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April 25, 2008
Newt Gingrich: Alternative Historian
Since leaving office in 1999, Newt Gingrich has carved out a lucrative post-Congressional career for himself as a speaker, a pundit, “citizen leader,” and possible presidential candidate, all while serving as chairman of his own organization as well as a fellow at various right-wing think tanks. Heck, he’s even got his own avatar.
In addition, he’s also established himself as something of an “alternative historian,” writing novels that re-imagine everything from the Civil War to World War II. So enthralled with the idea of alternate history is Gingrich that he’s even pontificated on an “Alternative History of the War since 9/11” with fascinating results.
But now it seems as if Gingrich’s obsession with alternate history is starting to infect his other, more reality-based, pursuits.
For instance, yesterday Think Progress caught him defending John McCain’s embrace of John Hagee, saying that McCain had repudiated Hagee’s anti-Catholic statements and that attempts to hold McCain accountable for Hagee’s offensive views was “grabbing at straws.”
Gingrich went on to suggest that McCain has adopted “the Ronald Reagan position” meaning that “People get to endorse me. I'm not endorsing them."
That’s a good defense - unfortunately, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what Reagan actually said:
The former actor, famed for his optimism and his ability to communicate it to the American public, was also famous for introducing many conservative Christians to real political influence.
Reagan was present -- and uttered one of his most famous lines -- at the meeting that many credit as the birth of the Religious Right, which molded evangelical Protestant conservatism into a cohesive political movement.
At the Religious Roundtable's National Affairs Briefing in 1980, after being introduced by a Southern Baptist evangelist as "God's man," Reagan -- then a presidential candidate -- told the gathering of conservative Christian luminaries, "I know you can't endorse me, but I endorse you."
Reagan's quip launched a relationship with conservative Christians that would eventually reshape America's political landscape.
Perhaps Gingrich should try to confine his fictitious historical yarns to his novels and avoid working them into his appearances as a political pundit.
Posted by Kyle at 10:45 AM | Permalink
Right to Pastors: Join Us or They'll Come After You
On Saturday, Coral Ridge Ministries—the televangelism empire of the late D. James Kennedy—broadcast a special program to encourage pastors to involve their churches in this year’s elections. While the panelists—Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, Jordan Lorence of Alliance Defense Fund, and Gary DeMar of American Vision—offered the usual admonishments that there’s no such thing as separation of church and state, the theme of the evening was that Christianity is being “suppressed” in this country by liberals and the “militant homosexual agenda.” Watch "Pastors, Pulpits, and Politics":
This is the persecuted majority syndrome: the idea that it’s a whole lot simpler to convince people to join your political program if you convince them that their faith is “under attack.” This has been one of the Religious Right’s dominant themes over the last few years through campaigns such as FRC’s “Justice Sunday,” a series of televised, church-based rallies to support President Bush’s most radical judicial nominees, who the Right claimed were being opposed because of their religion. Perkins picked up on that theme on Saturday:
The idea that there should be no religious test ... that has been turned on its head to say that if you have a particular faith or denomination in which you actually believe it and apply it to your lives, therefore, if that's the case, you can't serve in government. You have to somehow choose between actually believing in what you believe and serving in government. That's how this is being applied today and it's totally wrong.
And we're losing the Christian foundation of our nation. And if you want to see a totalitarian government, you want to see rights that are lost and freedoms abused, then you lose the Christian heritage of this nation and you go down the path that the liberals are taking us. And that's where it'll be found.
Posted by Ezra at 10:29 AM | Permalink
April 24, 2008
McCain Wins By Losing
Suffice it to say that John McCain and Wisconsin Right to Life (WRTL) have had something of a rocky relationship in the past, engaging in extensive litigation over the senator’s flagship McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation ever since WRTL ran ads back in 2004 targeting WI senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold despite a provision in the law “banning ads that mention the names of candidates for public office within certain ‘blackout periods’ ranging from 30 to 60 days before an election--if funds from corporations or unions are used to pay for the ads.”
As the Weekly Standard explained:
McCain has thrown himself into the McCain-Feingold litigation with unusual fervor, personally intervening in Wisconsin Right to Life's lawsuit rather than relying solely on the lawyers for the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department who are charged with defending the constitutionality of federal election laws. "It is not a common, ordinary occurrence" for sponsors of federal legislation to become involved in litigation over their handiwork, notes Bradley A. Smith, a law professor at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, who served as FEC chairman during Bush's first term and is a vocal opponent of McCain-Feingold as well as most other regulation of elections. "How rare it is I can't tell you, but it's more common just to file an amicus [friend-of-the-court] brief."
The case ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court and McCain even filed a brief in which he argued that WRTL’s actions were “a classic case of business corporations funneling unregulated monies to an advocacy group to pay for ads that will influence a federal election” in violation of the law.
Unfortunately for McCain, he ended up losing the case on a decision written by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by Justice Alito and and others whom he voted to confirm to the Court.
But it looks like WRTL isn’t one to hold a grudge, because they have now endorsed him and are citing his pledge to appoint more justices like Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court as one of the key reasons:
The Wisconsin Right to Life Political Action Committee today announced its endorsement of Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential race.
Senator McCain has a stellar 100% voting record on protecting unborn children from abortion. He opposes the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion on demand in the United States and he voted to ban the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure. He opposes taxpayer funding of abortion and supports legislation that would require parental notification prior to a minor's abortion.
Senator McCain opposes human cloning and the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes. He has stated that he would nominate U.S. Supreme Court justices in the mold of Justices Roberts and Scalia.
Presumably, all McCain needs to do to rack up support from his former Religious Right foes is to keep pledging to appoint the type of judges they demand, even if that means ones who will strike down legislation and views he otherwise champions.
Posted by Kyle at 4:21 PM | Permalink
April 23, 2008
More on the Right's 'Double Standard' for Religion in Politics
Radio talker Michael Medved complains about some imaginary “double standards” he saw following remarks by Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at a Compassion Summit earlier this month:
From most commentators, Hillary received high marks for her thoughtful, surprisingly intimate answers to such questions. … Nevertheless, the generally positive reaction to her comments raises obvious questions about faith, Democrats and double standards.
Imagine that George W. Bush told a public forum that he had “felt the enveloping support and love of God” since childhood, and that on “many, many occasions” he “felt like the Holy Spirit was there with me.”
It’s not hard to imagine the derisive tabloid headlines: “Bush: God Is With Me” or “Prez Sees Spirits” or “W. Talks About His Imaginary Friend.” Howard Dean might comment: “It sounds like Bush is once again saying that he talks to God, so we better watch out. The last time that happened, he took us to a war based on false intelligence.” …
Why is it less controversial when liberals talk about their religious outlook than it is for conservatives to speak about our faith?
Controversial? In fact, it’s difficult to name any recent candidate for any major office who didn’t talk about his or her faith. And now that he mentions it, we might point out that it’s been the liberal candidates (along with poor Mitt Romney) who have had their faith questioned by the Right. When the right-wing media hasn’t been whispering that Obama is a secret Muslim, they’ve been speculating about the particulars of his pastor’s theology. One activist conducted his own investigation and declared Obama’s Christianity “woefully deficient.”
Likewise, Clinton’s faith is considered fair game for attacks from the Right. For evidence, look no further than four paragraphs later in the very same article by Michael Medved, when he cavalierly asserts that “no one objects to Hillary’s God-talk because, in essence, nobody fully believes it. Her frequent encounters with the Holy Spirit sound no more formidable than Dennis Kucinich’s sighting of a UFO (in the company of Shirley McLaine – now that’s a problem).”
As for Hillary, she can’t point to a single issue in which her supposedly “deep commitment to my Methodist faith” actually shaped her thinking, beyond a very bland and generalized concern for the poor as “the least among us.” She doesn’t scare non-believers because all the religious overtones in her speeches and interviews can’t erase the overwhelming impression they receive that “she’s one of us” – and her positions on abortion, homosexuality, stem cells, and most church-state issues further reassure them that she’s still on their side on the culture war.
According to Medved, “no one in the country” takes Clinton’s “well-advertised interaction with the Holy Spirit” as genuine.
While Clinton’s membership in a Capitol Hill prayer group is common knowledge, her fellow members in the group—such as Rick Santorum and Jim Inhofe—are taken at face value when they talk about how their faith influences their politics. Clinton, as Medved demonstrates, is not—apparently because the Right doesn’t like her political positions. What’s the term for that? Oh yeah—“double standard.”
Posted by Ezra at 5:19 PM | Permalink
Perfect Timing
As we noted last week, ever since courting John Hagee and receiving his endorsement in February, John McCain hasn’t been quite sure how to handle the controversy that came with it, at times trying to distance himself from Hagee and then turning around and bragging about his close ties with him.
When he was asked about the endorsement by George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, McCain basically summed up his have-it-both-ways position by saying it was probably a mistake to seek it while maintaining that he is glad to have it.
While McCain has gone out of his way to repudiate Hagee’s anti-Catholic statements and views, he’s hasn’t weighed in on Hagee’s other controversial views, such as his belief that New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina because the city “had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”
McCain was probably hoping that Hagee would stop saying outrageous things like that and that the controversy would eventually go away – but that is not what is happening because, as Think Progress reports, Hagee continues to insist the New Orleans was targeted for destruction by God because a “homosexual rally” was being planned for the following Monday:
[Dennis] Prager followed up by asking [Hagee] if all natural disasters are a result of “the divine hand” and if there is “any natural disaster that is not the result of sin?” Hagee responded by saying “it’s a result of God’s permissible will” and “that there was going to be a massive homosexual rally there the following Monday,” which he said “was sin”
PRAGER: Right, but in the case, did NPR get, is this quote correct though that in the case of New Orleans you do feel it was sin?
HAGEE: In the case of New Orleans, their plan to have that homosexual rally was sin. But it never happened. The rally never happened.
PRAGER: No, I understand.
HAGEE: It was scheduled that Monday.
PRAGER: No, I’m only trying to understand that in the case of New Orleans, you do feel that God’s hand was in it because of a sinful city?
HAGEE: That it was a city that was planning a sinful conduct, yes.
Considering that McCain is scheduled to be in New Orleans tomorrow, this might be a good time to get him on the record again about just how glad he is to have Hagee’s endorsement.
Posted by Kyle at 1:16 PM | Permalink
April 22, 2008
Expulsion: Far Right Loves Ben Stein
Ben Stein’s anti-evolution attack film, “Expelled,” has finally arrived, grossing $3 million over the weekend, thanks to a church-based roll-out by the marketers that brought you “The Passion of the Christ.” Critics have savaged the documentary—which claims widespread persecution of creationists in academia and warns of a direct link between the theory of evolution and the Holocaust—as a dishonest work of propaganda, but, not surprisingly, the movie has a lot of fans among the Religious Right.
“Expelled” has been promoted heavily in right-wing media this month. Stein appeared on Focus on the Family radio, where the movie received the “enthusiastic” endorsement of James Dobson. Producer Mark Mathis appeared on WallBuilders Live, the radio show of premier church-state integrationist David Barton, to discuss “the persecution of the many by an elite few.” Rush Limbaugh exuberantly promoted it on his show; apparently, the movie taught him that “Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God.”
Stein was also interviewed by the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow, while executive producer Logan Craft hit WorldNetDaily. Baptist Press, the official outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, featured an op-ed by Stein and a series of articles pushing the film. The producers gave a private screening to Brent Bozell of the far-right Media Research Center. (He loved it.)
“Expelled” is also featured by the late D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Ministries, which offers its own product line equating Darwin and Hitler. While some “Expelled” cheerleaders express sympathy for the “Intelligent Design” advocates who have been “persecuted” supposedly (the National Center for Science Education has their realistic back-stories here), most on the Right seem to be especially enchanted by the film’s reliance on a half-baked linking of evolution to Nazism and Stalinism.
“Expelled,” wrote World magazine editor and faith-based initiatives architect Marvin Olasky, “rightly equates Darwinian stifling of free speech with the Communist attempt to enslave millions behind the Berlin Wall.”
The real question is: Did Darwinism bulwark Hitlerian hatred by providing a scientific rationale for killing those considered less fit in the struggle for survival?
The answer to that question is an unambiguous yes.
Richard Weikart of the “Intelligent Design” group, the Discovery Institute, defended the Darwin-Hitler connection as critical: “[W]hat is most objectionable about the Nazis' worldview? Isn't it that they had no respect for human life?” Weikart, who wrote a book entitled “From Darwin to Hitler,” added, “the Nazis' devaluing of human life derived from Darwinian ideology....”
Gary DeMar of American Vision was so inspired he branched out on his own, linking evolution to the fundamentalist polygamist cult that’s been in the news recently.
Given the worldview shift that has taken place in America, none of this is of any consequence. Evolutionary and atheistic assumptions are standard worldview thinking in every public school classroom in America. So then, why is it wrong with having forced sex with young girls? It’s evolution in action. …
The secularists should be proud of what these polygamists are doing. They are confirming the evolutionary thesis of Dawkins and his selfish gene hypothesis.
Posted by Ezra at 6:07 PM | Permalink
Dusting Off the Dirty Playbook
It looks like the man responsible for 1988’s infamous Willie Horton ad is back and has his sights set on Barack Obama:
Starting Tuesday, a group of conservative activists led by Floyd Brown, author of the famous Willie Horton ad used so effectively against Michael Dukakis in 1988, will begin a campaign to tar Obama as weak on crime and terrorism, a strategy that aims to upend Obama's relatively strong reputation among Republican voters.
…
Brown's new ad focuses on a 2001 vote by Obama in the Illinois Senate to oppose a bill that would have expanded the use of the death penalty if the perpetrator of a crime belonged to a gang. The links between Obama's vote on that issue and the deaths of three Chicago resident's are indirect and tenuous, as is the further connection the ad draws between the issue of Obama's position on the death penalty and the issue of international terrorism.
Time reports that the ads will be funded by a PAC called the National Campaign Fund “which had $14,027 in the bank at the end of March,” which probably explains why Brown is focused on creating the “most Internet-intensive effort for an ad debut ever” and hoping to gin up free media coverage to make up for the ad’s lack of funding, much like Mike Huckabee did, or at least tried to do, with his campaign ads (it is worth noting that Ari Berman of the "The Nation" reports that Brown's efforts are being "run by Bruce Hawkins, a former field organizer for Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson who recently worked for Mike Huckabee in Iowa.")
And speaking of free advertising, it looks like a pastor in South Carolina is trying make a name for himself by suggesting that Obama might secretly be Muslim:
Pastor Roger Byrd of Jonesville Church of God put the sign up which reads "Obama Osama humm are they brothers?"
Pastor Byrd says the sign is not meant to be racial or political but rather to make people think. "His name is so close to Osama, I have a feeling he might be Islamic therefore he doesn't recognize Christ," Pastor Byrd said.
Of course the ad is not political and was merely designed to make people think … that Obama is a Muslim and possible a terrorist.
Posted by Kyle at 4:16 PM | Permalink
April 21, 2008
McCain Has It Both Ways with Hagee
When John McCain picked up the endorsement of far-right televangelist John Hagee, it was only the loud protests of the Catholic League that got the media to notice, and eventually, got McCain to issue a weak statement: “I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee’s, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics.”
The story more or less dropped after that, as journalists seemed much less interested in Hagee’s views about things other than the Catholic Church—such as his statement that Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for a sinful New Orleans (or perhaps for policy in the Middle East?) or his position that the U.S. should launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran to usher in the second coming of Jesus. In any event, McCain continued to promote his ties to Hagee.
And in an interview with George Stephanopoulos yesterday, John McCain reiterated that he was “glad to have” televangelist John Hagee’s endorsement. Yet the ABCNews.com headline reads, “McCain Admits Hagee Endorsement Was A Mistake.”
McCain appears to be trying to have it both ways, assuring the media that it was “probably” a mistake to court Hagee’s support, while maintaining to the base that it was a mistake he’s “glad” he made.
Stephanopoulos. A lot of Senator Obama’s allies and others say that you should condemn the comments of Reverend John Hagee, an evangelical pastor …
McCain. Oh, I do. And I did. I said that any comments he made about the Catholic Church I strongly condemned, of course.
Stephanopoulos. Yet you solicited and accepted his endorsement.
McCain. Yes, indeed, I did. And I condemned the comments that he made concerning the Catholic Church.
Stephanopoulos. Yet you’re going to hold on to his endorsement. Your own campaign acknowledges that you should have done a better job of vetting pastor Hagee …
McCain. Oh, sure.
Stephanopoulos. So was it a mistake to solicit and accept his endorsement?
McCain. Oh, probably. Sure. But I admire and respect Doctor Hagee’s leadership of his church. I admire and appreciate his advocacy for the state of Israel, the independence and freedom of the state of Israel. I condemn remarks that are made that has anything to do—which is condemning of the Catholic Church. …
McCain. I’m glad to have his endorsement. I condemn remarks that are any way viewed as anti-anything. And thanks for asking. (Laughs.)
(Watch the video here—remarks at 16:45.)
Posted by Ezra at 1:58 PM | Permalink