Karl Rove and company strategically devised in order to increase the vote turnout from that particular segment of the population (millions of them had stayed home in 2000) — and yet, such strategizing wasn’t on such the grand scale as the leftist media wants us to think. Millions of them turned out last month for the same pure and simple reason that I and my friends did: because we realized that the only other man with a chance to win, a sacrilegious, fake Catholic and shameless panderer to anti-Christian causes, was far, far worse. We could see this for ourselves without any help from Karl Rove’s staff. (We do, on the other hand, owe much to the Swift Boat Vets and the bloggers who unraveled Dan Rather’s forged documents — both of whom, if you’ll recall, were curiously disowned by the Bush campaign!)

The fact is (as Kathleen Parker, among other commentators, has pointed out) that Bush is so uncommitted to the “cultural conservative” agenda that in just about everything he does that even touches on that sphere, he dances and tiptoes around its borders. Such religion as he embraces is entirely of a personal nature, as was most recently evident in the way he fielded questions on the topic in the October debates. The snub of Signor Buttiglione, while therefore perfectly pathetic, is just one more brick in the wall, just one more part of a pattern that was established from the first days of Bush’s campaign in 1999.

It proves again what a Hobson’s choice we had last month: between a man who is no friend to Christian culture, and a man who is a committed and credentialed enemy of the same.

[P.S. And it's articles like this that make me want to think twice about shutting the Annals down!]