I'm disagree debating issues of concern to Christians using frames that apply to their way of viewing the world equates to holy war. Although, historically, even holy wars have been known to achieve their military objective (sometimes holy warriors end up stuck with a land war in Asia though).

I don't think Obama or Bush could have possibly won without establishing on that front (Bush would have gone down to McCain in the primary). So, yes, I do think it was a decisive factor. You are probably right that for a politician it is by and large a process of proving they fit in (especially with new evangelicals) but that gets into judging the quality of the faith held by those using faith as a point of decision. In relation to politics, I think religion is more a question of strong self-identity than one of faith. A political approach that refuses to accommodate the target audience's self-identity just seems less effective than one that accommodates self-identity into an approach that challenges the target in frames that match their world view.

And to be clear, kgb didn't have anything to do with any of this. I simply point out that if you want to win in American politics ... tactics like this are exactly how to do it. I think you are off the rails trying to analyze this on a deep theological basis. The ad doesn't challenge the viewer to question any of the theological minutiae you highlight at all. This is the more basic universal-among-denominations question: "Who do you serve?" Rand cast herself as a literal alternative to God and articulated an agenda of eliminating religion - on video, apparently. She said it explicitly: you can't follow her philosophy and God's. Ryan, in particular, has national aspirations (as does Rand Paul). The entire point of this is to aggressively threaten the politicians' future legitimacy on the "do you fit in" electoral question - which the GOP has routed directly through stringent Christian orthodoxy for their politicians.

Is it "fair" or "proper" or whatever? Who cares? It has a better likelihood of working than anything I'm seeing go down from the liberal side. I'm pretty interested in winning on this one and liberal democrats seem almost temperamentally incapable of taking a kill shot. Glad the holy rollers are on it - and seemingly on my side. This also seems a case of answering dishonesty with honesty on the specific point raised, which is one always leveraged by the people highlighted, so I even feel kind of good about it.

Yeah, I view Atheism as a religion (sorry to those this offends ... don't wanna fight over it!). IMO, folks with a strong Atheistic self-identity tend to get caught up in the same dogmas that other religious folks do which leaves them locked in to their own frame with difficulty accommodating (even for the sake of argument) incompatible frames from which others approach things. There is also a "freedom from religion" point of view with Christian proponents ... and lord knows how many other underlying philosophies. I was just curious which direction you were approaching it from.

What I was taught is that everyone will one day have to personally stand before God and justify their life.

I like that concept. I was taught pretty much the same. It is similar to a concept I really liked from one of Bob Marley's religious songs. In his formulation, a person is the only one who knows what is truly in their heart and what their hands have done and it will be our own conscience/heart that judges in the end.

My family is pretty religious (private school through 9th grade w/ theology daily). I distinctly remember the moment I became agnostic. Interestingly, I base my agnosticism on being literal minded as well (I've heard Atheists say the same). For me, the answer "you just have to have faith" was inadequate for some questions. Ultimately, I feel the Atheist core mythology boils down to the same: you've got to have faith in assertions that simply have not been proven scientifically. When someone proves their belief, I'll believe it.

My general take is a lot of people miss out by not realizing that the tenets of most (non-distorted, reasonably modern) religions provide a framework to be happier living as humanity on Earth as much as earning a spot living forever in awesome not-hell (or not coming back as a slug or whatever). So I see a strong value in formalized religious doctrines and think the general tendency for humans to adopt them plays a net positive role in society. It sucks that gets misdirected for various purposes of power occasionally, but such is the world we live in. In the absence of religion, power simply manipulates analogous structures to achieve it's ends.