December, 2007

Elaine Donnelly seemingly has no actual experience serving in the military, but that hasn’t stopped her from establishing a career as president of the Center for Military Readiness through which she crusades against women and gays in the military.  

The Detroit News profiled Donnelly back in November 2006 and explained that she initially got her start in politics working alongside Phyllis Schlafly in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment:

Donnelly has been expressing such opinions for more than two decades in an activist career that began alongside conservative anti-feminist icon Phyllis Schlafly, fighting against the Equal Rights Amendment.

She was briefly involved in Michigan Republican politics during the 1980s, serving as first female chair of the state GOP's issue committee, and played an active role opposing the elder President Bush.

During years of debate on the ERA, Donnelly said, she became frightened by the possibility her two daughters could be forced to register for selective service, just as boys are when they turn 18. In 1984, the Reagan administration appointed her to a Pentagon committee on women in the armed forces, and eight years later, the first President Bush placed her on a presidential commission examining policies on assigning women.

Those experiences cemented, she said, the conviction that liberals are intent on imposing their social agenda on the military, even if the evidence says those policies hurt the military's ability to fight.

Since then, Donnelly has made it her mission to ensure that women do not serve in combat and that gays do not serve at all while making outrageous statements, such as her suggestion that retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili recent call for the repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy was somehow tied to a stoke he had suffered.

So when Donnelly sent out a survey to all presidential candidates demanding to know whether they will “promote inclusion and acceptance of homosexuals in the military” and “faithfully enforce the 1993 statute … which states that homosexuals are not eligible to serve in the military,” the candidates had enough sense to ignore her – except for one:

[Mike] Huckabee, was the only candidate who provided complete answers to the [Center for Military Readiness’] questions, Mrs. Donnelly said. Mr. Huckabee stated that he supports compliance with regulations and laws banning women in or near direct ground combat and he also opposes Selective Service registration of young women.

While Fred Thompson was the only other candidate to respond, he did so only with a statement saying he “supports current law regarding gays in the military and current Defense Department policies”  whereas the Huckabee campaign actually took the time to respond in full to her questions, thus reinforcing the growing sense that his willingness to engage and associate himself with fringe right-wing activists seems to know no bounds. 

The English First Political Victory Fund has endorsed Mitt Romney, calling him "a veritable Rock of Gibraltar on official English."

The Politico reports that Mike Huckabee "is continuing to accept paid speaking engagements in the thick of his insurgent presidential campaign, although churches get a break from his usual fee of up to $25,000."

Peter LaBarbera blasts Mitt Romney for "supporting pro-homosexual 'sexual orientation' state laws," saying "Mitt Romney's Christmas present to the homosexual lobby disqualifies him as a pro-family leader. Laws that treat homosexuality as a civil right are being used to promote homosexual 'marriage,' same-sex adoption and pro-homosexuality indoctrination of schoolchildren. These same laws pose a direct threat to the freedom of faith-minded citizens and organizations to act on their religious belief that homosexual behavior is wrong."

American Right To Life Action is running TV ads in Iowa that say that Mitt Romney is "willing to sacrifice children, [and] lying for your vote."

Randall Terry continues to protest and get arrested outside of Rudy Giuliani's NH office and demands to know "Why Are [the] Clergy Silent?"

While it is debatable that God is really responsible for Mike Huckabee’s recent rise in the polls, as he claims, it is clear that something is at work which has propelled the one-time “also ran” into a legitimate contender for the Republican presidential nomination – and that something appears to be a network of disparate but committed right-wing grassroots activists and organizations.  As the Dallas Morning News recently explained:

Mike Huckabee's political rise has been fueled by a vast network of local Christian leaders largely unknown to the general public but powerfully influential in evangelical circles.

That strategy – methodically rolling up the support of these grass-roots networks – has paid big dividends, helping catapult Mr. Huckabee ahead in Iowa and boosting his prospects in the Republican field.

"All these leaders that most of the national media don't recognize, they're all coming to Huckabee," said supporter Kelly Shackelford of Plano-based Liberty Legal Institute.

…

"You've got the home-school network. You've got the right-to-life network. You've got networks of megachurches," said John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

"The Huckabee campaign apparently understands something about the evangelical community that people outside don't – that it's highly decentralized," he said.

So far, Huckabee has been rolling up an ever-growing list of B-list right-wing figures while courting even fringier figures such as Steve Hotze and John Hagee, whom Huckabee praised as "one of the great Christian leaders of our nation."  Meanwhile, his supporters were all geared up to travel around Iowa and put on “non-partisan” rallies benefiting him until they ran into problems with the weather and their tour bus.   

But Huckabee’s biggest and most active boosters, at least in Iowa, seem to be home-schoolers who are, as the Des Moines Register described them, “Republicans … united by core principles, especially their rejection of public schools in favor of their own religious-based teaching”:

"They stand for the same things, and they trust each other," said Christine Hurley, a Pleasant Hill Republican active in the state's home-school network.

"I think that's what's happening with the Huckabee thing," said Hurley, who supports Huckabee. "When you understand he's a Baptist minister, you don't have to ask what he stands for."

…

Michael Farris' endorsement of Huckabee in May, meaningless to much of the voting public, sent a strong signal to Crawford and other Christian home-school families in Iowa. Farris is founder and chairman of the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association and the national figure for Christian home-school families.

"That was sort of the icing on the cake," Crawford said of Farris' endorsement. "It wasn't the be-all and end-all. But that was the thing that got me to take Governor Huckabee seriously."

The Washington Post reported on the same phenomenon, as has the Los Angeles Times, and even CBN’s David Brody. And while Mike Farris might not be a household name, he is a longtime right-wing activist (having served as general counsel for Concerned Women for America and as executive director and general counsel of the Washington state chapter of the Moral Majority) and obviously extremely influential within the home-school movement.  

In the end, what really excites these home-schoolers about Huckabee is that he is the most “biblically qualified” candidate out there:

"[Home-school families] see it as a civic duty and it's important to try to elect leaders who hold the same values families do. They get behind a candidate and support them," said [Justin] LaVan, who supports Huckabee as a "biblically qualified" figure "who doesn't want to put up barriers or increase control over home-schooling."

It’s hard work building a right-wing coalition. Mike Huckabee has been hammering away at the religious-right base, making explicit appeals based on his faith and reminding them that he is one of them. He’s signed Grover Norquist’s tax pledge and embraced the “FairTax” to shore up support from the economic right. He’s even gotten an endorsement from the co-founder of the anti-immigrant vigilante group the Minutemen. But all that may not be enough when you have Pat Robertson come around telling your people to vote for Giuliani because terrorism is supposed to be the most important issue.

It seems there’s one more faction Huckabee needs to pander to: the foreign-policy hardliners. That would explain Huckabee’s plans for this weekend: The former pastor will spend the Sunday before Christmas speaking at two services at the Cornerstone megachurch in San Antonio, home of Armageddon advocate John Hagee, who believes “that the United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West.”

For a closer look at Hagee, check out Max Blumenthal’s report from the Christians United for Israel conference this past summer. Or, if you’re wondering what Huckabee might be expected to discuss at Cornerstone, watch this typical sermon, which aired Wednesday on TBN:

Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.

Right now, the State Department is in Israel putting pressure on Israel to give concessions to the terrorist armies that are camped on her borders--to give up more land for peace. Joel 3:2 says, “Any nation that tries to get Israel to divide my land, I will bring it into judgment.”

I want those of you in the State Department and in government in Washington to hear this: If America does not stop pressuring Israel to give up land, I believe that God will bring this nation into judgment, because I believe what this book says. And if God brings this nation into judgment, He will very likely release the terrorists that you've already let get here through the ridiculous immigration policy you refuse to stop, and this nation is going to go through a bloodbath that you have permitted because of what you have done. You have disobeyed the law of God, and now, we as a nation are going to pay a price for that.

When we posted the “700 Club” report on a group of missionaries who believe God is using Interstate 35 to “invade” gay bars and porn shops along the highway, many people remarked on the amateur video featured in the segment that purported to show a young man being “freed” from “the desires to be with men” through the laying of hands outside a nightclub:

CBN REPORTER: Stabile felt God moving in him then, saving him and taking away his homosexuality.

JAMES STABILE: He just came in and complete transformed and radically saved me … I didn’t feel the desires to be with men like I had felt before.

JOE ODEN: We laid hands on him. He was hit by the power of God and filled with the Holy Ghost, got plugged into our church, and is just living for God.

What really happened to James Stabile? John Wright of the Dallas Voice tracked him down. When Stabile was interviewed by the “700 Club,” he had already been kicked out of Heartland World Ministries’ “ex-gay treatment facility” for lying compulsively.

But, as Wright reports, that did not prevent Heartland from “asking Stabile to do an interview for a segment on televangelist Pat Robertson’s ‘The 700 Club’ about the so-called purity sieges organized by the church outside gay bars.” Additionally, Stabile, who reportedly has bipolar disorder, “hadn’t taken his medication in 2 and-a-half weeks and had been drinking when he encountered the group from Heartland on the strip.”

Wright also spoke with Stabile’s parents, who helped explain how their son became a Religious Right media sensation for a day:

Joseph Stabile said the Heartland folks also may have advised James to throw away his medication, telling him that God would cure his bipolar disorder, too.

Joseph’s parents said James has a tendency to be less than truthful, especially when he’s off his medication, and that he loves attention. They said they don’t believe he’s ever questioned his sexuality, but that the folks from Heartland manipulated and exploited him for publicity.

They also provided a glimpse of life inside the “ex-gay” facility:

James just told them it was “horrible” and that there are some things he will never be able to share.

James’ mother, Suzanne, said he told her the people at Pure Life constantly threatened that he was going to hell.

Men in the program had to be fully clothed from the neck down at all times, including when they went to sleep, James told his parents. And they were prohibited from any physical contact, including shaking hands.

Speaking with Wright, Stabile “apologized to the LGBT community” and said he hopes “his story will discourage others from entertaining ideas that they can change their sexual orientations.”

On Monday we noted that former Center for Reclaiming America for Christ Director Gary Cass is banking on the “persecuted majority” card with his new group, the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission. In case you needed some concrete illustration of what that means, WorldNetDaily reports on Cass’s list of “the seven worst incidents of Christian-bashing that happened in 2007.” It might sound strange coming from one of the few on the Religious Right willing to attack Mitt Romney’s faith (its “secret rituals” and shady financiers), but that’s by no means the most absurd part.

According to Cass, “Anti-Christian sentiments” are becoming “deadly”: His top item is the horrific shooting by a disturbed Colorado 24-year-old that left four people dead at a megachurch and a youth missionary training center a week and a half ago. While the senseless rampage, apparently motivated by the man’s rejection from the missionary program, was certainly tragic, Cass sees it as a consequence of an “amoral entertainment industry” and gay rights politics, calling on “anti-Christian politicians, Hollywood and New York media elites to stop the Christian bashing and take responsibility for the culture of hate towards Christians they have helped to create.”

Indeed, his list makes pretty clear where he’s trying to channel outrage over the shooting:

1. Colorado Church Murders …

2. Federal Hate Crimes Bill …

3. Violence [sic] on San Francisco Church … [Note: See here]

4. Attack [sic] on Jerry Falwell: … Hitchens made the most reprehensible and offensive remarks one can imagine against a Christian minister …

5. CNN's "God's Warriors" and "Friends of God" … [Note: See here]

6. John Edwards' Campaign Bloggers …

7. Golden Compass, the movie

As Fred Thompson pushes hard to making a surprise showing in Iowa, touting Cass’s recent endorsement, will the candidate be linking hate crimes protections for gays to killing sprees? Will he demand an apology for the Colorado shooting from “New York media elites”? Stay tuned.

The anti-immigrant sentiment that swept across the country in 2006—leaving in its wake hard-line activist groups and anti-immigrant ordinances in a handful of localities—seemed to hit the wealthy Northern Virginia exurbs a year late. But efforts by Virginia’s Republican Party to ride the anti-immigrant wave to last month’s off-year elections did not pan out, as the party lost control of the state Senate. Nevertheless, the suburban vigilantes persist, and they’re now forming a statewide lobbying group and political action committee:

Greg Letiecq, president of the group Help Save Manassas and a co-founder of Save the Old Dominion, said … "What is missing is the engagement of regular citizens in legislative process[.] The only people who showed up last year [to lobby the General Assembly] was the illegal alien lobby." …

Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, has said the grass-roots efforts of Help Save Manassas were instrumental in drumming up support for a resolution adopted by county officials on July 10 that restricts public services for illegal aliens. Mr. Letiecq said organizers hope to replicate their success on a statewide level.

"Hopefully, we can do that in Richmond and make sure they are listening to citizens as much as special interests," he said.

Unfortunately for Stewart, the Prince William County supervisor, he’s also finding out that his immigrant-fighting plan is going to cost a fortune and require a property-tax hike. (Via Ryan Avent.)

Coinciding with his rise in the polls, Mick Huckabee seems to have developed a two-pronged message that highlights his faith at every opportunity while complaining about the unfair coverage his faith is receiving. 

The first part of this message can be seen on his own campaign website:

My faith is my life - it defines me. My faith doesn't influence my decisions, it drives them. For example, when it comes to the environment, I believe in being a good steward of the earth. I don't separate my faith from my personal and professional lives.

This theme has been carried over in his ads where he touts himself as a "Christian Leader" and states that "what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ"?  

The flip-side of this faith-based messaging is Huckabee’s tendency to complain, as he started doing a few weeks ago, that he is “being questioned about the details of my faith like no one else” and insisting that the appeal of his campaign is about much more than simply his faith.

Huckabee appears to want to have it both ways: making explicit appeals for electoral support based on his faith and then complaining that he is being unfairly targeted for it.  But as it stands now, it doesn’t seem as if he is willing to forgo the former in order to stop the latter:  

Associated Press   

Huckabee Counts on Pastors for Iowa Help

Republican Mike Huckabee, the former Baptist preacher, is depending on more than a leap of faith to win the Iowa caucuses.

Leading in polls, Huckabee is determined to make up for his skimpy organization in the state by enlisting national evangelical Christian supporters to rev up Iowa pastors and coax voters to the Jan. 3 caucuses.

Word of mouth in churches and among Christian groups can be a powerful force in Iowa politics. Christian believers make up the core of Huckabee's support in the state, said Rick Scarborough, a well-known Texas preacher who has endorsed the former Arkansas governor, though he adds that "it's not his only constituency."

Politico

Huck uses Christmas debate to mobilize base

Mike Huckabee brought Christmas cheer to Iowa on Wednesday, as the newly appointed front-runner gleefully defended his controversial Christmas ad released this week.

“If I had used the name in Jesus Christ in vain and blurted it out as profanity no one would be talking about it,” said the former Arkansas governor. “Because I invoked his name on his own birthday ... somehow everyone sees in it something that isn’t even there. Have we so lost our national soul?”

The hotel, packed with roughly 200 Huckabee supporters, erupted in applause, hollers and Amens.

Touting Christmas is smart strategy for the former preacher, whose evangelical base drinks up the holiday rhetoric as they would a big glass of eggnog. In the evangelical world, the ad strikes back at the so-called “war on Christmas.”

Huckabee’s two-pronged strategy is pretty well summed up in this quote from ABC News:

Does it bother Huckabee that unwillingness to vote for a Mormon is one of the factors helping him?

"You know, it's not something that I agree with," Huckabee says. "But I agree with the final outcome. I just have to believe that there's still a reason that a lot of people are connecting with me and I don't think it's religion."

He may not agree with voters supporting him only because of their own anti-Mormon view, but he’ll take it and just believe it is something else.  

And while he may wish to believe that there is more to his campaign than his appeal to faith, he can’t deny, as he told CBN’s David Brody, that voters driven by “spiritual motivation … certainly represent a broad part of my base.” 

After Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist endorsed Mike Huckabee last week, other anti-immigrant border vigilantes rushed to repudiate their erstwhile comrade. Chris Simcox, who split with Gilchrist in 2005, dismissed the latter’s influence and criticized Huckabee’s “duplicitous” immigration program. The leader of another Minutemen splinter group called the endorsement “disturbing.”

A variety of anti-immigrant groups also came out of the woodwork to pile on Gilchrist in a letter distributed by Americans for Legal Immigration: “We denounce Jim Gilchrist's solo endorsement of a pro-amnesty and Open Borders candidate for President. Mr. Gilchrist does NOT speak for us!” Signatories included representatives of a number of local Minutemen franchises, a FAIR front group, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, Save Our State, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, and many more.

This week, Gilchrist is facing heavy pressure from WorldNetDaily reporter Jerome Corsi, the premier advocate of the “North American Union” conspiracy theory. Corsi’s approach, rather than simply denouncing Gilchrist, was to confront him with the claim that Huckabee’s immigration program contained some element making it unacceptable to them. In response, Gilchrist “backtracked” on his endorsement, according to a Corsi article titled “Minuteman reconsiders Huckabee endorsement.”

The only problem with Corsi’s friendlier approach—helping Gilchrist along with his retraction of the endorsement—is that Gilchrist denies it:

But Gilchrist says Corsi's article is not accurate. "I am holding firm. I am endorsing Governor Mike Huckabee for president. I'm not wavering or waffling," he states.

And as for the WorldNetDaily report? "I have to say that Mr. Corsi really made me feel like he was interrogating me like a police investigator or a prosecuting attorney, rather than interviewing me," Gilchrist asserts. "He kept insisting that I was waffling -- and I did not say that; he kept saying that. And apparently he had an agenda."

But Corsi says he sticks by his story. "If Jim can't keep his story straight from one day to the other, ... I'll be happy to play back [for him] the recordings I made of him each day and Jim can listen to himself saying that he was going to reconsider the endorsement of Huckabee," he says.

What’s strangest about this exchange between Corsi and Gilchrist—with misunderstandings, hurt feelings, agendas—is that the two know each other very well. They wrote a book together on the Minutemen last year. Now, sadly, it seems they are no longer on speaking terms: Corsi’s latest article, which accuses Gilchrist of going soft, ends with the poignant line, “Gilchrist declined to comment.”

With Catholic Online: "What I accomplished as Governor proves that there is a lot more that a pro-life President can do than wait for a Supreme Court vacancy, and I will do everything I can to promote a pro-life agenda and pass pro-life legislation. I'll veto any pro-abortion legislation Congress passes. I will staff all relevant positions with pro-life appointees. I will use the Bully Pulpit to change hearts and minds, to move this country from a culture of death to a culture of life."

The AP reports that Mike Huckabee "is determined to make up for his skimpy organization in the state by enlisting national evangelical Christian supporters to rev up Iowa pastors and coax voters to the Jan. 3 caucuses."

It is not secret that the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez has been an avid backer of Mitt Romney for some time now and undoubtedly played no small role in getting her magazine to officially endorse him just last week.



From her position with NRO, she has been going all out to defend Romney against his critics and yesterday blasted Mike Huckabee for, of all things, using religion to polarize the GOP primary campaign:

In his role as an aspiring “Christian leader,” as one of his campaign commercials put it, he is doing nothing to raise the level of the public conversation about those running for president and the issues facing our nation. He has an utter lack of knowledge on foreign-policy issues — a reality he tries to laugh off — and on the issue he knows most, religion, to say he is completely unhelpful would be profoundly understating the case.



As the media focuses on the fact that fellow candidate Mitt Romney is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Huckabee has been presented a real opportunity to bring people together, to take the media obsession off of how religious evangelicals cannot tolerate a Mormon president. But instead of rising to the occasion, Huckabee makes things worse. In his most unfortunate moment, he played innocent with a New York Times reporter and asked, “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?” Now he is running a commercial using Christ and Christmas to change the subject away from policy and record issues.



...



The Republican party owes the American people the best candidate it can offer. The anti-Mormon vote is not going to win anything for Republicans. A uniting, rallying message from a conservative candidate, with a record as a successful executive who knows and believes in the promise of America, can.

It is absolutely stunning that Lopez would level this criticism against Huckabee, considering that what he is doing to Romney is exactly what the Right has been doing to their opponents since their inception two decades ago (i.e., using religion to mobilize their own activists and polarize the electorate.)



Did Lopez voice such outrage when right-wing leaders like Tony Perkins and Gary Bauer claimed that Democratic presidential candidates are “frauds” for talking about their own faith and accused them of doing so only to conceal “their long history of hostility toward Christians”? Did she come to Barack Obama’s defense when the National Clergy Council wrote an entire report attempting to discredit his faith?  What was her response when Rep. Pete Stark was attacked by Concerned Women for America and the Traditional Values Coalition for admitting that he “does not believe in a Supreme Being”?  Did she complain that the organizers of the Justice Sunday events or the "War on Christians" conference were squandering an "opportunity to bring people together"? Did she voice such concerns when Romney himself joined a bevy of right-wing activists at "Liberty Sunday" to warn that the radical homosexual agenda was out to destroy religious freedom?  Is she upset that Romney’s own National Faith and Values Steering Committee is chock full of people, like Lou Sheldon, who've made careers out of using religion as a divisive political club with which to pound opponents?

Obviously not. 

Apparently, it is okay for Republicans and their Religious Right allies to engage in base religious pandering and polarization, so long as it is directed against Democrats and progressive advocates, but it is unacceptable for any candidate to stoop to "playing religious hardball" against another Republican.

Does Lopez not realize that this is standard operating procedure for the Religious Right? And does she not realize that Mike Huckabee's record and rhetoric make him the ultimate Religious Right candidate? Has there ever been another serious presidential contender that has run ads touting himself as a "Christian Leader" or stating that "what really matters is the celebration of the birth of Christ"? Does she not see that Huckabee's entire campaign to this point has hinged on his ability to garner the support of polarizing right-wing activists?



As such, did she really expect Huckabee to refrain from insinuating that his opponent's faith is somehow lacking and illegitimate? It’s what the Right does best.

To expect a candidate relying on the likes of supporters such as Janet Folger, Rick Scarborough, Don Wildmon, and Beverly LaHaye to "rise to the occasion" and shun the practice of "playing religious hardball" is downright naive, especially when there are electoral gains to be made by doing exactly that.