Getting To Know The Republican Base

I was talking to a home schooling Evangelical Christian fellow yesterday that I have become friendly with. He indicated that he was pleased with the selection of Gov. Palin for VP. We talked about a number of related issues and as I had previously been made aware, he said that abortion and gay marriage are by far the most important issues for him in this election. If it isn't clear yet, I am pro-choice because I'm old enough to remember what it was like before Roe v. Wade and about gay marriage, I couldn't care less.
I'm one that has never quite understood how an irrational willingness to wage war and an unwillingness to accept any form of gun control can co-exist with a pro-life opinion. But what do I know?
The more we talked the more I realized that he was exactly what the calculation to select Gov. Palin was all about.
Discussing the respective campaigns it was obvious that as long as his candidate is solidly pro-life and defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, nothing else really mattered that much. As I was to find out, the ethics involved in running a campaign was just simply not that important.
After I had given him plenty of time to talk, I was curious and seeing a limited opportunity I began to open up the possibility of a different perspective. I started by pointing out for example that Sen. McCain had not been truthful the day before when he said on the television show, The View, that Gov. Palin had not received earmark funding as Governor. I said, in fact, she will receive 256 million this year. I also pointed out that Gov. Palin told ABC's Charlie Gibson, touting her energy credentials, that Alaska provides 20% of the U.S. supply of energy when in fact the number is 3.5%. Then I told him that she had just told her son and fellow soldiers who were heading to Iraq, that they were being sent to protect us from the people who carried out the attacks on 9/11. I said, another falsehood.
He wasn't having any more of this and said, what's wrong with soliciting and receiving earmarks? To his surprise I said, nothing, I would expect my Governor to go after every penny available. Pork barrel rules do need to be changed but until they are it's fair game. He looked confused. I said, this is not about that, it's about lying to become President. Surely your religion teaches you that lying is wrong.
About Iraq, he said that it hadn't been proven that they weren't involved in 9/11. I said, yes it has. Then he went into this whole-all is fair in love and war-type of counter argument and says that both sides are as guilty as the other.
Well, I quickly realized that I was never going to convince him of what I do strongly believe, that the McCain campaign has run a much more deceptive and dirty campaign.
To change the subject I asked if he had seen Saturday Night Live. He said he hadn't but he did catch the Gov. Palin/Sen. Clinton bit on line and he thought it was very funny. Then he surprised me by saying that he couldn't believe that people in the McCain campaign thought it was disrespectful. Then adding that this was what satire is all about and what about that New Yorker cover with Barrack Obama and his wife as terrorists? Talk about disrespectful he said, did you know that there was even an American flag burning in the fireplace on that cover. I hadn't thought about it until then but it was an excellent point and I told him so. Then he said, you know, except for a few big issues I bet you and I don't see things all that differently. I said, I'm not so sure about that.