Pontius Pilate, Barack Obama, and Sarah Palin

Since Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin's vice presidential nomination to the Republican ticket, the left has scrambled to try and recover Sen. Barack Obama's (Ill.) momentum in the campaign.

One tactic the Democrats have used in attempt to derail Palin is to demean her time spent as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, a town of less than 10,000 people. In response to such attacks, Palin stated in her speech at the Republican National Convention that the difference between a mayor and a community organizer, a position touted by Barack Obama when he was in his 20s, is that a mayor has actual responsibilities.

Sensing that Obama's "community organizer" status was turning into a national joke, the left lashed out at Palin. On the floor of the House of Representatives, Rep. Steve Cohen (Tenn.) stated that "Barack Obama was a community organizer like Jesus. . .Pontius Pilate was a governor."

Similarly, Democrat political strategist Donna Brazile said on CNN, "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate, a governor." Several days later, actress Susan Sarandon followed suit: "Jesus was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor. That's all I have to say!"

The underlying message of such statements is of course to compare Sen. Obama to Jesus and Gov. Palin to Pontius Pilate. Let's analyze the ways in which this comparison might work.

In the Gospels, Pontius Pilate is portrayed as an inherently weak man. Though he tries to avoid condemning Jesus and believes him to be innocent, he fears the power of the mob and in cowardice gives into their demands to crucify Christ. He represents nothing more than a tool of corruption in Rome and seeks only his political advancement.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has been perhaps the biggest element of positive reform in Alaskan state history. Palin has an approval rating as governor of over 80 percent, the highest of any governor in America. In Palin's two years as governor, she vetoed over $499 million from Alaska's capital budget. She has cut nearly 10 percent of Alaska's state budget this year, saving residents $268 million. Before Palin, Alaska had a tradition of wasteful earmark spending. Last year, Palin reduced earmark numbers by half. She has been a champion of individual freedom and a servant of the people during her time in Alaska, refusing to bow to the Washington insiders' crowd. As she noted in her speech at the Republican National Convention, Palin got rid of the governor's personal chef as well as the private jet. Of the jet, she said jokingly, "I put it on eBay."

But what of Barack Obama's being compared to Jesus? In the Gospels, Christ's love for humility and innocence gives children a special place in the Kingdom of Heaven. In Mark's Gospel he states, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." Sen. Obama, on the other hand, has one of the most liberal stances on abortion in the United States Senate. He opposed President Bush's measure to ban partial birth abortion and strongly criticized the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the ban. As an Illinois state senator, Obama on three occasions opposed legislation providing healthcare and protection to children born of botched abortions. In other words, Obama did nothing less than sanction infanticide. In an Illinois senate debate on April 4, 2002, Obama stated that "what liabilities the doctor might have in this situation [of a botched abortion]" had to be considered prior to the care of the newly born baby. When Obama quoted the Gospel of Matthew in a debate at the end of August, saying that America's greatest moral failing was that it has not protected the "least of our brothers" he did not have the unborn or the newly born in mind. Perhaps Senator Obama is Christ-like in ways the Democrat Party and its cronies in the media have yet to disclose.

Ironically, this talk of God is coming from the party that has for decades adamantly opposed the mixing of politics and religion. As Sarah Palin is quickly gaining in popularity with Americans, Democrats should try to come up with more effective means of attacking her than by comparing their candidate to Christ.