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A post by Maynard

Drudge linked to this Washington Post article about Hillary’s religiosity. It’s a puff piece of historical revisionism. It describes of Hillary’s long religious history, and indeed the long religious history of the Democrat party in pursuit of the Christian ideal of “economic justice”.

This would all be well and good if the story were “truthy”. But anyone who lived through the Clinton presidency knows we didn’t hear much in the way of religious rhetoric from co-President Rodham until recently. Neither did Bill Clinton exude any particular religiosity, except for frequent politicking in black churches (because he was the self-proclaimed “first black president”). This isn’t to say that there were no church-oriented publicity photos, but nobody ever accused the Clintons of being “too religious”, as they do with Mr. Bush.

Clinton briefly found God when the Lewinsky affair came crashing down, and he decided his repentance would be accomplished with the aid of rigorous spiritual counseling. The Reverend Jesse Jackson heard the call and rushed to Washington, accompanied by Karin Stanford, Jackson’s assistant (and also his mistress and mother of his “love child” — but we didn’t know about that part yet).

Okay, so the Clinton White House was not the most pious of places, and that’s okay. What irks me is the blatant lying. These people must think we’re incredibly stupid.

Contrast the Post’s newly-minted history with your own memories, and add this little note about how Hillary hired an evangelical consultant to boost her stock with the non-Left, and the picture becomes clearer:

Burns Strider, one of the Democratic Party’s leading strategists on winning over evangelicals and other values-driven voters, will join Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as she prepares to launch her 2008 presidential campaign.

Strider now heads religious outreach for the House Democratic Caucus, and is the lead staffer for the Democrats’ Faith Working Group, headed by incoming Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.).

Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) created the working group in 2005 when Democratic strategists recognized that the party lost ground in the previous election because of trouble appealing to centrist and conservative voters in rural areas, who tend to be church-goers driven by moral issues. Strider was an aide to Pelosi when the group formed and joined Clyburn’s staff as policy director of the Democratic Caucus in 2006.

Strider’s move to Clinton’s camp suggests that Democrats will woo so-called faith voters in the 2008 election. The plan is buoyed by the Democrats’ success in winning over religious voters in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in the midterm elections.

In this critical era, it’s disturbing that so many politicians are either themselves morons, or they believe we are morons.