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October 24, 2006
Dobson Uses Radio to Magnify Effects of Poorly-Attended Rallies
Focus on the Family founder James Dobson devoted two days of his widely-syndicated radio show to broadcasting much of his last “Stand for the Family” rally in Nashville, Tennessee. While the rally was almost cancelled due to poor ticket sales, Dobson’s radio program claims a daily audience of “more than 220 million.” Although that number is not particularly believable, the audience for his family-advice show is certainly more than 2,400, the number who attended the Nashville rally.
In introducing the broadcast, Dobson repeated his claim that the media is suppressing voter turnout: “The truth of the matter is, the media does not want values voters to participate in this great representative form of government, and they’re doing everything they can to keep them from voting.” He also apologized for confusing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and famous farm-worker organizer Cesar Chavez.
You can listen to most of the Nashville rally here: Part 1 and Part 2.
In addition to emphasizing the war on terror, rather than his usual political issues of abortion and gays, in order to pump up enthusiasm for Republicans, Dobson also endorsed the GOP tax plan:
The other thing, with regard to marriage, is that if there is a change in government – by the way, we’re not going to tell you how to vote tonight, because that’s not what we’re supposed to do. That’s not legal. And we’re not going to tell you how to vote. But we’ll talk about the issues, and you figure that out for yourself. And that’s where we’re going with this.
But, if there is a change in government in November 7 and then January, one of the first things that will happen is that all of the tax cuts will be rolled back.
Dobson also implied that if states fail to pass bans of same-sex marriage in their state constitutions, then those states will have same-sex marriage – even if it is already against the state’s law. He said, "If one of those states is lost -- or two or three -- it has serious implications for the future of the family. It means adoption laws will change. It means textbooks will all have to be rewritten to include man and man and woman and woman marriage."
Posted by Ezra at 5:38 PM
