Terrorist strikes on four American cities. Russia rolling into
Eastern Europe. Israel hit by a nuclear bomb. Gay marriage in every
state. The end of the Boy Scouts.
All are plausible scenarios if Democrat Barack Obama
is elected president, according to a new addition to the campaign
conversation called “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” produced by
the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family Action.
The
imagined look into the future is part of an escalation in rhetoric from
Christian right activists who are trying to paint Obama in the worst
possible terms as the campaign heads into the final stretch and polls
show the Democrat ahead.
Although hard-edge attacks are common late in campaigns, the tenor
of the strikes against Obama illustrate just how worried conservative
Christian activists are about what should happen to their causes and
influence if Democrats seize control of both Congress and the White
House.
“It looks like, walks like, talks like and smells like desperation
to me,” said the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston, an Obama supporter
who backed President Bush in the past two elections. The Methodist
pastor called the 2012 letter “false and ridiculous.” He said it showed
that some Christian conservative leaders fear that Obama’s faith-based
appeals to voters are working.
Like other political advocacy groups, Christian right groups often
raise worries about an election’s consequences to mobilize voters. In
the early 1980s, for example, direct mail from the Moral Majority
warned that Congress would turn a blind eye to “smut peddlers” dangling
pornography to children.
Read Previous Post
