Last summer, in the wake of Senator Barack Obama's speech regarding the role of religion in public life, I wrote several essays pointing out that Senator Obama and Jim Wallis' author of God's Politics, had internalized and expressed one of the central frames of the religious right, namely that "secularists" or a number of variants (secular humanists, secular fundamentalists, etc) were somehow oppressing Christians (or religion, or people of faith, etc), or driving religious people "out of the public square."   They offered no evidence for this. It was, and is, a false and unsubstantiated frame designed by the religious right to argue that traditional efforts to advance the rights of conscience of all citizens against appropriation of governments resources for prostelyzation and other misuses of taxpayer resources and public property to advance religious views were somehow in opposition to religion in general or Christianity in particular.  

Now comes Democratic political consultant Mara Vanderslice who told The New York Times recently that Democrats should not use the phrase separation of church and state because it is not in the Constitution and because "That language says to people that you don't want there to be a role for religion in our public life"  I wrote at the time that this argument is very close to, even indistinguishable from the argument advanced by the religious right. I also noted that she was not the only one saying uch things in the Democratic Party.  That said, I think candidates doing smart forms of "religious outreach is a good thing and, I might add, somethihg that has never been alien to the Democratic Party or to liberals in general. That some Democrats are now more publicly connecting their religious values with their politics is fine with me. Doing it appropriately and well will be the ongoing trick.  

Meanwhile, to underscore how fuzzy this area can get as religious right talking points bleed into the Conventional Wisdom, here is a news and public affairs quiz!

I recently posted about the latest piece of dubious advice from the consultantocracy that is shaping the Democratic Party's approach to religion in public life. I noted that Antonin Scalia and his friends on the religious right are undoubtedly laughing and rubbing their hands with glee at the latest Democratic Party capitulation to their world view.

Now the consultantocrat in question has responded.