Did the 700 Club make Kerry lose?

The OpinionJournal's James Q. Wilson has a rather sharp editorial up on John Kerry's loss of the 2004 Presidential Election, and he's as confused as I am over the incredible fear gripping the Democratic party of "fundamentalist nutjobs" hijacking the vote.

I am just as mystified by Mr. Friedman's lament that "Christian Fundamentalists" are ruining his America by fostering "divisions and intolerance." It would make as much sense to say that liberals are fostering division and intolerance by favoring abortion and gay marriages. In fact, abortion was not an issue in the election and Messrs. Bush and Kerry both opposed gay marriage. A ban on gay marriage was approved in Oregon, a state won by Sen. Kerry.

See, all these projections about voter demographics are being taken from the deceptively scanty data taken from exit polls. A few too many eggs in one pollster's basket, maybe? I particularly liked his conclusion:

Suppose the Democrats had done this better than the GOP. The result might well have been a Bush loss in Florida and Ohio, and thus the loss of the election. Our press would now be running columns about the liberal shift in public opinion, the defeat of fundamentalists, and the importance of antiwar sentiments. But in fact the Democrats did not do a better job than the Republicans. Perhaps the columnists should now just say that Karl Rove out-organized his opponents.

Well, they definitely need to run columns about something. I guess the threat of Pat Robertson disciples taking the country by storm is as good as anything else.

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