More than in any other era, we live in an age of voluntary religious conversion. I'm using religious conversion as a substitute for political conversion because it seems to me that there is a correlation.
When Christian converts to the Muslim religion choose to become terrorists to defend their new religion, none can doubt their sincerity of conversion. They are willing to surrender their lives for their new religion. I'm not defending or promoting that choice, merely noting it.
On the other hand, history is rife with examples of religious conversion by military or political conquest. When Henry VIII established the Church of England, not every catholic willingly became a protestant. The catholic religion was secretly practiced in England for decades by men of wealth who constructed priest holes in their homes to conceal their priests.
I could go on. Jews evaded the Inquisition by pretending by day to be catholics. To this day, Christians in Muslim countries conceal their religion from their neighbors. The history of communism is full of stories of a reluctant conversion to a life in denial of God.
The point that I am making is that if one understands the signs, one can distinguish between the actions of a sincere convert and those of an insincere convert.
The same is true in politics. Mark Udall has opposed drilling all of his political life, and now, suddenly, in the face of an election that he might lose over high gas prices, he claims to favor offshore drilling. Is he sincere or insincere?
He still doesn't favor drilling in ANWR. He wants to closely restrict drilling on the Roan. His support of a proposal for offshore drilling is restricted to a very few states and so restrictive that no drilling might actually occur. He hasn't proposed legislation or supported legislation that would allow increased drilling anywhere else.
And yet, he is running commercials that claim that he favors offshore drilling. If he is a convert to drilling, every sign suggests that he is a very reluctant convert. His reluctant conversion suggests that Mark Udall will drop his support for drilling on the day after the election, no matter what the outcome.
It reminds one of Bill Ritter claiming to be pro business before the election and becoming anti-business as soon as he entered office.
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