How Did Dems Inherit Ozzie & Harriet Mantle?

Evangelical love for Palin family highlights dramatic switch in 'family values'
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 5, 2008 5:31 AM CDT
How Did Dems Inherit Ozzie & Harriet Mantle?
Barack Obama waves to the crowd as he is joined by his family at the end of his speech at the Democratic National Convention at Invesco Field last week.   (AP Photo )

The enthusiastic evangelical reaction to a working mother with an unwed pregnant teenage daughter on the GOP ticket highlights the dramatically changing face of conservative Christian America and could spell trouble for the Dems, Hanna Rosin writes in Slate. Evangelicals now actually score worse than the rest of America on the traditional values that preachers and conservative pundits laud, with families often failing to resemble the "oh-so-perfect" Obamas.

The Palin clan's flaws may boost the candidate's  working-class Christian cred, Rosin argues, pointing to figures that show the divorce rate has sunk among the college-educated and soared among evangelicals. "Since the '70s, evangelicals and the coastal elites have effectively switched places," Rosin concludes. "An intact happy marriage that produces well-behaved children, it turns out, is becoming a luxury of the elites—bad news for the Obamas." (More evangelicals stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X