“The Illinois senator praised Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives but said that it “never fulfilled its promise” because the administration “consistently underfunded” social service programs for the poor. Obama said he’d replace the Bush program with a Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. “The new name will reflect a new commitment,” he said.”

The religious right is the problem and Sarah Palin is the devil incarnate in that representation. Bush43’s “faith based initiatives” were bad enough, unconstitutional on their face and immoral beyond hope of reason. The GOP, my party, actively solicited the support of Hagee, Dobson, Robertson, and the like. All of the them self righteous, sanctimonious, superstitious, delusional, intolerant, hate mongers out to change these United States, my country, into a theocracy based on their brand of religion. Intolerable. Some of those religious zealots appear to have conditioned their support on having an uneducated, mean spirited, religious zealot on the ticket: Palin. It’s just wrong. Wrong in so many ways.

Let me tell you this. If the GOP, my party, stick to the the religious right’s agenda, I’ll vote Democrat again. Maybe next time I won’t feel so bad about it.

MW is right. Blaming “deregulation” is burning the Reichstag. It gives people who advocated the failed social engineering policies of our government which caused this mess an excuse to pass the blame, and they can call for more government intrusion to “fix” it. Justin is a great example of this. There was no regulation that was preventing the mortgage crisis, which was then removed by the Bush administration. Name it if you think otherwise.

Obama won because he was in the right place at the right time. Bush is not liked because of the Iraq war, the fact that he is presiding over a bad economy, and that he is a boob of a personality. Obama “represnts “change.” Thats it. That’s why he will govern from the center, because this is a center right country and he will never win re-election if he does all of the things he said he would do during the campaign.

“Bush and company still believe in the free market, but the days of deregulation as the greatest good are all but over and the moderate majority that swings elections no longer believe that Democrats are the socialistic boogeymen that Republicans try to frame them as.” – JG

Two problems here.

First, I’ve corrected you on this before, but I see I will have to keep doing it every time you bring it up. I don’t know what they “believe”, but what “Bush and company” did has little or nothing to do with free markets. Corporate welfare, cozy big business k-street bribery/contracts and favoritism, protectionism, and cronyism – which are the hallmarks of the Bush administration, have nothing to do with free markets. Nothing. Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, by definiton, have nothing in common with a free market.

In fact, I’ll suggest a new slogan:

“Bush lied. Free Markets Died.”

Second, that is an awful big sweeping conclusion about moderates based on exactly one data point, when it looks far more likely that they were not so much voting for Obama, as they were voting to reject Bush Republicanism, and against the McCain/Paiin ticket. I suggest you at least wait to look at another election before you leap to that conclusion.