Friday, May 04, 2007

God and Candidates at the Republican Debate   [Peter Suderman]

Time’s Joe Klein listened to last night’s debate on the radio and describes his impression of the debate over at Swampland:

Here's what it sounded like: God God God God God God God Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan Reagan God...and, oh by the way, Reagan.

There were certainly a number of Reagan references throughout the evening. But how prevalent was discussion of God, or even faith in general? Well, a quick search of the transcript reveals that the word was used only seven times. Moderator Chris Matthews used it once, saying “Oh, God” after Ron Paul mentioned that he was a supporter of “original intent” when it comes to the Constitution. Romney, Huckabee, McCain, and Giuliani each used the word a single time, though Giuliani did so in a not particularly religious context (about immigrants, he said, “God bless them, let them pay taxes.”) Brownback used the word twice, but one of those uses was to note that “our [national] motto is, “In God We Trust.”

Expanding the search, you find that the word “faith” popped up a little more often—21 times in all. Three came from moderator Chris Mathews. McCain used the word once, though only as a reference to “faith in government.” Gilmore used the word twice, once when speaking about religiously-motivated terrorists and once when talking about how the U.S. should represent people “in good faith.” Huckabee used the word five times, but all were in a single question and follow-up about if and how his decision-making would be affected by his faith (kind of hard to avoid the topic there). Romney came out at the top of the pack with six uses of the word, but four of those were packed into a single response to a question about whether the government should interfere with the Catholic Church’s communion practices.

I know it’s just an impression, but, to me at least, it doesn’t really seem like God-talk dominated the discussion in the way Klein suggests, and what we did hear was often prompted by the moderator.

Update: A reader asks for a comparison with the Democratic debate, and I live to serve (plus, I'm curious myself). Measured against the Democrats, the Republicans did indeed spend a lot of time talking about issues of God and faith.  According to the transcript, the word “God” was used only six times during the Democratic debate. The word was used three times by Gravel (all of which were the exclamation, “my God”), once by Biden (“Thank God [Robert Bork] is not in the court or Roe v. Wade would be gone by now.”), and twice by host Brian Williams when asking the question beginning with “[I]f, God forbid a thousand times… we learned that two American cities have been hit simultaneously by terrorists…” to both Obama and Edwards. 

The word “faith” was uttered only two times, and both uses were by Edwards.  The first time it was in reference to the importance for the rest of the world to have “faith in the president of the United States” and the second time it was to say that what he learned from his vote for the Iraq war was to “put more faith in [his] own judgment.” 

If this is the benchmark, then I suppose Klein's impression makes a little more sense.   

05/04 12:57 PMShare