Lowell: My question had to do with what I think might be a bit of a focus on something of a sideshow right now, which is denominational issues. Beliefs between different religions. The differences between different religious about doctrinal matters, when, in fact, if you look down the road, if the nominee of the Republican party is someone like Sam Brownback or George Allen or Romney, all of whom have strong views on fundamental values issues, such as abortion, same sex marriage, judicial legislation, and so forth, I wonder if the opposition from the left, the institutional left, the ACLU, most of the main stream news media, won’t be quite furious against that person and won’t there be an effort to marginalize that nominee? In other words, don’t Republican’s have a lot more to fear from people outside their own tent, the left,, than they do from internal squabbles over, perhaps, religious doctrine?
David Barton: Well, yes and no. That is, there is a theoretical answer and there is a practical answer. On the theoretical side, it’s friendly fire that you worry about more than anything else. Remember, Moses only had to fight the Egyptians once, but he fought his own people for 40 years; Republicans can too often be that way. However, on the issue of religion, if the Democrats or the left choose to go after any candidate because of religious beliefs, they have just shot themselves in the foot (again) - they have just validated Ann Coulter’s assertion they are Godless – they have just repeated the mistake they have made in the previous cycles. On the other hand, Democrat leaders this cycle are making noise about how they are reaching out to appeal to religious folks to get them to vote Democrat, and then they attack someone because of their faith? That might look like it was an Article VI problem - they claim they want no religious test but then they impose one??? I think they would seriously damage themselves if they did that. The only way they might do that is through whisper campaigns rather than coming straight out and making it an issue. I don’t think they’re stupid enough and make that an issue straight on; and I don’t think they’re stupid enough, after the last two elections, to have any publicly known Democratic spokesman speak that way. Instead, what they can do is get 527s to start shooting some emails around and start some buzz going; however, even that has not been very effective of late.
On the Republican side, I think that up to about six years ago, doctrinal issues were big in the Republican primaries, but in the last three cycles I’ve not seen that to be an issue. The greater issue has become where someone stands on the values; and if he stands on the right values, Republicans can overlook much else. Perhaps Clinton had a lot to do with this change in the sense that he had every appearance of being an evangelical Baptist; in fact, I’ve personally seen him preach on Bible verses much better than a lot of Baptist preachers I’ve heard; yet his policy positions were dead wrong on so many issues that the rest of the Baptists held dear (e.g., homosexuals in the military, abortion, homosexuality, etc.). I think that Clinton cured a lot of voters from having theological disputes because he was right in his theology but wrong in his policies and behaviors. So, since the time of Clinton, I have not seen religious theology be an issue in many Republican primaries; in the few instances where it has been raised, it has not been a substantive issue; and I see it even less today than I did six years ago.