MM&N Commentary In the wake of the mid-term elections, perhaps we can consider what doesn't work to advance a campaign. Negative campaigning generally don't work, although they somtimes convey information including the ability of the candiate to effectively respond to such attacks. Robo-calls don't work. They just annoy. Structural advantages such a money and armies of volunteers don't work if it fights the prevailing tide. No amount of money can get people to change core beliefs. Gerrymandered districts can backfire as it weakens the plurality of the representation of one party over another. Perhaps 30 other Republican congressmen had political near death experiences with margins of under three points. Voting guides don't work. They're fun to read, but I doubt they change minds. These are guides published by special interest groups that attempt to steer people to vote in accordance with a specific platform, say, on conservation, abortion rights, or tax issues. The Arizona church I attend supported Proposition 107, which would amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage as well as deny domestic-partner benefits to government employees. They used a guide published by the Center for Public Policy, a conservative nonprofit organization devoted to lobbying on issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Len Munsil (Bush referred to him as "Lee Munster") is one of the founders and former president of the center, and lost in the race against the popular and pragmatic governor Janet Napolitano. Proposition 107 also lost. The Protect Marriage Arizona amendment promoted by the Center aimed to not only reinforce the existing gay-marriage ban, but also remove benefits from unmarried heterosexual couples. This includes, but is not limited to, health care benefits and hospital visitation rights. My church especially pushed hard for Prop 107. Each Sunday, you had to walk a gauntlet of petitions and posters. The pastor spoke on the proposition the Sunday before the election. The problem I have with these guides is that they reduce complex issues into simplistic false choices. In the case of Prop 107, a lot of people voted against it when they found out it would hurt those who live together without having some kind of a religious marriage arrangement, such as maiden aunts. I question the ethical or Biblical basis for arguing that homosexuality per se is immoral. The Bible condemns a lot of things, not the least of which is hypocrisy. If we believe that marriages have social utility and that there really is a need to protect marriages, I would think we could do that firstly by encouraging gays to marry and secondly by attacking legitimate threats to stable marriages, such as preconditions to divorce and child and spousal abuse. It's weirdly fascinating that Republicans are at the forefront of gay bashing when powerfuls gays have found a home within the Republican party. Just last week, Bill Maher suggested that RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman was gay. And of course you have Jeff Gannon, Jim Gucket, Foley, Haggard, J. Edgar, perhaps Rove, and many others. But that's beside the point. These voter guides assume that we're sheep-- that we need to be guided. The tract from the center was a cynical attempt by Republican National Committee to mobilize what they saw was their base by creating a false equation that the GOP is God. In the case of Missouri and elsewhere, it mobilized the wrong base, and the Democrats won the Senate. Issues like abortion, capital punishment, the war, homosexuality, civil rights, and immigration may have a moral dimension. But I really think the church has no business preaching on such issues, except in terms of general values-- how to distinguish right and wrong and and why. In the voter guide I got, there were even checklists on whether a particular tax policy was Christian or not. Jesus said "render unto Caesar", not "soak the rich" or "slash taxes." The church should keep out of that completely and talk about what Jesus talked about-- how to be a kind and moral person and how to draw closer to God. Rove's strategy that failed so spectacularly last week was an aborted exercise in wedge politics-- to capture the base by pandering to the most extreme elements in that base. I think with the election, we'll see less socially oriented propositions and less coddling of religious extremists in the name of politics and more attention to real moral issues, such as corruption in government and the use of violence to achieve foreign policy goals.