News-Record.com

I have been meaning to get reaction to something in the U.S. Senate race from out there in the blog-o-verse about this but it has slipped my mind until this blog post (from Minnesota no less!) reminded me of the topic this morning:

Elizabeth Dole is continuing her campaign in North Carolina of smearing her opponent, Kay Hagan, for simply associating with atheists. We atheists are the "most vile, radical liberals in America," out to wage war on Christmas and stock boy scout troops with homosexuals, and we actively support political candidates who are atheists. I know … how dare we.

I have a personal reason to be offended, however. The Dole ads cite endorsements by two atheists, FriendlyAtheist.com and DaylightAtheism.org. Now hang on…what's so scary about the Friendly atheist? And Daylight Atheism sounds positively pleasant. Couldn't they find one mean, cruel, truly frightening atheist to give a testimonial, like maybe one with an obscure and somewhat intimidatingly intellectual name?

The entire post is here. Dome has written about this here.

I asked Hagan about this fundraiser back when she was in the building for an editorial board interview. Hagan described herself as a "devout Christian" and said she's working with folks of all different religious stripes.

"I believe the people you're talking about typically have Democratic fundraisers and (they asked) to support me from a standpoint and I agreed," she said.

Click here to listen to her full answer.

So does this matter to you? Would you base a vote on this association? Or this merely a distraction in a race that has a lot of other issues to deal with?