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January 11, 2008
Pat Robertson: Bolshevism Behind Ruling Against Missionaries in Classroom
A federal judge ruled this week that the school district of rural Annapolis, Missouri could no longer let Gideons International hand out Bibles in an elementary school, and Pat Robertson is none too pleased. From yesterday’s “700 Club”:
According to Robertson, the ACLU doesn’t have enough to do since it lost its “raison d’etre,” Communism, and so now “they say their main goal is to take religion out of the public square.”
Robertson also complains that “one or two atheists can strip a whole community of its deeply-held religious views.” As a matter of fact, the parents who sued the school board are Christians, but in any event we expect Christianity to survive in eastern Missouri even without the local government working to convert fifth-graders.
The right-wing Liberty Counsel, which represented the school, plans to appeal.
Posted by Ezra at 5:33 PM | Permalink
Pat Robertson: Bush 'Asking for the Wrath of God'
Even after President Bush’s visit to Jerusalem, the prospect of peace between Israelis and Palestinians faces many obstacles, but at least one man hopes Bush’s plan fails: “It is just insanity!” said an exasperated Pat Robertson:
And if we do this, there is a judge in heaven, and that judge in heaven is going to take vengeance against those who damage Israel. That’s what the Bible says: Don’t touch them—he who touches you touches the apple of my eye. You’re sticking your finger in God’s eye. That’s what the Bible says. Terry, I fear for our country if we go forward with this nonsense.
Robertson said the U.S. and Israeli governments are “just asking for the wrath of God” by talking about giving part of Jerusalem to a Palestinian state. For Robertson, the “wrath of God” can mean a lot of things: natural disasters, terrorist attacks—even a persistent vegetative state. Almost exactly two years ago, when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a stroke that has left him in a coma to this day, Robertson blamed it on God’s wrath over Sharon’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
While Robertson says Bush is “in a fog,” the televangelist has been campaigning for Rudy Giuliani because of the former New York mayor’s foreign policy stance. However, when Giuliani was asked about Bush’s visit during this week’s Republican presidential debate, he didn’t mention the wrath of God.
Posted by Ezra at 5:27 PM | Permalink
Huckabee's Non-Expanding Base
Now in the middle of a heated presidential primary race, Mike Huckabee seems to be trying to expand his base beyond the evangelical Christian voters who propelled him to victory in Iowa - or, more accurately, seems to be trying to convince himself and the press that his base of supporters extends beyond those who are seeking a "Christian Leader":
This morning, on a Detroit talk radio show, Huckabee said his candidacy is appealing to more than evangelical Christian voters. He said that national polls showing him ahead of the field prove he's reaching a broader audience.If Huckabee has evidence that his campaign is making an effort to win over non-evangelicals, he should make that public because recent press coverage of his efforts in Michigan and South Carolina suggests otherwise:"This talk that it's just an Iowa thing or an evangelical thing has not proved to be true," he said.
From the AP:
In the final campaign stretch in South Carolina, Huckabee backers will distribute voter guides and air radio announcements urging Christian pastors to speak out on moral issues and encourage people to vote, said Janet Folger, a Florida-based talk show host and co-chair of Huckabee's Faith and Family Values Coalition.
From CNN:
But as in Iowa, the biggest secret to Huckabee's Michigan success seems to be his depth of support among evangelical Christians. Typically, somewhere between one-fifth and one-third of Michigan's Republican primary voters are self-identified evangelicals. A few weeks ago, a Detroit News survey found that number may be as high as 40 percent this year.So pro-Huckabee organizers say they are focusing their entire effort on turning out evangelical church goers. They plan to call every evangelical pastor in the state over the next few days. Those ministers can't endorse any candidate from the pulpit -- but they can tell their parishioners that "it's their Christian duty," to turn out on primary day, said [Gary] Glenn. "And we know who they'll be voting for."
To help drive that message home, thousands of volunteers will be dropping leaflets and waving signs in church parking lots across Michigan this Sunday. Glenn says there will also be several news conferences across the state through the January 15 vote featuring groups of pastors announcing their personal support for Huckabee, an organized wave of callers into Michigan's Christian radio stations, and phone trees targeting the state's largest churches from within.
From the American Prospect:
I've been told that Huckabee is slated to speak at the Pastors' Policy Briefing scheduled for this month in Orlando, Florida, which will also feature San Antonio televangelist John Hagee, who hosted Huckabee at his church in December. The Florida event is being facilitated by Orlando attorney John Stemberger, who was behind the drive to get a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the November ballot in Florida....
The Pastors' Policy Briefings are secretive and closed to the press, and there's no evidence that any of the other presidential candidates spoke at them, or were even invited to speak at them.
From Bloomberg:
Huckabee recently moved his campaign into larger offices in Columbia and has been invited to preach in local churches on topics such as family values and parenting.Randy Page, president of South Carolinians for Responsible Government, a Columbia-based advocacy group, said the invitations reflect Huckabee's appeal among evangelicals.
"He's a preacher so it's easier for him to get into a pulpit," said Page, a Baptist who endorsed Thompson. "For a presidential candidate, it's unprecedented."
Posted by Kyle at 5:01 PM | Permalink
Robertson Seeks to Buy Critical Paper
The Virginian-Pilot, located in Norfolk, VA, has long provided excellent, in-depth coverage of Pat Robertson and his various activities. In particular, Pilot journalists Steven Vegh and Bill Sizemore have regularly covered Robertson, often generating national news coverage of his exploits - including his yearly predictions, his health claims, his charities, his buisness dealings, and his outrageous statements.
And now the Pilot was the first to report another Robertson-related scoop - the televangelist is trying to buy the newspaper:
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, who has sharply criticized The Virginian-Pilot in the past, is considering making a bid to buy the newspaper, an associate said Thursday ... "I am considering a potential bid for the Pilot and have asked my attorneys to look into it," Robertson said in an e-mail forwarded by his personal assistant, G.G. Conklin. "It would be particularly helpful to provide internships for Regent University journalism students."
As the article notes, "Robertson has objected to articles in The Pilot that he has said unfairly characterized his pursuits." Presumably, should Robertson succeed in purchasing the paper, Vegh and Sizemore will both be out of jobs and the interns from Regent won't be particularly committed to carrying on their legacy of exposing Robertson's lunacy.
Posted by Kyle at 1:53 PM | Permalink
January 10, 2008
Alabama County Gives Money to Far-Right Group
The government of Jefferson County, Alabama is making some sharp budget cuts to deal with a $30 million shortfall, but commissioners have scrounged up resources for at least one new priority: subsidizing a far-right activist group:
The Jefferson County Commission voted Tuesday to spend $15,000 to help a conservative group host a forum next month on global warming, immigration, education policy and other politically charged topics.
Eagle Forum of Alabama is part of the national Eagle Forum, an organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime conservative political activist.
According to county commission president Bettye Fine Collins, the money is to help the Eagle Forum “work with the state school board and work with the local school system.” The Eagle Forum’s “leadership conference,” however, hardly sounds like an after-school program:
Eagle Forum of Alabama will hold its Twenty-Seventh Annual Leadership Conference on February 22-23, 2008 at the Birmingham Marriott on Highway 280. This years speakers include: Gary Palmer of the Alabama Policy Institute, Kris Kobach of the University of Missouri, Kansas City School of Law K.C. McAlpin of ProEnglish, Phyllis Schlafly and many more! We will be covering a variety of topics including: "Press One for English"; "What States Are Doing About Illegal Immigration"; and "What America Needs From Its Next President."
Collins had participated in an Eagle Forum event in the past, and another commissioner received an award from the group for his “leadership in working for God, Family, and Country.”
Twenty-two years ago, PFAW urged an investigation when the Eagle Forum was awarded a $600,000 grant from the Reagan administration Justice Department to counteract "the feminist agenda" on the issue of domestic violence.
Posted by Ezra at 6:19 PM | Permalink
Can Romney Avoid the Noid in Michigan?
According to the Washington Times, the Republican primary in Michigan next week will be a “do-or-die” moment for Mitt Romney’s campaign. The candidate is polling ahead in the state, where he launched his campaign and where his father was governor. Hoping for a clean victory, Romney recently shifted resources to Michigan from South Carolina and Florida.
And now Romney can boast the support of a major religious-right force in Michigan: Thomas Monaghan, the billionaire founder of Domino’s Pizza, who created or funded groups such as the Ann Arbor PAC, Ave Maria List, and the Thomas More Law Center, along with Ave Maria School of Law, Ave Maria University, and an entire Ave Maria Town in Florida dedicated to his conservative Catholic vision. Previously, Monaghan had backed Sam Brownback, but the far-right senator dropped out of the race in October.
Although Monaghan has relocated his mini-empire to Florida, he may still carry enough influence to counteract Huckabee-backer Gary Glenn, the head of the American Family Association’s state affiliate, who has been an anti-Romney gadfly for over a year. Indeed, Glenn’s e-mail urging Huckabee supporters to mobilize churches all but cedes Catholics to Romney.
Says Monaghan,
As someone who values the importance of faith in one's life, I recognize in Mitt his deep religious convictions which will serve him well in facing the critical moral issues facing our society. I believe he will stand firm on the pro-life issues and for the traditional family values that our country was founded on and which are so critical to the future of our nation.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Romney, as the head of Bain Capital in 1998, made Monaghan a billionaire when it bought Domino’s.
Posted by Ezra at 6:18 PM | Permalink
DeLay No Fan of McCain
Tom DeLay says "There’s nothing redeeming about John McCain." Wonder if this has anything to do with the animosity? Rick Santorum doesn't like him either.
Posted by Kyle at 2:11 PM | Permalink
Monaghan Endorses Romney
With Sam Brownback out of the race, Domino's Pizza founder and right-wing money man Tom Monaghan has endorsed Mitt Romney: "Governor Romney is a man of principle. As someone who values the importance of faith in one's life, I recognize in Mitt his deep religious convictions which will serve him well in facing the critical moral issues facing our society. I believe he will stand firm on the pro-life issues and for the traditional family values that our country was founded on and which are so critical to the future of our nation."
Posted by Kyle at 11:45 AM | Permalink
January 9, 2008
Just in Case, Right Wing Ready for Anti-Obama Campaign
Few constituencies were more surprised by Barack Obama’s win in last week’s Iowa Democratic caucus than the right-wing media—Clinton obsession has been its bread and butter for over a decade. Nevertheless, the Right is doing its best to prove it will pull no punches no matter who the Democrats nominate.
The Right has hardly refrained from attacking Obama—remember his visit to Rick Warren’s church over a year ago? Or last summer, when the National Clergy Council declared “Obama's Christianity [to be] woefully deficient”? But the last few days have seen a seeming uptick in the number of anti-Obama articles: For example, Human Events editor-at-large Terence Jeffrey warned that the Democrat is “the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever.” A CNSNews piece surveyed African-American religious-right activists on the candidate, such as Rev. Clenard Childress of Blackgenocide.org, who implied that abortion is worse for blacks than was lynching, and Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND, who said, “For Barack Obama to support abortion shows a lack of love for the black community and especially for the unborn."
But the Illinois senator’s faith seems to be the most appealing target of the Right. Newsmax correspondent Ronald Kessler offers a menacing warning that Obama attends a black church whose pastor propounds the “thesis that blacks in America are oppressed.” “At the least,” writes Kessler, “Obama’s membership in [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright’s church suggests a lack of judgment and an insensitivity to views that are repugnant to the vast majority of white Americans who are not bigots.”
(In particular, Kessler objects to the “Black Value System” on the church’s website. “One can only imagine the outrage that would erupt if a white presidential candidate like Romney subscribed to something called the White Value System,” he writes. One can only imagine what Kessler would think if he knew about the Religious Right’s “Black Contract with America on Moral Values.”)
But if Kessler wants to present Obama as a radical Christian, he’s going to have a lot of competition from those on the Right who want to present Obama as a radical Muslim, a (needless to say, inaccurate) smear that continues to be distributed as an e-mail forward. Daniel Pipes (nominated by Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace) wrote an article for David Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine purportedly “confirming” the senator’s secret Muslim past.
Kessler concludes his report on Obama’s pastor with a bizarre comparison:
But media bias or not, if Obama is his party’s nominee, his Republican opponent will rightly be able to make use of Rev. Wright and his radical teachings as effectively as supporters of George H.W. Bush used Willie Horton’s furlough to help Bush win the presidency.
The 20-year-old Horton ad would hardly be the first campaign strategy to come to mind, unless Kessler were recalling the ad’s widespread reputation as a crypto-racist attack on Michael Dukakis. In that sense, comparing it to these insinuations about the black church may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Posted by Ezra at 6:06 PM | Permalink
Reports of Huckabee’s Moderation Are Greatly Exaggerated
Running as a “Christian Leader” was enough to proper Mike Huckabee to victory in Iowa, but it didn’t play too well in New Hampshire, where he finished a distant third.
So what is his plan going forward?
Republican Mike Huckabee is trying to soften the image of the religious right as he reaches out to liberal Christians and blue-collar workers for support in his presidential campaign.
It's a delicate balancing act for the ordained Baptist minister who staunchly opposes abortion and gay marriage.
But the folksy southerner told Reuters he believed some evangelicals had widened their political concerns beyond the hot-button cultural issues that helped put George W. Bush in the White House and had mellowed enough to embrace causes like poverty and the environment.
Huckabee, who won the first presidential nominating contest in Iowa with the support of evangelicals and placed third in New Hampshire on Tuesday, wants to help bridge that divide.
"Unquestionably there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It doesn't mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional families and the sanctity of life," the former Arkansas governor said.
"It just means that they also realize that we have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that these are issues that people of faith have to address," he said in an interview aboard his campaign bus.
Presumably, any effort to soften his image or reach out beyond his right-wing religious base will have to wait until he gets back from this:
Together for Life Memorial Service and Walk, Georgia's annual pro-life gathering, will be held Tuesday, January 22, 2008 on the steps of the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia.
The Memorial Service, sponsored by Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) begins at 11:30 am and is followed by a one-mile long silent walk through downtown Atlanta.
This year's keynote speaker is Gary Bauer, an esteemed author, political activist, and President of American Values. He stated, "We must build an America where all of our children, rich and poor, black and white, are welcomed into the world and protected by the law. Human life has dignity at every age; the taking of innocent human life is always wrong."
…
Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee will also speak as a strong pro-life advocate and supporter of the Human Life Amendment. "I'm pro-life because I believe life begins at conception, and I believe that we should do everything possible to protect that life because it is the centerpiece of what makes us unique as an American people. We value the life of one as if it's the life of all... it's what separates us from the Islamic jihadists who are out to kill us. They celebrate death. They have a culture of death. Ours is a culture of life." The Georgia Right to Life PAC has endorsed Mike Huckabee for President.
Posted by Kyle at 3:44 PM | Permalink
Keyes Campaign Blasts RNC
The head of Alan Keyes' "presidential campaign" is accusing the Republican National Committee of excluding Keyes from the Iowa Caucus, saying it "appears motivated by bias against him -- in a way that is un-American and contrary to democratic principles ... In our judgment, the tactics we've witnessed by the state party are reminiscent of 'communist-style' electoral politics."
Posted by Kyle at 3:10 PM | Permalink
An Unwelcome Invitation
Just before the New Hampshire Primaries, the Christian Defense Coalition (perhaps best known for anointing the seats in the hearing room before the confirmation hearings of John Roberts and Samuel Alito) announced that it would be taking part in something called "The New Hampshire Awakening" – an effort to ensure that “the voice of the innocent children that have been brutalized through abortion be heard loud and clear at the start of the Presidential Primary season.”
As part of their pre-Primary activities, they even planned a “non-partisan” prayer vigil to which all candidates were invited. As their letter of invitation stated:
The prayer vigil will be non-partisan and we are inviting all Democrat and Republican Presidential candidates to attend. During the evening, we will take time to pray for each candidate individually. We will offer the same prayer for each person, asking God to give the candidates wisdom, guidance, courage and faith. Since this is the first in the nation Presidential Primary, it is imperative that we look to God for His direction and blessing as the primary season begins.
Presumably, none of the major candidates showed up (though the CDC claimed that Ron Paul had agreed to attend) which is probably just as well, since it would have only interfered with the CDC’s plans of targeting the Democratic candidate’s campaigns by forming a “life chain outside of the New Hampshire campaign office of Senator Hillary Clinton” and disrupting a Barack Obama campaign really:
About 20 pro-life protesters made the leading Democratic presidential candidate confront the issue of abortion on Monday when they interspersed themselves in a rally he held at the Rochester Opera House. Obama had just begun speaking at the Monday night event when the pro-life advocates waved signs and chanted.
The protesters, members of the Christian Defense Coalition and the youth-oriented group Survivors, shut down the Obama campaign rally chanting "abortion is an Obama-nation."
The chant was a play on the phrase "abortion is an abomination."
Posted by Kyle at 1:45 PM | Permalink
AL County Gives Eagle Forum $15,000
Money well spent - from The Birmingham News: "The Jefferson County Commission voted Tuesday to spend $15,000 to help a conservative group host a forum next month on global warming, immigration, education policy and other politically charged topics. Eagle Forum of Alabama is part of the national Eagle Forum, an organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, a longtime conservative political activist. Jefferson County's appropriation comes after the county last year approved a $660 million budget that cut $18 million in vacant positions, $5 million in cultural arts funding and $4 million in worker overtime in an effort to close a $30 million shortfall."
Posted by Kyle at 12:13 PM | Permalink
Huckabee Still Vague on Birthright Citizenship
More he said/he said from the Washington Times. Background here.
Posted by Ezra at 11:00 AM | Permalink
Hijacking the Language of Faith
Yesterday, The Press Register in Alabama ran an op-ed by Randy Brinson entitled “Language of Faith Hijacked.” In it, Brinson complained that all of the talk of faith in the current presidential election is confusing voters:
In this presidential cycle, nearly every campaign, both Democrat and Republican, has developed a faith outreach component to facilitate communicating to the faithful. The 2008 presidential election will focus on the faith and values of the individual candidates more than any in modern history.
While this may give solace to many faith-oriented political activists, it only makes it difficult for voters to decipher which candidate truly understands the link between personal faith and policy.
Despite this onslaught of personal spirituality, it has been even more difficult for voters to determine whether some of the candidates even understand the particular faith they profess to embrace.
Brinson went on to criticize Barack Obama, saying that his talk of faith, “may be losing the audience he seeks to engage,” and Mitt Romney, questioning “if his Mormon faith guided his present moral convictions, what guided him when he was pro-choice and pro-gay-rights?”
Brinson concluded by seemingly urging these candidates, and presumably others, to focus less on faith and more on “candor, integrity, honesty and character,” as that is what voters are looking for in a candidate.
Of course, nowhere in the piece does Brinson bother to mention that he has been actively involved in assisting Mike Huckabee:
The Values Voter barnstorm [through Iowa] will be led by Pastor Rick Scarborough, an early Huckabee endorser. Participants include R. Randolph "Randy" Brinson, an iconoclastic social conservative doctor from Alabama who possesses a huge list of Iowa pastors and Christian conservatives. He's also the head of ReedemTheVote, which was active in 2004 and 2006 as a voter registration vehicle for young evangelicals.
As the Washington Post explained last month:
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's surge in Iowa, from single digits in the polls to a virtual tie for the lead among Republicans, has captivated the political world and prompted speculation about just how he did it.
The Fix may have found the answer: a physician from Montgomery, Ala., named Randy Brinson.
Brinson is the keeper of a massive e-mail list of much-coveted Christian voters that Huckabee is using to reach and organize people in early-voting states such as Iowa.
Brinson's list numbers about 71 million contacts, with 25 million identified as belonging to "25 and 45 years old, upwardly mobile, right-of-center, conservative households," he said. In other words, a target-rich environment for a candidate such as Huckabee, who is preaching a compassionate conservative message heavily infused with religious sentiment.
In fact, this op-ed appears to be an outgrowth of an email Brinson sent around not too long ago attacking Mitt Romney for … you guessed it, hijacking the language of faith:
Brinson wrote an e-mail distributed widely in Iowa that questioned the changed views of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on abortion and gay rights and that asked whether Romney was really being led by his Mormon faith.
Some political commentators have credited that e-mail with being one of several factors that helped turn out conservative Christians for Huckabee.
Brinson said Friday he sent the e-mail because he was concerned that some candidates had "hijacked the language of faith."
Since he’s backing Huckabee, who has made his faith the center of his campaign, Brinson is obviously not worried about political candidates using faith for political purposes. But like many other religious right activists, he seems to think the “language of faith” is reserved for the “right” kind of “Christian Leader.”
Posted by Kyle at 9:19 AM | Permalink
Huckabee A Victim of “Anti-Evangelical Bias”?
As we have noted several times before, Mike Huckabee’s primary campaign strategy to date has been focused almost exclusively on wooing evangelical voters – a strategy that paid off handsomely in Iowa:
Religion played a huge role in Mike Huckabee’s triumph in the Iowa Republican caucuses, though there are some mixed signals for him on the road ahead. On the Democratic side, it was fresh blood — and an outcry for change — that helped propel Barack Obama to his victory in the state.
Eight in 10 Huckabee supporters said they are born again or evangelical Christians, according to an entrance poll for The Associated Press and television networks. Another six in 10 said it was very important to share their candidate’s religious beliefs. In both categories, none of the former Arkansas governor’s opponents came close to that kind of support.
While it seems obvious to most that Huckabee’s success can be directly attributed to his ability to convince Religious Right voters that he is one of them, Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America doesn’t see it that way. In fact, she rejects that notion all together and instead sees Huckabee’s Iowa victory as evidence of his ability to overcome anti-Evangelical bias among participants in the Republican caucus:
While 46 percent of Evangelicals voted for Huckabee, more than half of them (54 percent) split their vote among the four other candidates (Romney, McCain, Thompson and Paul).
…
Huckabee had to overcome extraordinary anti-Evangelical bias. The message of Iowa is that anti-Evangelical bias was extraordinary and overwhelming. Eighty-seven percent of non-Evangelicals voted against Huckabee, whereas only 66 percent of all Iowa Republicans voted against him — an astounding 21 percent gap. [Exit polls] shows that among those who self-identified as non-Evangelicals, Huckabee finished 4th (behind Romney, Thompson and McCain). It is significant that Huckabee got only 14% of non-Evangelical votes, while Romney got 19% of the Evangelical vote.
Huckabee was too busy running as a “Christian Leader” to make much of an effort to court non-evangelicals, so his limited support among that group is not surprising and certainly isn’t evidence of any sort of “anti-Evangelical bias.”
By comparison, Huckabee won the support of a plurality (36%) of self-identified Republicans in Iowa, but only 17% of independents. According to Crouse’s logic, Huckabee must have also somehow managed to overcome extraordinary anti-Republican bias as well.
Posted by Kyle at 9:16 AM | Permalink
January 8, 2008
More Nativist Than Thou
Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minutemen, got into some hot water with his fellow anti-immigrant vigilantes after he endorsed Mike Huckabee for president last month. Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leader Chris Simcox rushed to repudiate Gilchrist, as did another Minuteman splinter group, the Patriots Border Alliance. Dozens more groups, from local vigilante outfits to sideshow acts like Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, piled on in a joint letter to “denounce” the endorsement. And Jerome Corsi, who co-authored a book with Gilchrist, seemingly tried to trick the latter into reversing his support for Huckabee.
Perhaps it’s easy for anti-immigrant activists to be picky in a Republican field competing to “out-Tancredo” each other, and despite Huckabee coming out with an immigration plan restrictive enough to attract Gilchrist—one that gives undocumented immigrants 120 days to exit the country—other activists latched on to the candidate’s feel-good rhetoric, such as his statement that “We’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did.”
But, as if to prove himself wrong, Huckabee is now reaching for a fringe proposal that targets immigrant children in particular, according to Gilchrist.
Apparently spooked by the backlash of his Huckabee endorsement, Gilchrist caught up with the candidate and pinned him down on some red-meat anti-immigrant positions, reports the Washington Times. Along with making the pardon of right-wing folk heroes Ramos and Compean his “first act as president,” Huckabee promised to put an end to birthright citizenship, by hook or by crook, Gilchrist said.
Mr. Huckabee, who won last week's Republican Iowa caucuses, promised Minuteman Project founder James Gilchrist that he would force a test case to the Supreme Court to challenge birthright citizenship, and would push Congress to pass a 28th Amendment to the Constitution to remove any doubt. …
Mr. Gilchrist, who campaigned with Mr. Huckabee in Iowa last week, said Mr. Huckabee explained his positions in a half-hour conversation on the campaign trail.
Since the passage of the 14th Amendment, the Constitution has guaranteed citizenship to those born in the U.S., apart from children of diplomats and American Indians. (The latter are citizens by statute.) Recently, a few on the right—such as Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation—have claimed an alternate interpretation of the Constitution eliminates that guarantee for undocumented immigrants. Signing on to this extreme position would put Huckabee in his own league among major GOP candidates.
And the Times—a right-wing newspaper known for replacing “illegal immigrant” with “illegal alien” when running AP stories—seems confident in its story:
"I read back my notes to him twice and I told him I did not want to put words in his mouth," said Mr. Gilchrist, who also issued a press release from the Minuteman Project detailing Mr. Huckabee's positions. "The guy looked me right in the eye."
Campaign spokeswoman Kirsten Fedewa said Mr. Huckabee intends to review the case against Ramos and Compean as one of his first acts as president, but she didn't otherwise dispute Mr. Gilchrist's quotes as provided by The Washington Times.
However, Huckabee’s campaign issued a statement today denying at least part of Gilchrist’s claim:
"I do not support an amendment to the Constitution that would prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens. I have no intention of supporting a constitutional amendment to deny birthright citizenship."
Notably, the statement did not deny that Huckabee supports that attempt to end birthright citizenship by means other than amendment. In any event, the little episode—a repeat of the apparent communication problems between Gilchrist and Corsi—gives the candidate cover to do what he does best: sweet-talking the middle while pandering to the right.
Posted by Ezra at 5:35 PM | Permalink
Huckabee's Populist Image Belies Bizarre Economic Plan
Mike Huckabee’s first-place finish in the Iowa Republican caucus was a victory for the Religious Right, after the combined efforts of a number of lesser-known right-wing figures eager to nominate one of their own. But while James Dobson and Richard Land issued cautious statements endorsing the victory if not the candidate, other national religious-right activists remained aloof, maintaining that Huckabee jeopardizes the vaunted right-wing coalition by alienating some of its partners, especially allies on the economic Right.
“I'm still skeptical that Mike Huckabee is the right man to speak for them because of his views on economics and foreign policy,” said Gary Bauer. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said Huckabee supporters “overlooked the fact he was not attractive to other members of the conservative coalition, and they said they don't care about us, and we don't care about them."
Indeed, these prominent religious-right activists are echoing people like Patrick Toomey of the Club for Growth, who called Huckabee the “John Edwards of the Republican Party,” FreedomWorks' Dick Armey ("Huckabee undermines the GOP's longstanding unity between its traditional and economic wings"), or American Enterprise Institute Vice President Harry Olsen. Toomey’s Club has done the most to convince Republicans of Huckabee’s alleged tax-hiking heresy, running anti-Huckabee ads heavily in Iowa since the summer.
Huckabee himself has played up this reputation as a populist, deriding the “Club for Greed” and talking about “the growing angst in the middle class.”
While many pundits seem to have accepted this presentation, it’s important to separate style from substance: When it comes to economic policy, Huckabee has arguably been running to the right of any of his major opponents.
Key to jumpstarting Huckabee’s surge in Iowa, along with conservative homeschoolers, was his early embrace of a little-known right-wing group called FairTax.org, which proposes replacing all income taxes with a 23 percent national sales tax. FairTax sent at least 20 buses full of people to the Ames straw poll in August, where Huckabee finished a surprising second-place, and the group almost went broke in the fall working the campaign.
Huckabee sells the plan with a populist flair, promising to abolish the IRS and put in place a “progressive” system that would be less for everybody while rewarding “hard work and thrift.” However, the substance doesn't quite match the rhetoric.
Economists and observers on the right and left have mocked the FairTax plan as “politically unrealistic and mathematically impossible.” The 23 percent number, for example, seems to be an obvious ruse to disguise what is in fact a 30 percent tax. (Here’s how that works: adding a $30 tax to a $100 purchase is what anyone would call a 30 percent tax – but the “FairTax” folks say that $30 is only 23 percent of the new total cost of $130.)
Even that number is not sufficient to meet current government spending, which would also be taxed under the plan: Supporters include the tax government agencies would themselves pay when computing revenue but not when calculating spending. Other estimates put the required sales tax rate to meet current spending at above 50 percent.
But beyond the legerdemain and “fantasy” numbers put out by FairTax, the plan for a national sales tax—which would ignore corporate income and capital gains as well as wages—is most vulnerable to criticism that it hits the poor and middle class hardest. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist who worked in the Reagan administration, wrote that under the FairTax plan, “there would be an enormous shift in the tax burden from the wealthy to those with lower and middle incomes.” As Money magazine explained:
Let's say a hedge fund manager has a good year and earns $1 billion. If he can somehow manage to scrape by spending, say, $100 million, the other $900 million is tax free. He'll have paid about 2% of his income in taxes that year.
Such a scheme is far more regressive than the current income tax, and no other candidate has proposed anything so radical. Nevertheless, Huckabee continues to employ the FairTax plan as part of his “populist” image, which pundits and his right-wing opponents alike—not to mention religious-right leaders—have bought into.
Posted by Ezra at 1:55 PM | Permalink
ABA Asked to Examine Regent Law's Accreditation
A lawyer for Adam Key sent a letter to the American Bar Association asking them to examine the accreditation of Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law, saying that Regent is "creating a bunch of lawyers who don't believe in free speech."
Posted by Kyle at 1:54 PM | Permalink
Religious Right Rejects Outreach to Muslims
In October, a group of 138 Muslim scholars, clerics and intellectuals came together to issue an open letter entitled “A Common Word Between Us and You,” a statement that sought to declare common ground between Christianity and Islam.
A short time later, the Yale Center for Faith and Culture issued a response that was signed by 100 Christian theologians and ministers that welcomed the effort, stating:
Given the deep fissures in the relations between Christians and Muslims today, the task before us is daunting. And the stakes are great. The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace. If we fail to make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony you correctly remind us that “our eternal souls” are at stake as well.
We are persuaded that our next step should be for our leaders at every level to meet together and begin the earnest work of determining how God would have us fulfill the requirement that we love God and one another. It is with humility and hope that we receive your generous letter, and we commit ourselves to labor together in heart, soul, mind and strength for the objectives you so appropriately propose.
Guess who is not happy about it?
An attempt by leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to win friends and influence Muslims is alienating another group — evangelical Christians.
Reactions have been negative and strong. Islam expert Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo has called it a “betrayal” and a “sellout.” Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary (Southern Baptist), termed it “naiveté that borders on dishonesty.”
…
Mohler said the agreement “sends the wrong signal” and contains basic theological problems, especially in “marginalizing” Jesus Christ. He also condemned the apology for the Crusades.
“I just have to wonder how intellectually honest this is,” he said. “Are these people suggesting that they wish the military conflict with Islam had ended differently — that Islam had conquered Europe?”
…
Gary Bauer, president of the Campaign for Working Families, told CitizenLink the NAE leaders “have left the (card) table without their pants — that is, they’ve been taken and may not even realize they’ve been taken.”
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Sookhdeo called for Christian leaders who signed the letter to withdraw their names, saying the confession of guilt puts Christian communities in Muslim areas of the world at risk.
“I find it difficult to understand how senior evangelical leaders in the West can join hands with other Christians who actually are betraying the Christian faith (and) their Christian brothers and sisters in the Muslim world,” he said.
No word yet on whether this right-wing leaders will try to get Richard Cizik fired from his position with NEA for signing this letter, as they did a while back when he dared to care about the environment.
Posted by Kyle at 11:12 AM | Permalink
Right-Wing CA Delegates
Rudy Giuliani announces that anti-Affirmative Action crusader Ward Connerly will be among those representing his campaign in the California Republican primary election, while Mitt Romney announces that Lou Sheldon will be among his delegates.
Posted by Kyle at 10:25 AM | Permalink
January 7, 2008
Perkins Slams Efforts at ‘Unity’
A group of Democrats and Republicans, including former Senators such as Jack Danforth, Gary Hart, and Bob Graham, as well as Christine Todd Whitman, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, gathered at the University of Oklahoma today for a forum urging presidential candidates to work to “establish a government of national unity”:
Today, we come together with hope and determination, with a determination to stop politics as usual which seeks to divide us for political gain. We come together to resurrect that kind of bipartisan statesmanship that united us as Americans to win the Cold War. We come together to appeal to all presidential candidates to tell us how they plan to bring us together. Hear our plea! Bring us together!
The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins is having none of it and sees it as an effort to drive so-called “values voters” out of the political process:
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC), says in their zeal to find common ground, the moderates want to jettison social issues from both party platforms and focuses. The FRC leader says the group of moderates "obviously did not get the message from Iowa," where former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee surged ahead because of "his unequivocal stand on core issues."
"I think we've seen in the wake of Iowa and in what's happening across the country that those issues are very near and dear to people," Perkins observes. "Those are issues that motivate people; they vote based on those issues. [And] those issues are important to Americans, not just evangelicals, but value voters make up a wide section of Americans who are concerned about the moral direction of our country."
Polls show that most Americans – including most Republicans and most Christians – don’t share Perkins’ abortion-and-gays political priorities. But he’s got a point about the power of those issues to motivate a good chunk of the Republican base. Mike Huckabee just won Iowa where “over 80 percent of [his] supporters self-identified as born-again Christian or evangelical.”
Or as Perkins explained following Huckabee’s win last week, the GOP’s right-wing base is motivated by wedge issues and will rally around “one of their own” if given the opportunity:
[E]vangelicals, dispirited by Republican indifference if not outright hostility to their concerns, cast their ballots for candidates who line up with them on their top priority issues (for example, all of the top five finishers contend that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be corrected).
…
Iowa evangelicals' voting pattern says, "If that is the way we are viewed by the other members of the conservative coalition, we are going with one of our own whom we can trust on our issues." The road ahead will be filled with challenges, but one thing is clear: the values voter turnout has reshaped this presidential campaign in a very good way.
In other words, Perkins seems to be saying, “values voters” aren’t even interested in “unity” with the rest of the conservative movement. That’s quite a change from what he was telling reporters at the “Values Voter Summit” in October, when he was indirectly dissing Huckabee by repeating Romney’s “three legged stool” formulation that any Republican would need the support of social conservatives, economic conservatives, and foreign policy conservatives to win the White House.
Posted by Kyle at 4:29 PM | Permalink