Hillary Clinton: Defender of the faith(less)

"CLINTON SPEAKS"

YES, AND I WON'T OVERTURN ROE V WADE, AND I WON'T ATTACK THE 14TH OR THE 22ND AMENDMENTS.

YES, AND SHE WILL RESPECT THE RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS OF EVERYONE.

YES, OBAMA IS NOT HILLARY CLINTON. YES, CHANGE IS WHAT AMERICA NEEDS.

NOT JEB BUSH, OR JOHN MCCAIN. NOT EVEN KATHERINE HARRIS STANDING NEXT TO JEB BUSH, CIRCUMVENTING VOTER LAWS IN THIS COUNTRY.

To my amazement, in Romney's otherwise odd concession speech he acknowledged with real grace that those without formal religion usually believed in something greater than the self, a purpose driven life. Are we reaching a point where, while all the politicians need to have a faith, agnostic-bashing appears intolerant?

You can have all the faith you want, and believe in any God you want, but it doesn't belong anywhere near public policy. If you want to live in a Theocracy, go live in Iran.

Spin this any way you want, but Hillary just showed us (again) that she can’t give a straight answer to a simple question. The question was about "her faith," and not her views on religion in politics and government.

She can’t answer a straight question about herself because she really doesn’t want anyone to know the real Hillary, as opposed to the Hillary whose public image she can control. So, go ahead and vote for her. I’m sure we’ll do just fine with a chameleon and a control freak in the White House.

Thanks Paul. Please tell that to the Republic front runner.

John W-

What possible relevance does Hillary Clinton's personal faith have to the Presidential election? If she explained her faith, and it was identical to your religious beliefs, would that make you more likely to vote for her?

If you don't believe in the same imaginary friends as me, I have to kill or convert you.

Luke:

You asked what relevance a candidate’s personal faith has to the Presidential election. There are many answers to this question.

First, the objective ones. Knowing a presidential candidate’s “personal faith,” if he or she has one, speaks volumes on where he or she stands regarding foreign policy as well as a wide variety of delicate social issues. This is too obvious to bear mentioning.

Second, the subjective ones. A lot of pseudo-liberals find Mike Huckabee’s personal faith highly relevant, if only to show to others of the same stripe how utterly disqualified he is. There is clearly an anti-religious stream of thought in politics, especially among Democrats. I’m not saying it’s ubiquitous; it’s just there. To other people, however, a person’s faith is a positive characteristic: it becomes a proxy for “he/she thinks like me” and, therefore, is “like me.” To some, it’s a matter of character and trust; and to other’s it’s the hope that shared beliefs will translate into protection for a particular way of life and thinking.

The character of a candidate is always relevant, and personal faith is relevant to many people – for better or worse - in determining whether the candidate has an acceptable character.

To answer your second question, the answer is “no.” If Hillary believed like I did, it would be hypocritical for her to take a number of stances that she has. That doesn’t bode well for her in my views.

Having answered all of this, let me return to my original point: the character of Hillary. I answered your questions because, unlike Hillary, I believe questions ought to be answered. But your questions raise issues that had nothing to do with my point.

My point was that Hillary shows a character defect by avoiding questions that many feel relevant (see above) because she doesn’t want people to know who she is. The persona Hillary allows to be portrayed to the voting public is a limited and measured one – and often not the real Hillary. She wants us to vote for what she wants us to see, and not for who she is. That injects a degree of uncertainty into the process. Are you really getting the candidate you want by voting for only what she allows you to see? How do we know there isn’t something else under the facade to make her unacceptable? For a candidate who has a lot of other negatives going against her, she certainly doesn’t help her cause by remaining so amorphous and enigmatic.

Barak Obama, on the other hand, doesn’t have this problem. His life is as visible as an open faced sandwich. I may not agree with much of what he has to say, but I, at least, have a comfortable understanding that he’s honest and open enough to say who he is, and that he is comfortable with being that open. That, in turn, gives me the confidence to believe the person we see now will be the person in the White House if he is elected.

Somebody PLEASE show RM how to turn off the shift-lock key.

Roger Morris don't know no shift key.