On its face, the central argument of today’s Washington Post story on Edwards makes some sense: “he is the sole Southern Democrat and cultural conservative in the Democratic presidential field, making him the only top-tier candidate in his party who can appeal easily to white men.” And while Edwards is now a United Methodist, he was raised in the faith tradition that produced the only two Democratic presidents of the last 40 years: Southern Baptist. Still, God-o-Meter feels that the obvious trouble with playing up Edwards’s religious or culture conservative appeal, as this article does, is that he is about as culturally conservative as Rudy Giuliani. Edwards supports abortion rights—decrying the recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act—and backs gay civil unions and opposes “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”. In the debates so far, he has more insistent than Clinton or Barack Obama that his faith has no place in shaping his policy stances (though he said otherwise during his Beliefnet interview). It may be true, as the Washington Post reports, that Edwards is attracting mostly white crowds in the New Hampshire countryside. But hey, the state is more than 95% white, so God-o-Meter warns against making too much of it.

5