The ideal policy outcome for the greater Middle East would be if Middle Easterners’ relationship with religion were to mirror Europeans’, Australasians’, Canadians’ and East and West Coast Americans’ relationships with religion. Extremists would be rare and mocked; life in general would be secular, although the moderately religious would have no problems fitting in.
The worst possible Western ambassador for such a strategy would be a man from (and electorally dependent on) the only significant part of the developed world not to have become secularised.
This may well be another reason why people outside the Southern and Midwestern USA are so overwhelmingly pro-Kerry. It also implies that non-fundie Americans have a moral obligation to vote for Democrats, at least until one of the Middle East and the Deep South loses its fundamentalism…
Dude, are you on crack? You think it is just Southern and Mid-Western Fundamentalist that are for Bush and that everyone else is "overwhelmingly pro-Kerry"? And people say Bush is simplistic. I think you actually believe that the Middle East and the Deep South have comparable fundamentalism, which, of course, is insane. You really need to get out more.
1) No. However, if you exclude the south and the midwest then the polls show Kerry on track for an overwhelming landslide in the popular vote and the college (damn that General Grant and his military superiority…)
2) No. I don’t really care how fundamentalist they are relative to each other; they’re both fundamentalist enough that I don’t want them to be in charge of anything that affects me.