It’s 8:20 p.m., just eight minutes after MSNBC, CBS, and NBC, on the basis of Ohio’s going to Obama, declared that President Obama had won the necessary 270 Electoral College votes and will serve four more years.
I’m thankful for what I believe to be a gift from God — the repudiation of the contempt Romney and the GOP have shown toward the poor. Obama hasn’t been perfect, but I believe he’s a good man, and he’s endured more hate, more examples of false witness, and more entirely unfair and bigoted opposition than any President in my lifetime — and much of it from conservative Christians who hate the man so much they blissfully embraced in Romney a man whose faith is anathema to them and whose character brings to mind images of Jello being nailed to walls.
I believe Romney is a dishonest man with a moral core like a Slinky, a stunning lack of empathy, and a predilection for political prostitution that’s unusually robust, even in the smarmy world of politics. The Mitt Romney of 15 years ago, I probably could’ve voted for. The Tea Party-splashed, religious Right-anointed Romney of this election cycle, however, morphed daily into someone new, a shape-shifting cypher who should have lost. In fact, he should never have even made it into, much less through, the primaries, and it speaks poorly for the political demographic that claims to represent Christ that he did.
I look forward to four years during which the Christian President, Barack Obama, can govern with the integrity he’s demonstrated and that has been largely denied him in D.C. The cornerstone of everything “political” in my life is how it would affect “the least of these” whose plight Jesus commanded us to focus on.
I believe my Savior is glorified, perhaps more in Romney’s defeat than in Obama’s victory, and I believe my Lord is pleased.