I thought that I had finished talking about the Aqua Buddha ad two weeks ago, but it seems to live on as an exemplar of how Democrats screw up with attack ads that are mild in comparison to demon sheep, Barbara Boxer mushroom clouds, and an assortment of race-baiting offerings.
As Joanna points out, social conservatives don’t care that one of their own had a checkered past with keeping the faith. He keeps it now (or so they think) and that’s all that matters. Salvation is the only required redemption. Testimony above deeds. That’s why the hypocrisy argument — that Paul now professes to be such a committed Christian that everyone should follow Christianity instead of civil law, so why did he mock Christianity in early adulthood? — doesn’t work, with social conservatives, at least.
Of course Kentucky is a deeply socially conservative state — I’ve done a bit of reporting there, and met registered Democrats who were virulently anti-choice and anti-gay and never actually vote Democratic in national races — so that’s a big chunk of the electorate that Conway needed to reach. The Aqua Buddha ad wasn’t going to sway them one way or the other, since they were likely Paul voters anyway. And as a Louisville reader at Talking Points Memo writes in, Conway faced a barrage of oppositional advertising which probably had more of an impact on his declining poll numbers than Aqua Buddha since, of course, most people aren’t analyzing it as closely as pundits and political writers do.
But the question remains — as it has since around 2006, when the Democrats started recruiting social conservatives to run in red districts, several of whom are facing tough reelection fights this year — what is the Democrats’ ammunition against someone who says now they are a devoted Christian whose faith is not to be questioned? Because as we all know (Exhibit A, Barack Obama), for a Democrat to say he’s a Christian is not enough to insulate him from questions about his religion.
Rand Paul walked free from his Aqua Buddha past because conservative Christians think he’s a good Christian now, and others, like the reporter Jason Zengerle, who broke the story, think he’s just a fun-loving, anti-authoritarian prankster. (That’s the beauty of a conservative Christian Ayn Rand devotee — they can simultaneously embrace and reject God and get away with it, somehow.)
I don’t think the Aqua Buddha ad should have backfired on Jack Conway. Democrats hung him out to dry in a series of denunciations that the National Republican Senatorial Committee used in its ad condemning it. Democrats should’ve stuck up for him, saying, yes, we’re sick of these moralizing right-wingers who want to tell us that Christianity demands legal protections for zygotes and none for gays, and try to tie rights for others to a “big government” that’s “on our backs.” Conway was right to point out that the moralizers like to impose their views on everyone else, but make sure they’re free to mock that very moral code.
Democrats fear that argument. That’s why their approach has been, especially since about 2006 or so, to try to make themselves out to be the “authentic” Christians who truly care about their neighbors and all that.
The Aqua Buddha ad may have been a bad strategic move in Kentucky; we’ll never really know. But Conway — without, as far as I can tell, invoking treacly religion — takes positions on economic issues that would, if enacted, actually help his constituents. Rand Paul does not. But Democrats are so afraid of the religious hypocrisy argument that they ran from Conway. One stupid ad versus a voice in the Senate for consumer-friendly legislation?
UPDATE: Speaking of moralizers, remember this guy?
