It has become apparent since John McCain announced Sarah Palin as his running mate that this was less of a hail-Mary pass (hoping to pick up alienated Hillary voters and any other woman who would vote for any woman) than it first appeared and, more predictably, a play for the GOP’s born-again Christian base. As a story in the Times, or even a ten-minute visit to the Republican National Convention makes abundantly clear, her selection has been hailed as divine. Literally. 

It was this same bunch that was so instrumental in winning the election for Bush in ’04; these people are like Orcs, the unstoppable broodlings in the Lord of the Rings that battled the hobbits and fairies and trolls and men who were trying to defeat the dark empire of Mordor. They can go for days without food or drink and certainly don’t need to be paid to stuff envelopes and ring doorbells. They believe they are doing God’s work, and many of them would be insulted by the offer of money. 

I had the experience, canvassing for Kerry in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre areas of Pennsylvania (a state we won by the way) of driving through the exurbs to ring the doorbell of some registered Democrat and passing all these other houses and McMansions and wondering: who’s ringing their doorbells? In Ohio it was the Orcs, stirred into action by that Lord Sauron of the GOP, Karl Rove (who told the Washington Post.com that choosing Palin was “a campaign decision, not a governing decision.”

Translation: we just want to get this guy elected. Motivating the Christian right, for whom abortion remains the signature issue, is more important than gambling on any voters in the middle, many of whom live in those exurbs and smaller cities in the swing states. We can only hope that this strategy will backfire, that voters who support a woman’s right to choose (a clear majority of Americans) and who are tired of the God-gays-and-guns gang having such sway in government, as they have under GWB, will hit the Change button come November 4. (Most of my wife’s Republican family, who live in the battleground county of Washington in the battleground state of PA, are already leaning that way.)

But hoping (or praying) alone won’t do it. If you haven’t already, find a way to volunteer to work for Obama. Calling the fairies and trolls you know in California and New York (and I know plenty of both) won’t help; we’ve got those states. You need to start reaching out into the red states and trying the gentle art of suasion instead of the bellicose rhetoric of partisanship. Ask people: do you care about climate change? Because Palin and all she represents think it’s part of God’s plan, and the war in Iraq was a Holy War. (Check out this church video from June of this year if you think I’m exaggerating.) Despite McCain’s past statements about the environment, he has backed away from that stance in the last year, and I guarantee he will do far too little too late as president, and has already said he will choose anti-Roe judges for the Supreme and federal courts. You’ve got to dance with the Orcs that brought you.