RealClearPolitics

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Podcast: Is 'post-truth America' a right-wing or a left-wing term? Please discuss

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Podcast: Is 'post-truth America' a right-wing or a left-wing term? Please discuss

Please ponder this pair of true or false questions.

When religious, cultural and political liberals complained about Donald Trump promoting his own “alternative facts” for use in the mainstream press, did they have a valid point? Was it fair game for them to apply the academic term “post-truth” in this case?

When religious, cultural and political conservatives complained about Democrats and their Big Tech-Big Media allies burying coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, funders of Antifa, origin debates about COVID-19 and Jane’s Revenge attacks on churches and crisis-pregnancy centers, did they have a valid point? Was it fair game for them to apply the academic term “post-truth” in this case?

I would argue that the correct answer is “yes,” in both cases.

Debates about the meaning of the term “post-truth” were at the heart of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). There was a logical reason for that, since Clemente Lisi and I were speakers in a March 10-11 conference in Washington, D.C., with this title: “Journalism in a Post-Truth World.” The conference was sponsored by Franciscan University of Steubenville and the Eternal Word Television Network.

The Franciscan University press release afterwards noted that the participants included journalists from the “National Catholic Register, The Washington Post, OSV News, Fox News, CNN, RealClearPolitics, The Catholic Herald, The Spectator, Washington Examiner, National Review, The Daily Signal, Catholic News Agency, The Daily Caller, and GetReligion.” Well, I had requested that I be identified as a columnist with the Universal press syndicate, but I wear several hats.

That’s a list that clearly leans to newsrooms on the cultural right, but with some solid mainstream voices as well. For example, I was on a panel about Catholic news coverage with the (in my eyes) legendary religion-beat pro Ann Rodgers, best known for several decades with the Pittsburgh Press and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Also, click here for a Lisi post at Religion Unplugged about his presentation.

It’s safe to say that someone was there from the National Catholic Reporter, because of this headline in that progressive Catholic publication: “EWTN-sponsored conference on journalism embraces right-wing 'post-truth' narrative.”


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Do trends in Grand Rapids tell us something about religion, evangelicalism and the GOP?

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Do trends in Grand Rapids tell us something about religion, evangelicalism and the GOP?

Tuesday was a good night for Kansas abortion-rights campaigners and for many Republicans blessed by Donald Trump. Democrats are calculating that both factors could foretell a good night for them on Election Day.

Whatever, journalists attuned to the potent though oft-neglected religion factor should especially focus on the Michigan Republican U.S. House primary win by neophyte John Gibbs, a Trump-endorsed 2020 election denier.

In this significant showdown, Gibbs edged incumbent Peter Meijer (pronounced “Meyer”) with 52%. It helps to remember that Trump staged his final campaign rallies in a very symbolic location — Grand Rapids — in 2016 and 2020.

As a brand-new House member, Meijer voted to impeach President Trump for attempting to overthrow President Biden’s Electoral College victory. (Meijer’s predecessor in the seat, Justin Amash, had backed the 2019 Trump impeachment, quit the Republican Party and retired.)

Among last year’s 10 pro-impeachment House Republicans, five others sought party re-nomination. At this writing two of them led Trumpite challengers in Washington state’s Tuesday “jungle primary,” Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse. North Carolina’s Tom Rice lost big, California’s David Valadao won and Liz Cheney faces Wyoming voters August 16. Four decided to retire.

Underscoring hopes to flip the Michigan seat, House Democrats’ campaign arm horrified some party stalwarts by spending $435,000 on ads to boost Gibbs’s name recognition, while undercutting Meijer as the far stronger November opponent. In what turned out to be an obituary, a Monday Meijer blog post denounced Democrats’ “nauseating” violation of “moral limits.”

This brings us to the obvious GetReligion question: Why religion-beat buzz about Michigan District 3?

Simply because it centers on Grand Rapids, as much as any northern town a buckle on an established Bible (especially Calvinist) Belt outside of the South.


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'Catholic voters' will split their votes in this election, but how will that affect swing states?

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The U.S. election season has come down to its final days. Both national polling and those in battleground states see former Vice President Joe Biden with a lead. President Donald Trump has been traveling across the Rust Belt in hopes of winning key states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as voters are told — once again — that the upcoming election is “the most important of our lifetimes.”

The Nov. 3 election is important, and signs continue to point to a Biden victory. Democrats, fearing a repeat of 2016 when Trump surged to a shocking victory, are countering this narrative by paying attention to many states — especially in the Midwest — that Hillary Clinton downplayed in 2016. For journalists, this leads straight to fights to attract Catholic voters of various kinds (see this previous tmatt post on that topic).

News consumers can sense some panic on the left that this election could go horribly wrong for them once again. Republicans, on the other hand, appear confident, yet cautious at the same time regarding the potential outcome.

Trying to gauge voter enthusiasm is difficult. While Trump voters do seem generally more energized — especially among evangelicals and church-going Catholics — compared to Biden supporters, the events of the past few weeks in Washington may have shifted priorities.

A majority of Catholics say they support Biden (52%), while only 40% back Trump. Nevertheless, that gap, according to the latest EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll released this past Monday, shows that the race narrows significantly in swing states such as Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. In those states, Biden leads by an average of just four percentage points (48% to 44%), which is within the survey’s margin of error. Also, note this passage in that EWTN report:

Catholic voters are divided on some issues but said they are more likely to support candidates who seek to protect religious freedom (78% to 14%) and are less likely to support candidates who support taxpayer funding of abortion (52% to 34%) or who support abortion at any time during a pregnancy (60% to 28%).

Back in July, I argued that this coming election was primarily about the Supreme Court.


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Religion folks note: Whatever Donald Trump's fate, there's a Pence in your future

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Religion folks note: Whatever Donald Trump's fate, there's a Pence in your future

Whether Donald Trump completes two full terms and surpasses Ronald Reagan as America’s oldest president, or declines to run in 2020, or -- as many Democrats pray –- resigns or is removed from office, 58-year-old Vice President Mike Pence will be a fixture in your future.

Pence is an obvious prospect for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 if not 2020. He runs a bit better in first-year job approval ratings than Trump, who was averaging a limp 39 percent at realclearpolitics.com just prior to the “[bleep]hole” racial furor.

The current issue of The Atlantic magazine offers a religious spin on the VeeP that gets second billing on the cover under the headline “God’s Plan for Mike Pence.” (The writer, McKay Coppins, also provided an online obit for LDS Church President Thomas Monson.)

The Pence piece, though weighing in at 8,000 words, leaves room for more depth from an enterprising religion reporter. Mention of the vice president’s conservative Christian zeal is a frequent tic in the news media, but as Coppins accurately observes: “For all Pence’s outward piousness, he’s kept the details of his spiritual journey opaque.”

 Other writers have sought to fill in the Catholic and evangelical blanks but, oddly, the vice president is as religiously mysterious in his own way as the unconventional president who ushered him into the limelight. Some aspects regarding this would-be future president that journalists should fully explore and explain.

So, for starters, is Pence still a member of the Catholic Church?


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A Monday-morning quarterback re-examines a foggy religion news forecast for 2016

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A Monday-morning quarterback re-examines a foggy religion news forecast for 2016

This Memo must begin with a confession.

The Religion Guy was among countless newsies who thought Donald Trump would lose. He figured it was close, Trump would win Ohio and Iowa, and had a good shot in Florida and North Carolina. But it didn’t seem likely (to say the least) the president-elect could grab Wisconsin, Michigan (where The Guy went to college), Pennsylvania (where his in-laws live) and fall only 1.5 percent short in Minnesota (that super-blue land of Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale). 

Reminders of fallibility are necessary as The Guy turns Monday-morning quarterback and re-examines the forecast for 2016 by the team of pros at www.religionlink.com, an essential resource on the beat sponsored by our Religion Newswriters Foundation. (Tax-deductible donations welcomed.) Its Web postings are especially helpful in listing knowledgeable observers and advocates for reporters.

Naturally, ReligionLink led with the election. On the January day its 2016 forecast appeared, the RealClearPolitics poll average among Republicans put Trump first with 35 percent, followed by three rivals with substantial evangelical appeal who together claimed 38.3 percent: Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Dr. Ben Carson, in that order. Uh, that was essentially “white evangelical” appeal, due to African-Americans’ Democratic fealty.

ReligionLink cited Rubio’s pitch to evangelicals but ignored the devout Cruz and Carson.

Remarkably, Trump’s candidacy was not mentioned.


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