THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Perhaps, according to this column, everybody's favorite Old Fart is not lying as a tactic but as a strategy to appeal to Anerica's newest silent majority, the hypocite vote.

the 26% of Americans that describe themselves as evangelical Christians have strong hypocritical tendencies, politically at least. Evangelicals first became a political force in the 1980 presidential election, when they abandoned small town Sunday school teacher and born-again Christian Jimmy Carter for divorced, Hollywood actor and infrequent churchgoer Ronald Reagan.

A Pew Research survey released early this year found that evangelicals are nearly as likely to be living together out of wedlock as the public at large and more likely to be divorced. Perhaps more telling, the Barna Group found that only about one in five self-proclaimed evangelicals actually hold the tradition's key core beliefs. Underscoring that point, evangelicals have loudly applauded Bristol Palin, the 17-year-old pregnant daughter of the Republican vice presidential candidate, as a goddess of life rather than condemn her as a sinner. One suspects they wouldn't be quite so forgiving if it was an Obama offspring was the mother-to-be – or the shotgun groom.

But hypocrisy cuts across religious as well as party lines. Tens of millions of Americans talk the talk but don't walk the walk or think things through. They drive their SUVs to Earth Day rallies. They watch Fox News and parrot complaints about the media's liberal bias. They believe America needs to keep good, high wage jobs at home yet shop at Wal-Mart, Chinese exporters' best customer. They don't see a contradiction or even a connection between abstinence-only sex education and pregnancy crisis centres.

What a diabolical scheme! Appealing to the voters who do no wrong themselves and just can stand it anymore when the people they don't like continue to be so wrong. It easily explains why the Old Fart has not been laughed off the national stage.

For them, McCain offers not just a hypocritical campaign, but a hypocritical agenda for the White House. After 26 years on Capitol Hill, President McCain will reform Washington and put the lobbyists who run his campaign out of business. He'll cut taxes, yet balance the budget. He'll reduce regulation yet bring order to Wall Street. He'll continue the American war in Iraq to victory, even though there's little sign of political progress among Iraqi factions despite the decrease in violence. He'll stop global warming while providing bigger fixes to satisfy America's addiction to oil.

Evangelicals think the AntiChrist will be charismatic but it could be he will just be old.