October, 2006

Frank Pavone of Priests for Life claims 1000 signatories.

Supporters of referendum, which also bans civil unions, cite the recent New Jersey decision. Watch their new ad, courtesy of right-wing funders. Focus on the Family is concerned about Arizona and Colorado as well.

“There’s a basis,” the radio talker says, because “Harold Ford has dated a white woman.” Read more on the ad.

Group cited in “bitter GOP infighting,” putting at risk seats once considered safe in Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, and Rhode Island.

Citing fraud, despite a lack of evidence, even as ID laws create problems at polls.

At least 24 nominees gave to key Republicans while under consideration for federal bench.

Government now targeting 19- to 29-year-olds. Meanwhile, urging his supporters to vote, FRC’s Perkins warns Democratic House would put more oversight over federal abstinence-only education programs.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has released a report called “Homophobia at ‘Hell House’: Literally Demonizing Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth,” which examines the “hell houses” used by churches nationwide around Halloween. Many churches use elaborate kits sold by Denver pastor Keenan Roberts, which come with props and very specific scripts designed to scare children as young as 10 on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.

From the NGLTF report, which emphasizes the impact of these performances on harassment and violence against gay and lesbian youth:

Another scene portrays a marriage between two men. The script calls for a young heterosexual married couple to act out this scene. “The wife dons masculine make-up for the necessary male look,” the Hell House Web site instructs. The demon performing the ceremony harasses them during their vows, asking, “Do you solemnly swear to never believe that you’re normal?” The demon also pronounces that the couple is “burning in a repulsive lust for one another, deceived by the world that they’ve been born gay, [and] are joining their deeply confused lives in this deeply nauseating matrimony.” The Hell House Web site explains to potential buyers that purchasing this script “will give you another powerful weapon in your arsenal against the homosexual stronghold and the born-gay deception.”

Another room is a mock emergency room, where one of the men from the wedding scene is on his deathbed. He cries out that he does not want to die and go to hell. “This is Steve,” the demon says. “He thought his homosexual lifestyle was everything a real man could want, but now he’s dying of AIDS.” Toward the end of the Hell House tour, participants are led through “hell,” where Steve is writhing in pain among other “sinners.” The demon laughs maniacally at Steve, shouting “AIDS! You fool! Ha ha!” over and over again as he stresses that Steve is separated from God forever.

Pat Robertson doesn’t go quite as far as some on the right who have said Michael J. Fox was “pathetic,”  “lying,” or saying things that were “untrue” in the recent embryonic stem-cell research ad featuring Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s disease.  

Robertson did however say in a segment about the upcoming Senate race in Missouri that Rush Limbaugh was pointing out that Fox “seemed a bit over the top.”

Robertson scientifically bolstered his skepticism adding:

“[Fox] plays a role in a show called ‘Boston Legal’ and he doesn’t do all that gyrating back and forth and that. Whatever disease his Parkinson’s is showing he doesn’t have all that problem. Now is that too much meds or not enough?”

At least a few people at CBN seemed to have learned to avoid compounding Robertson’s (to put it mildly) insensitive faux pas.  Christian Broadcasting Network’s political correspondent David Brody didn’t bite, and instead of answering Robertson’s question about whether or not Fox had taken “too much or not enough” medication launched into his story about the impact of the ads on Missouri voters saying it was hard to tell what impact the commercial was having in Missouri as most of the people he had asked about it still seemed confused over the issues.

[View the video highlight: Broadband or Dial-Up.]

The New York Times reports that moderate Republicans are concerned about the GOP’s rightward lurch and worried that it is not only polarizing the party but harming their chances of winning re-election.

Leading moderates say Republicans concentrated on social wedge issues like same-sex marriage while pressing national security almost to the exclusion of popular wage and health policies that could have helped endangered Republicans in the Northeast and the Midwest.

Of course, those pushing the GOP ever rightward are not particularly concerned

Conservatives say the overall party message was developed to draw the most loyal voters to the polls by emphasizing bedrock principles. The leader of one group that backed conservative candidates in Republican primaries, angering the moderate wing, said some moderates were in trouble simply because they strayed too far, alienating Republicans without attracting Democrats.

“We have people who are certainly well left of the center of the Republican conference on all issues, including economic and growth issues,” said the leader, Pat Toomey, a former congressman from Pennsylvania who heads the Club for Growth. “I’m not hoping they lose. But if they do, I think we will be able to recapture those seats with pro-growth candidates who distance themselves from Democrats.”

Toomey’s confidence that the Club for Growth will be able to rebuild the Republican Party in its own image is undermined a bit by this article in USA Today

When members of the conservative Club for Growth opened their checkbooks to back candidates in Republican primaries for open House seats in Colorado and Idaho, it seemed a pretty good bet that their choices would cruise into Congress if they won the preliminary rounds.

…

Less than two weeks before the Nov. 7 election, the Club for Growth's choices in Colorado and Idaho are looking less like surefire investments. The group's 36,000 members and political action committee have spent about $700,000 on the Idaho race and about $310,000 in the Colorado district.

In Colorado, Republican candidate Doug Lamborn, a 12-year veteran of the state Senate, has been hurt by lingering divisions from a bitter six-way primary in August. Hefley, who has represented the district 20 years, called Lamborn's campaign "sleazy and dishonest" and has refused to endorse him.

…

In Idaho, it's been five months since Republican Bill Sali won a divisive six-candidate primary, but time has not healed rifts within the party, some of them dating to Sali's 16-year tenure in the Legislature. The Idaho Statesman endorsed Democrat Larry Grant, saying Sali spent his legislative career "fixated on hot-button issues such as abortion, alienating fellow Republicans."

After Sali discussed a supposed link between abortions and breast cancer early this year, Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, a Republican, called him "an absolute idiot" who "doesn't have an ounce of empathy." Former GOP speaker Mike Simpson, now in the U.S. House, once threatened to throw Sali from a second-floor window.

This rightward push is clearly having an impact and turning off moderates – including many who are now turning away from the GOP even in places like Kansas. But CFG is pushing ahead, spending millions of dollars in support of its approved far-right candidates.

If Club for Growth gets its way, the moderate Republicans will soon find themselves all but extinct and replaced by a raft of “pro-growth candidates who distance themselves from Democrats” primarily by being “absolute idiots” who run “sleazy and dishonest” campaigns.   

Reason “Why Christians Must Urgently Pray and Vote.”

For 43 states.

Only “racist liberals” would think it’s racist, says Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a frequent right-wing speaker.

Put $2.6 million in parent-consent drive.

“There’ll be a backlash,” predicts New Jersey Family Policy Council’s Deo.

Chris Simcox on a ten-state tour for Minuteman PAC. Also: Grassfire.org scores GOP as party of “stopping illegal immigration.”

“Be sure and vote your values on Tuesday, November the 7th. As an American, it is your right. But as a Christian, it's your responsibility,” says Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in a get-out-the-vote advertisement. With leading religious-right groups working hard to help the Republicans maintain control of Congress – despite avowing a total disillusionment with the GOP – the already-overworked catchphrase of “voting one’s values” is being taken to the farthest corners of the Republican platform.

While an upcoming U.S. museum tour featuring “Lucy,” the 3 million-year-old remains of a human ancestor, is generating controversy over whether to move the fragile artifacts, creationists see a controversy of a different sort: so-called “anti-creationist hype.” From the American Family Association’s AgapePress:

Creationists … are predicting that Lucy's tour will be much more about promoting the theory of evolution than about expanding real scientific knowledge.

"When I see that they're bringing the most famous of the supposed 'human ancestor' fossils to America, and they're going to feature it across America, I can see this is a big push for evolution," [Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis] observes.

"There's a lot of evidence that goes against Lucy being upright and as a human ancestor and so on," the Answers in Genesis spokesman says. However, he has no illusions about the likelihood of those facts being brought out during the tour.

"We'll see Lucy portrayed in a particular way," Ham says, with exhibitors "trying to tell the American public that this is your human ancestor and that this is fact. And they won't put all the information in there that contradicts that."

Ham’s protest signals that it is unlikely the “Lucy” tour will make a stop at Answers in Genesis’s Creation Museum in northern Kentucky, which will have its own fossil collection and “life-sized dinosaur models” when it opens as early as next year.

The Monday edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an article on right-wing get-out-the-vote effort around the nation, but which focused primarily on the work being done in Ohio by Phil Burress of Citizens for Community Values  

If Republicans still have an ace up their sleeve in this fall campaign, it's people like Phil Burress.

Mr. Burress, a thrice-married, self-described former pornography addict, is president of Citizens for Community Values, a statewide network of politically active Christian conservatives. His work here in 2004 helped turn out evangelical voters who put President Bush over the top in Ohio -- the state that made the difference between victory and defeat.

The article notes that despite the Right’s disenchantment with President Bush and the Republican Party as a whole,  they are doing all they can to register as many people as possible and get them to the polls in an attempt to help the GOP maintain its majority in Congress 

As part of its mobilization effort, the CCV recently paired with Wallbuilders’s David Barton for a series of rallies around the state, during which Barton called upon those in attendance