Santorum and other in the GOP have been equating religious beliefs with atheism or with

[applegrove]

something like the President's political world view. Instead of voting on the issues, the GOP seems to want people to vote on whichever creation myth they believe. A majority of Americans say they believe in god. The democrats don't do out and out patriotism with the American creation myth of the founding fathers. They do issues (like inequality in taxes). But don't have an overriding myth.

How can we beat back the GOP practice of equating religion to non religious views? Do Democrats need and overriding myth? This is like the Elizabethan world view where god is at the top, then royalty, people of various classes and animals way below that in decreasing order. I would imagine that people who put god at the top, put single issues below that. With something like the middle class, just that: in the middle. If this is what the GOP has borrowed they certainly have gone far back in time to find a frame.

http://www.wvup.edu/mberdine/Shakespeare/ShakElizWorldView.htm

It is the same thing as Mitt Romney attacking the president. It makes him look like he is already in a race with the president...that is how his campaign wants his image to be. If Mitt Romney = Obama, then he is greater than the other GOP nominees. Likewise if Santorum's christianity = Obama fighting for the middle class, or the environment, Santorum does better in the nomination race.

[phasma ex machina]

1. The GOP has been playing politics with religion from the start.

Abe Lincoln he got the war he wanted by using abolitionists to go over the top.

[davidthegnome]

2. Perhaps I misunderstood my history lessons

From everything I've read, Lincoln wasn't looking to start a war.

He was about as far from your modern GOP member as you can get. He certainly wasn't a person of great means in the first place, not born with the silver spoon up his ass. He may have been an abolitionist and may have known many of them, but according to the history books I've read Lincoln had no intention of going to war - or demanding an end to the practice of slavery until after the South left the Union.

Comparing Lincoln to these idiots is bizarre.

[phasma ex machina]

3. How And Why Abraham Lincoln Started The War Of Northern Aggression To Protect His Own Political Care

How And Why Abraham Lincoln Started The War Of Northern Aggression To Protect His Own Political Career

...There were two factors about the election of 1860 which disturbed the Southerners so badly that Southern states subsequently seceded. First was the Republican-party platform for 1860. Basically, the Northern capitalists wanted the U.S. government to tax (only) the South deeply, to finance the industrialization of the North, and the necessary transportation-net to support that. In those days, there was no income tax. ...

...Second, if the Republicans somehow managed to gain control of Congress AND the White House, they would then be able to use the federal government to enact and enforce their party platform -- and thus convert the prosperous Southern-states into the dirt-poor agricultural colonies of the Northern capitalists. And given the trends in demographics, the Southern states would never be able to reverse that process. The intent of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution would then have been subverted completely: the Southern states would no longer be governed with the consent of the governed -- but instead bullied mercilessly by the Northern majority. Why, then, remain in the Union?...