Originally Posted by Tralls

From The Nation:

The biggest outrage imaginable occurred yesterday. Despite a lagging economy, an unpopular war in Iraq and unprecedented energy on the other side, Republicans actually increased their majorities in Congress and held the Presidency. How did this happen? A look at last night's exit polls reveal that Republicans effectively manipulated voter's anxieties about the threat from terrorism abroad and gay marriage at home to solidify their mandate.

Voters approved every one of the eleven initiatives banning gay marriage on state ballots. In Ohio, the strictest anti-gay marriage amendment ever proposed--banning even civil unions and possibly domestic partnership for straight couples--passed with 62 percent of the vote. Twenty-three percent of voters named "moral values" as the most important issue according to exit polls, well ahead of "Iraq" (13 percent) and "healthcare" (5 percent) and second only to "jobs/economy" by a point in a state decimated by outsourcing and lost manufacturing jobs. Of the moral values voters, 85 percent preferred President Bush. "The church is going to show up today," Phil Burress, chairman of the Ohio Campaign to Protect Marriage, told The New York Times yesterday. Burres said that social issues like the ban on gay marriage prompted groups like the Amish to vote for the first time. Solidifying Bush's support, the 17 percent of voters who ranked "terrorism" as the most important issue picked the president by a stunning 90-10 margin over Kerry.

These trends carried over into other crucial battleground states like Florida, where voters ranked "moral values" as second with 20 percent, behind only "terrorism" at 24 percent. Eighty percent supported Bush on moral values, and an even higher 87 percent on terrorism. These statistics show how the president won the Sunshine State.

In teetering swing states such as Arkansas, 33 percent of voters identified "moral values" as the crucial issue, while Democrats and independents joined in approving a ban on gay marriage by 75 percent.

Across the red states, moral values and terrorism often trumped the economy and Iraq, and far surpassed health care and education, as the most important issues for voters.

Republicans drove up turnout by hammering John Kerry as a gay-loving, terror- capitulating Massachusetts liberal who'd impose the social values of Boston and San Francisco on all of America. It worked. The party that favors passing a Constitutional amendment that would explicitly withdraw rights from a group of people for the first time in American history now has a stranglehold on "moral values." The party that failed to take actions that could have helped prevent 9/11 and strengthened Al- Qaeda by invading Iraq is the only one who can defend America from terrorism in the voters minds. In this party, ignorance is strength.