May, 2007

Rolling Stone blogger Tim Dickinson recently talked to Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist about the right-wing credentials of the leading GOP candidates for president. Norquist, a key organizer of the D.C.-based coalition of economic and social conservatives, declared that the anti-abortion and anti-gay litmus test proffered by the Religious Right is hooey: “What brings social conservatives to the Republican party is not some list of 20 things that James Dobson would like to see.” Instead, according to Norquist, they are really a “parents-rights movement” who “are worried about raising their kids in their own faith and being left alone.” Says Norquist:

You can make the argument that some candidates would be more enthusiastic about going further on the social conservative agenda, and some may well excite the leadership of the social conservative movement, but I don’t believe that it moves votes. Take a look at how McCain and Giuliani and Romney are polling. Who are the three top guys? Pat Robertson sees two pagans and a Mormon. Everybody’s heard that Giuliani dressed up in drag. If my analysis was wrong, would he be polling as well as he is? Romney is a Mormon, which evangelicals see as theologically flawed, and McCain picked a public fight in 2000 with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Those are the three Republicans polling the best!

If 40 percent of the GOP base truly had Dobson’s 20 point test then a candidate such as Huckabee should be one of the frontrunners. He’s not, and that’s why I think my analysis is the correct one. The press is going to want to talk about and solicit quotations from self-appointed leaders about how unacceptable certain of these candidates are. I don’t think that translates.

This isn’t the first time a prominent leader of the economic Right has singled out Dobson: Dick Armey, head of FreedomWorks and the former House majority leader, attacked “Dobson and his gang of thugs” last year.

Last week’s attack on James Dobson by some anti-abortion groups prompted rebukes defending Dobson from other anti-abortion groups with almost the same names, displaying an internecine conflict between factions on the far Right: Operation Rescue versus Operation Rescue and National Right to Life versus affiliate Colorado Right to Life.

Similar problems have been brewing over the last year between the waning Christian Coalition and its state affiliates. Chapters in Ohio, Iowa, Alabama, and Georgia have split off, citing disgust over the group’s finances as well as apparent ideological differences, such as the national group’s support of an Alabama tax reform measure, which the Republican governor called a Christian duty to the poor but which was fervently opposed by the group’s Alabama chapter.

Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was ousted for refusing to remove a two-ton Ten Commandments monument from his courtroom, is decrying proposals to expand pre-kindergarten programs as an attempt by “liberal elites” to “indoctrinate our youth,” on par with the formation of the Hitler Youth:

Why, then, do social liberals like Hillary Clinton push so hard for the expansion of preschool programs? Perhaps they understand the truth of Proverbs 22:6 better than most parents: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it." When the mind of a young child is subjected to state control before fundamental concepts and basic beliefs are formulated, the child is much more likely to learn a liberal social and political philosophy with the state as his or her master. Creation and God-given rights are more easily replaced with evolution and government-granted rights. Totalitarian regimes like those of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin knew well the value of a "youth corps." As Hans Schemm, leader of the Nazi Teacher's League, once observed, "Those who have the youth on their side control the future."

Gary Bauer penned a rather odd op-ed in today’s Christian Science Monitor complaining that Americans are too attached to their pets: 

We're treating animals as humans, and in some cases preferring pets to people. But an excess of affection per se isn't the problem – it's the lopsided moral framework that it reveals.

As one would expect, any piece written by Bauer undoubtedly will suggest that whatever issue he’s discussing is in some way really a sign of some sort of social breakdown:

It's partly due to the growing share of people choosing pets over children.

Census Bureau data reveal that the proportion of childless women 15 to 44 years old reached an all-time high of 45 percent in 2004. Moreover, the National Center of Health Statistics confirms that the percentage of women who choose to be "child-free" has swelled 160 percent in a generation.

…

Standard reasons for choosing pets over people include the rising costs of raising children, and careers and social standing taking precedence over family life.

Such an attachment to pets is dangerous, Bauer suggests, because pets inhabit “a different moral universe than man” and are incapable of demonstrating forgiveness or compassion … or something like that:

Human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. And though capable of monstrous acts, human beings also have the ability – unique in creation – to demonstrate heroic forgiveness and compassion. Witness Holocaust survivor and professor Liviu Librescu, who heroically gave his life during the Virginia Tech shootings. Witness, too, the tremendous outpouring of sympathy for the loved ones of those killed.

Some of those most deeply affected by the shootings even extended the hand of forgiveness to the killer. Clearly, even in the face of brutality, man – when he appeals, as Lincoln admonished, to the better angels of his nature – is capable of exhibiting a humanity toward his fellow man that should make countless thousands rejoice.

Your pet did not survive the Holocaust or give its life to protect students at Virginia Tech, nor did it grieve or have sympathy for those who died and so, apparently, you shouldn’t be so attached it.

How on Earth did Bauer convince the Christian Science Monitor to run this?  

From a new Rolling Stone article entitled “All Flipper, No Gipper” which looks at the troubles the current Republican presidential hopefuls are having winning over the Right:  

Sam Brownback

Ticket to ride. Kansas senator appeals not only to Christian fundamentalists (he serves only "one Constituent" - God; considers abortion murder and homosexuality immoral) but to economic fundamentalists ("He has a great pro-growth record," raves Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth).

Baggage. Baptized by a priest from the Catholic cult of Opus Dei (featured in The Da Vinci Code). A favorite of hatemongers: Fred Phelps, the "God Hates Fags" preacher infamous for disrupting gay funerals, says Brownback "likes what we're doing, and he tells me that."

As we noted last week, pseudo-historian and right-wing propagandist David Barton was traveling around Iowa with Republican presidential hopeful Sam Brownback.  

Further, [Barton] said, "you can also tell a guy by his enemies," and cited [Brownback’s] 19 percent rating from the American Civil Liberties Union and an "F" grade from the National Education Association, which drew applause from the crowd.

"Socialists just don't care for Sam much," said Barton, president of the Texas-based WallBuilders group, which seeks to give insight into the Christian values the founders of America possessed.

Brownback is likewise infatuated with Barton:  

"David is well known across the country for his research and his knowledge on really the heritage, and particularly the spiritual heritage, of the country. His support I think is a signal to a number of people that this is somebody that understands the Constitution and also understands the role of faith in the United States ... and doesn't try to run it out of the public square," Brownback said.

Barton is indeed known across the country for his research – research that is often staggeringly slanted, openly partisan, and tellingly incomplete.

For good measure, Brownback also discussed his own views on the intersection of faith and politics:

While Brownback thinks faith belongs in government, he said he does not want the church to control the government, or vice versa.

“I’m opposed to a theocracy. I think it would be bad for religion. I also think it would be bad for government,” he said.  

So Brownback is opposed to theocracy mainly because it is bad for religion … and, oh yeah, not so good for the government either. 

With views like that, it’s not hard to understand why Barton would be out there stumping for Brownback:

Barton said the United States’ Christian heritage is one of the reasons for the country’s stability, while other countries get new governments every 20 to 30 years.

“You’ve got to have God-fearing leaders to have God-honoring leaders,” he said.

Barton also seemed to have an ominous warning to those who might be considering sitting out the upcoming election:

Barton said evangelical Christians number nearly 60 million and they should be engaged politically. "We get to choose our leaders, and we'll answer to God," he said.

This was the same message Barton was delivering last year before the mid-term election. At least he hasn’t begun threatening to break fingers in order to get people to vote for Brownback yet.  

No plans for Memorial Day? The Creation Museum, a $27 million production of Answers in Genesis, is finally opening in northern Kentucky. From the New York Times:

The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away. …

[The scene] serves as a vivid introduction to the sheer weirdness and daring of this museum created by the Answers in Genesis ministry that combines displays of extraordinary nautilus shell fossils and biblical tableaus, celebrations of natural wonders and allusions to human sin. Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel.

Last year, Answers in Genesis complained that a museum tour of “Lucy,” the remains of a 3-million-year-old human ancestor, was “anti-creationist hype.” The group’s own museum will also feature fossils, but presented as cohabitants of the world of Noah and passengers on his ark.

Oddly enough, the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., is opening its own new exhibit on Saturday.  But the museum maintains that the subjects of the “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids” exhibit “are found only in folktales and other stories.”    

As we wrote yesterday, James Dobson’s applause for the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the “Partial Birth Abortion Ban” led to an unusual row between far-right anti-abortion groups: One group claiming the name Operation Rescue condemned Dobson for backsliding and called on him to “please repent,” while another group also calling itself Operation Rescue defended the Focus on the Family leader. Oddly enough, a similar dispute emerged out of the same anti-Dobson campaign.

Colorado Right to Life joined Flip Benham’s Operation Rescue/Operation Save America in taking out a full-page ad in the Gazette, the newspaper in Colorado Springs, where Focus on the Family is located. Focus’s Citizenlink web site responded with an article that enlists the support of Colorado Right to Life’s parent group, National Right to Life:

The National Right to Life Committee said it’s “in complete disagreement” with an ad sponsored by a state affiliate that attacks Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family Action. …

David O’Steen, executive director of National Right to Life in Washington, D.C., said the Colorado affiliate is wrong about the court ruling. “It’s the first time that the court has allowed the legislative branch to outlaw a specific abortion procedure,” O’Steen told CitizenLink. “We think it’s a great victory.”

The Colorado affiliate is also wrong about Dobson, he explained. “We appreciate Dr. Dobson, and we appreciate his support to end partial birth abortion,” O’Steen said. “We agree with him that the decision is a breakthrough.”

As the New York Times reported, National Right to Life sees the Supreme Court’s decision as a vindication of its strategy emphasizing that abortion restrictions are important because women don’t know better – an idea seemingly echoed by the court’s majority opinion.

An anti-abortion group in Mississippi believes it has discovered a back-door legal method to force the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. According to David Rogers, who heads "The Campaign for the Ultimate Human Life Amendment," if voters in Mississippi pass an initiative declaring that “[t]he word ‘person’ shall apply to all human beings … from conception,” then a chain reaction of legal ramifications will ensue:

"The simplest way to explain it is, for example, if you are a citizen of Mississippi or citizen of a state, then you're automatically a citizen of the United States," he offers. There is a similar legal linkage concerning personhood, Rogers explains.

"If we declare, or if any state declares an unborn child [to be] a person through their constitutional process, then they're automatically a person of the United States," he says. In effect, then, it "legally maneuvers the Supreme Court into protecting unborn children," Rogers adds.

While Rogers’s elaborate legal plan may appear dubious, “Pro-Life Dave” is undaunted. He derides other anti-abortion activists as a “'Limited Abortion' coalition” focused on “'chipping away' at Roe v. Wade,” and declares that the strategy of “getting Republican Presidents in office so they could nominate reasonable judges” has “seriously backfired.” Rogers declares his technique – in which, rather than replace justices on the Supreme Court, he tricks them – is “The Only Way to END Abortion.”

Today, Operation Rescue is among a handful of far-Right groups attacking James Dobson for saying a recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the so-called “Partial-Birth Abortion Ban” would “protect children”:

In a full-page ad in The Gazette newspaper in Colorado Springs, the group said Dobson wrongly characterized the court's April ruling as a victory for abortion foes. The ad said the ruling will actually encourage medical professionals to find "less shocking" methods than late-term abortions, which abortion opponents often call "partial-birth abortion."

"Dr. Dobson, you mislead Christians claiming this ruling will 'protect children.' The court granted no authority to save the life of even a single child," the ad said. It concludes by asking Dobson to "please repent." A spokesman for Dobson did not immediately return a call. …

The letter is signed by Brian Rohrbough, president of Colorado Right to Life; the Rev. Tom Euteneuer, president of Human Life International; Flip Benham, director of Operation Rescue/Operation Save America; Judie Brown, president of American Life League; and Bob Enyart, pastor of Denver Bible Church.

Also today, Operation Rescue is joining the Christian Defense Coalition for a press conference in Wichita “to demand to know how the federal government plans to enforce the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act now that it has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.” In fact, Operation Rescue released a statement that it is “proud to stand with Dr. Dobson” on the Supreme Court case.

Today’s confusion arises from an internecine squabble rivaling the spat between Chris Simcox’s Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project.

Back in 2005, when Harriet Miers was humiliated and forced to withdraw her nomination to the Supreme Court, the Republican Party’s right-wing base was largely responsible.  Having torpedoed their own president’s nominee for being insufficiently zealous regarding their social and legal agenda, the Right forced President Bush to send them someone whose ideological commitment could not be doubted, which he did by nominating Samuel Alito.  

In the face of what, initially, seemed insurmountable odds, the Right mobilized and managed to torpedo Miers’ nomination in just under a month, achieving arguably their single most significant political triumph of the entire Bush presidency to date. 

Now, heading into 2008, the Right is facing what some of them see as an even more ominous threat: the prospect that Rudy Giuliani could win the GOP presidential nomination.  And just as they did with Miers, right-wing activists - especially anti-choice Catholic ones – are gearing up to launch an all-out attack in an effort to deny Giuliani the nomination:

It appears as if right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton has made his choice in the GOP presidential primary:  Sam Brownback.

This comes as no surprise really, considering that Brownback and Barton have a long history together, with Brownback not too long ago appearing on Barton’s radio show where he called him “one of my heroes.”

So now the duo is out stumping around Iowa together:

Presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Christian leader David Barton will speak in Davenport Thursday.

Sen. Brownback and Mr. Barton are to appear from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at the Thunder Bay Restaurant, 6511 N. Brady St.

The event is invitation only, campaign spokesman Ben Leifker said Tuesday. However, he said, if people want to attend, they can call the Des Moines headquarters at (515) 221-1001.

The senator is seeking the Republican presidential nomination.

Sen. Brownback and Mr. Barton will also appear in Council Bluffs, Sioux City, Ames and Cedar Rapids on Thursday and Friday. All events are closed to the media.

Why would these events be closed to the media?  Is Brownback afraid that the media might find out that Barton’s academic credentials are limited to a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oral Roberts University and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Pensacola Christian College and that his work have been dismissed by academics as “convincing to an uninitiated audience” because it relies on “distortion[s] of the truth”?

In an article about gays adopting, the San Francisco Chronicle included this unusual passage, citing far-Right anti-gay “expert” Paul Cameron (via Americablog):

Focus on the Family's objection to same-sex parents is grounded in interpretation of biblical scripture and research by Paul Cameron, director of the Family Research Institute in Colorado. Cameron says gays and lesbians are unfit parents, are more likely to molest children of their same sex, switch partners frequently, have shorter life expectancies and cause their children embarrassment and social difficulties.

"Any child that can be adopted into a married-mother-and-father family, that's the gold standard," Cameron said. "An orphanage would be the second choice, and then a single woman."

Apparently the newspaper heard from its readers, as it has posted this clarification:

CLARIFICATION: In an article about San Francisco's campaign to get more gays and lesbians to adopt foster children - as well as an opposing evangelical campaign to get more Christian families to adopt -- the Chronicle quoted Paul Cameron, director of the Family Research Institute. The article should have noted that Cameron, who believes gays make unfit parents and self-published dozens of articles he said were based on his research, was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983 when he refused to subject his work to peer review. The article also should have reported that his Family Research Institute was named a hate group in 2006 by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In early January, the Washington Times reported on the emergence of a new immigration coalition, Families First on Immigration - headed by Manuel Miranda and consisting of such right-wing stalwarts as Paul Weyrich, Don Wildmon, Gary Bauer, and Lou Sheldon - that was promoting what it called the “holy grail” of compromise on immigration reform.  

Families First on Immigration’s proposed “holy grail” compromise consisted of granting citizenship to those already in the country illegally who were related to U.S. citizens while simultaneously amending the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship provision.  Miranda hailed the concept as “a real compromise" that was both “consistent with Christian teachings and with the rule of law.”  

Since then, Families First on Immigration hasn’t been heard from, with searches of the Lexis and Factiva databases returning a grand total of one mention of the group since late January.    

And that one mention was this recent Washington Monthly profile of Miranda, which helpfully explains why there probably haven’t been any other mentions of his stillborn coalition:

For one thing, it has no full-time staff—in fact, there don’t appear to be any staffers at all besides Miranda. It also seemingly has no mailing address, Web site, official phone number, or public e-mail address …This time, Miranda is attempting an intervention rather than an attack, and already there are signs that his proposed compromise may be too clever by half. Richard Viguerie, for instance, objected to the limited legalization Miranda proposed in his January letter, stating that any Republican seeking the presidential nomination must hold a firm line on immigration. “I know what Manny’s trying to do; that’s why I signed on to begin with. But there’s a line here,” Viguerie says. “Any Republican candidate who tries to compromise on [amnesty] will lose in 2008, and I and a lot of others will work very hard to make that happen.” And last month, when Miranda told the news organization Inter Press Service that if the Minutemen, the anti-immigration volunteer border patrol, “agreed to our fundamental principles, they could join on,” he was swiftly criticized by Hispanic evangelical leaders, who represent the fastest-growing segment of the evangelical population. “It’s great that white evangelicals are finally speaking out on this issue,” says Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr. of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “But so far, I’m not sure I’m comfortable with what we’re hearing.” Miranda, who has never found a political dustup he couldn’t win, may finally have met his match.

“America is now risking national suicide. … If a path to citizenship becomes law, nothing will stop the next invasion,” warns Patrick Buchanan on the immigration bill being consider in the Senate. Puzzling over the country’s changing demographics, he continues,

What is happening to us? An immigrant invasion of the United States from the Third World, as America's white majority is no longer even reproducing itself. Since Roe v. Wade, America has aborted 45 million of her children. And Asia, Africa and Latin America have sent 45 million of their children to inherit the estate the aborted American children never saw. God is not mocked.

And white America is in flight.

You may remember Virginia Republican Rep. Virgil Goode from December, when he made headlines denouncing newly-elected Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim who was planning to pose for a photo after his swearing-in holding a copy of the Koran. Invoking the specter of hordes of Muslim congressmen streaming across the borders, Goode wrote to his constituents, “[I]f American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”

Now Goode is apparently warning that the immigration bill being considered in the Senate may lead to the United States being subsumed into what some on the far-Right are calling a “North American Union,” complete with a unified currency:

Representative Virgil Goode (R-Virginia) hopes the bill's backers will be unable to obtain cloture in the Senate and the bill fails. He says the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose amnesty for illegal aliens. …

And with regard to the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the Virginia congressman believes such a merger with Mexico and Canada would only serve to undermine the sovereignty of the United States.

"It will lead us on a path to likely have a North American currency, will further break down the borders between our countries, and it really undermines the concept of the United States of America in favor of something called North America," Goode predicts. "And it will harm the lifestyles and the status and standing of most American citizens," he says.

The theory that mysterious forces such as the Council on Foreign Relations, an obscure professor, and the Bush Administration are plotting to merge the U.S. with Mexico and Canada in a European Union-style entity has been pushed heavily on the Internet by “Swift Vet” co-author Jerome Corsi and the John Birch Society. Phyllis Schlafly recently wrote a letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch complaining that the media are giving the plot little credence.

John McCain, a key figure in efforts to pass comprehensive immigration reform, responded to criticism from fellow presidential candidate Mitt Romney by telling bloggers on a conference call,

Maybe I should wait a couple of weeks and see if [Romney’s position] changes because it’s changed in less than a year from his position before. And maybe his solution will be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn.

Politico has the audio. The “varmint” line refers to Romney’s efforts to square his claims of hunting experience with lack of hunting license, while “those Guatemalans” are presumably those employed by Romney’s landscaper.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has withdrawn from an effort to disentangle Baptists from partisan politics – citing politics. Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas and a Southern Baptist pastor, was invited and expected to attend a meeting of the New Baptist Cov