Moral Values in the 2004 Election

The exit polls made election night excessively cruel and especially so for supporters of presidential candidate Senator John Kerry. Early in the afternoon, exit polls suggested that Kerry would be a big winner. The stock market plummeted on the news and Kerry supporters were giddy in anticipation. Some were already planning strategies for running against Senator John McCain in 2008. Bush supporters were gloomy, until about 7:00 p.m. when the actual election returns started to trickle in. When the exit polls were finally tabulated using data for the entire day, they began to approach the actual election returns, but the damage was already done. Kerry supporters were forced to suffer an even more frustrating loss than they would have endured had the exit polls not been so initially misleading.

While exit polls may not be the best real-time predictor of election outcomes, they did offer an interesting post-election insight into the motivation and demographics of voters. Exit polls clearly showed an increase in voting by Evangelical Christians and that the issue of "moral values" played a more important role in voters' minds than most observers had anticipated before the election. However, to many the term "moral values" is code-language for only a pro-life position or for the notion that the definition of marriage ought not to be extended to same sex partners. While it is true that these issues are important, the thesis here is the moral values that defined this election were substantially broader. Many of those who were citing "moral values" as an issue were also reacting to vitriolic rhetoric and mean-spirited campaign of the Democrats and others on the Left. The thesis here is that Americans were also rejecting the tone and tenor of the campaign.

Consider the following incendiary rhetoric by major players in the Democratic Party:

• Senator Edward Kennedy claimed that the War in Iraq was a "fraud" that was "made up in Texas."

• Governor Howard Dean said, "John Ashcroft is not a patriot" and lent credence to the notion Bush may have know about the 9/11 attacks in advance.

• General Wesley Clark ran for the Democratic nomination suggesting that as far as Christianity goes "there's only one party that lives that faith in America, and that's our party, the Democratic Party."

• Vice-President Al Gore shouted to a partisan crowd that Bush "betrayed us."

• Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe asserted that President Bush went AWOL while in the Texas National Guard.
  The copyright of the article Moral Values in the 2004 Election in Conservative Politics is owned by Frank Monaldo. Permission to republish Moral Values in the 2004 Election in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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