Here’s something that I think really blows up the MSM thesis that social cons freaking on gay marriage knocked Kerry for a loop, something so obvious I keep waiting to hear it on the tube or see it in print, but nada.
So, anyway, recall that it was Kerry who used the “wrong war” formulation. That is value talk and Bush quickly and repeatedly, if somewhat incoherently at times, jumped to assert he thought he was doing “right.”
Kerry also made a big deal about finding allies to help his foreign policy goals while Bush stressed his commitment to unilateralism if that’s what it took. Again right way, wrong way.
The public could clearly look at the two candidates and discern something of a value difference underlying and explaining some foreign policy differences. There is just no reason to suppose that the phrase “moral values” only blips to domestic issues. Indeed, in some of the rabid blogging on the left you see mentions of Iraqi deaths and the prison abuses as issues with a deep moral importance.
But you can’t have it both ways.
Voters looked at the two candidates and concluded Bush more closely matched their value set on a wide range of issues, foreign and domestic.
