Ronald Reagan and Mayor Pete Buttigieg



When the relatively unknown Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, announced for President I like most of you wondered why he thought he had any chance at all of competing. Now I understand.

Buttigieg has been in the headlines everyday this week. He picked out a villain and is going after him. Surprisingly, the villain is not President Trump but his smooth talking smiling Vice President, Mike Pence.  Both are from Indiana and know one another well.

The technique that is driving religious conservatives to distraction is one Ronald Reagan used against liberals. Young liberals during Reagan's campaign used ideology to champion their cause. Their thing was that making money was not a noble activity. The conservative business community that Reagan represented had been painted as self serving and uncaring.

Along came Reagan speaking the language of idealism. Our country can be the shining city on the hill, he said, if each person is allowed to thrive without being held back by government. He did not say, "Businessmen with money know better than those without money." Reagan's language of idealism challenged liberals on their home court.

Buttigieg, an out gay man, is beating up on religious politicians like Pence on their home court. Unlike Trump, religious language rolls easily off his tongue. So do the merits of marriage and fidelity in marriage. While the President has chosen "immigrants" to demonize, Buttigieg has chosen conservative politics.

It would be my preference religion was kept private and was not part of politics. Since that is not our reality it is imperative that liberal politicians use it to their advantage just as conservatives do.

Picking out the 40% of the electorate that thinks anti gay religion and Trump are heroes and making fun of them is using the majority to Buttigieg's advantage. Buttigieg's approach of identifying himself with "outsiders" by attacking the insiders is as old as politics.

Identifying with "outsiders" is what Trump did. It has more potential than Democrats who champion policies of health care, climate change, redistribution and "reaching across the isle."

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