I've been fuming

for approximately 48 hours about the liberal media's (and Bill Bennett's) painting this victory as the victory of homophobic fundamentalist Christians over the reasonable folks in society. I'd been mulling it over in my head - bothered by the whole concept, after all I might have been a Bush voter, and I'm all for gay rights, right? But I guess there was also a side of me that feared it may be true. Maybe the country doesn't give a shit about Social Security reform, or free market economics, or the tyranny of international organizations after all. Maybe Andrew Sullivan is right, maybe it really is just a gay-bashing ecumenical frenzy that renewed Bush's lease on 1600 PA Ave.

Thankfully, John Hood over at the John Locke Foundation is there to reassure me:

It's official, everyone: the media spin I fumed out earlier today, the attribution of Bush's win simply to a higher turnout among socially conservative voters worried about same-sex marriage, is false. The pundits repeating it have not apparently bothered to check the numbers out. Perhaps it was considered one of those "too good to check" stories that bear out preconceived notions and biases.In this case, liberal media elites and Democratic activists desperately want the thesis to be true. They want to pretend that they won every salient argument with Bush and his supporters, so the Kerry loss must be attributable to something else. It couldn't be due to a preference for Bush over Kerry on a number of issues, including his foreign policies. So it is all about the culture wars.

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