ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 helps answer the question which specific features are most characteristic of the religious language produced by the GOP? More specifically, it gives an account of several patterns of language that are mostly salient in the rhetoric produced by GOP candidates from the late 1970s onwards and which are linked to the religiously laden culture war issues of abortion, gay marriage, family values, stem cell research and judicial activism. Still in Chapter 3, the concept of issue ownership is discussed while trying to reconcile (1) the relatively equal measure of references to family values in the rhetoric of both parties with (2) the consensual understanding that the GOP owns these so-called family value issues. Finally, Chapter 3 analyses the evolution of the term liberal. More specifically, it confirms previous scholarly work and documents how this term left the Democratic Party rhetoric while being recuperated by 1980s-onwards GOP candidates who have since turned it into a bad word to accuse “the liberals” of several culture-war-related charges. This displacement of the term liberal seems to parallel a modification in the paradigm used to describe the American religious landscape and the different groups forming it. Chapter 3 discusses the modifications that the term liberal has undergone in campaign rhetoric in the light of this new framework.
