A values voter's trap

0 Comments | USA TODAY, April, 2008 | by Austin Dacey

Woody Allen confesses that he once failed a philosophy exam when he was caught looking into the soul of the student next to him. Like metaphysics, morality is not the kind of thing that can be lifted from someone else. And to the extent that one tries, one usually loses it in the process. This could pretty well describe what has been happening lately with the Democratic Party's relationship to religion and values in public life.

After the failed presidential bid of 2004, a now-famous (and famously flawed) exit poll of so-called values voters launched a thousand liberal soul-searches. The Democratic Party concluded that because values voters are religious, the way to Washington must lie on the road to Damascus. Since then, it has been closing the God gap that is thought...