Posts on Family Research Council

for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.One of the prevailing themes of the Republican Party at the moment is rampant finger-pointing in which just about every faction of the party is blaming every other faction of the party for the fact that they keep losing elections. 

First you had moderates blaming the Religious Right while the Right was blaming the Republican leadership for being insufficiently committed to the right-wing agenda and others were blaming the anti-immigration "nativists."

Now comes the Family Research Council complaining that Rep. Pete Sessions, incoming Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, dared to meet with the Log Cabin Republicans and warning that any moves toward treating them like a legitimate element of the party will only undermine the GOP's efforts to reach out to Black and Hispanic voters and will ultimately doom the Republicans to being in the minority for the foreseeable future:

According to a press release from the pro-gay "marriage" group, Log Cabin Republicans, one of the first stops for the newly elected Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Congressman Pete Sessions (R-Texas), was the fundraising dinner for the homosexual organization. The release states that Representative Sessions said that the GOP cannot win elections and reach out to voters if it continues to oppose the issues that Log Cabin stands for, presumably including same-sex "marriage." My team sought clarification from Sessions' office and was told he did speak to the Log Cabin group, but that a copy of his remarks was not available. If the Log Cabin portrayal is true, it is disturbing on a number of accounts. One, Sessions' new position as the head of the NRCC is to train and recruit new candidates for the Republican Party. If this is his idea of "campaign advice" then the Republicans better prepare for a longer term in the minority then they faced prior to 1994. Secondly, if the GOP is serious about reaching out to new voters, especially African-Americans and Hispanics, then it should look closely at the exit polls on issues important to families. Both minority groups strongly support traditional family values that embrace life and protect marriage, two things the Republican Party once stood for also. Under these circumstances, pro-family voters should reserve judgment about giving their financial support to either political party.

FRC might soon actually have a lot more say in these sorts of matters now that Ken Blackwell, one of its own Senior Fellows, is contemplating his own run for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.

The latest "Washington Update" email from the Family Research Council serves as a near-perfect example of how the group operates.  The first section complains about reports that former Senator Tom Daschle has been tapped to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Obama Administration:

As Majority Leader, Daschle was a notorious opponent of every pro-life measure. He blocked the partial-birth abortion ban, voted for taxpayer-funded military abortions, and supported a measure that would have forced Americans to pay for the distribution of the morning-after pill to young school girls. Apart from his extreme political ideology, the selection of Daschle is even more troubling because the South Dakotan lacks any experience in the public health arena. To most Americans, who thought this election was about "change," these appointments must seem incredibly ironic.

The very next section then praises President Bush and current HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt for implementing last-minute changes that would "deal a crippling blow ... to the pro-abortion movement":

He may technically be a "lame duck," but President Bush is going out with guns blazing. With just two months left in office, the administration dealt a crippling blow to online gambling and is prepared to do the same to the pro-abortion movement on conscience exemptions. Despite an uproar from the usual liberal suspects, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is putting the finishing touches on a rule that would create a hedge of protection around health care providers who object to abortion or other procedures on moral grounds. The regulations, which HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt has promoted for months, would bar anyone who receives federal funds from discriminating against pro-life doctors, nurses, or other medical workers because of their beliefs. Pharmacists would also be exempt from dispensing drugs that could end an innocent life -- like the abortifacient RU-486. If approved before the President leaves office, the rules would be a giant leap forward for the entire medical community, some of whom have been pressured to compromise their convictions on the job. Of course, there is some danger that President-elect Obama would undo HHS's hard work, but it would be a long and arduous task. Like much of the radical abortion camp, he says these rules would create a hurdle in "women's health care." However, his argument is severely flawed, considering that abortion is not -- nor will it ever be -- true health care. While Obama says he wants to "reduce abortions," his promise to sign the Freedom of Choice Act means he's not opposed to forcing people to perform them. Thanks to Secretary Leavitt, more Americans understand that the people who oppose these rules, including President-elect Obama, are the ones imposing their beliefs-not the men and women of faith. As Leavitt said on his blog, "Our nation was built on a foundation of free speech. The first principle of free speech is protected conscience. This proposed rule is a fundamental protection for medical providers to follow theirs." Please let the administration know how much you appreciate their perseverance on conscience protections. Log on to secretarysblog.hhs.gov/my_weblog and leave Secretary Leavitt a comment expressing your gratitude.

To FRC, Daschle is completely unfit for the office not only because he doesn't share their anti-choice views, but also because he "lacks any experience in the public health arena."  But they don't seem to have similar concerns about Leavitt:

Prior to his current service, Leavitt headed the Environmental Protection Agency and was elected three times as the Governor of Utah. During his eleven years as Governor, Utah was recognized six times as one of America’s best managed states. He was chosen by his peers as Chairman of the National Governors Association, Western Governors Association, and Republican Governors Association.

Prior to his public service, Secretary Leavitt was president and chief executive officer of a regional insurance firm.

Hmmm ... I don't see any "experience in the public health arena" among Leavitt's previous jobs as head of the EPA, Governor, or insurance company CEO.  So maybe it is not really the "experience" thing that is bothering FRC, but primarily the abortion thing. 

The Family Research Council is getting fed up with suggestions within the Republican Party that its best hope for winning future elections is to jettison the Religious Right base of the party and are warning that efforts to actually do so will all but spell doom for the GOP :

To those of us in the pro-family movement, the Establishment's diatribe is a familiar one. When the GOP succeeds because of social conservatives, our importance is ignored. When the party fails for overlooking us, values voters are somehow to blame. With the exception of Gov. Sarah Palin and some hollow overtures by the Democratic Party, the 20 percent of voters who cited "moral values" as their first or second priority in this election had no real horse in this race. Maybe that explains why believers were less active in this election cycle. More than four million Americans who go to church more than once a week and voted in 2004 stayed home on November 4. Those voters would have made up half the difference between McCain and Obama. As the members of the Republican party jockey for position in this brave new Congress and sort out their internal leadership, a commitment to life and marriage is non-negotiable. Without it, the prospects of a Republican revival are bleak.

It is interesting that FRC focuses on the decline among voters who attend church more than once a week as evidence that it was the demoralization among "values voters" that doomed McCain because, while exit polls from 2004 and 2008 do show such a decline, they also show that the number of voters who attend church "weekly" actually increased by nearly half a million (though as an overall percentage of the voting population such voter were down slightly from 2004, there was an increase in actual numbers due to greater turnout.)  And among those voters, Barack Obama did substantially better than did John Kerry. 

So one way to interpret that is to say that, despite all their talk, the Religious Right and the GOP cannot claim to be the sole political representatives of religiously active voters.  Of course, that would only end up undermining the very case that FRC is trying to make which is why they chose to highlight this specific subgroup as "proof" that the GOP needs to wed itself to the so-called "values voters" if it wants to win elections.

It looks like the Religious Right will have a new enemy to fight in their annual “war on Christmas” now that the American Humanist Association has announced its new ad campaign:

"Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake," proclaims a new holiday ad from the American Humanist Association. Already appearing today in the New York Times and Washington Post, the message will soon be blazoned on the sides, taillights, and interiors of over 200 Washington DC Metro buses.

It's the first ad campaign of its kind in the United States, and the American Humanist Association predicts it will raise public awareness of humanism as well as controversy over humanist ideas.

Needless to say, right-wing leaders and activists have already swung into action to warn unsuspecting Americans of the dangers of this new advertising campaign:

Peter Sprigg, vice president of policy at the conservative Family Research Council (FRC), told CNSNews.com that sustainable morality is grounded in a belief in a higher being.

“I don’t think it’s possible to sustain long-term morality without religion,” Sprigg said. “If there is no higher being obliging humans to act morally and ethically, why should we do it?”

Sprigg emphasized he thinks that atheists can act morally, but he also said that society would shift towards greed and selfishness without a belief in a higher power.

And you just knew that Bill Donohue was going to have something to say about it:

Codes of morality, of course, have always been grounded in religion. For those of us in Western civilization, its tenets emanate from the Judeo-Christian ethos. By casting this heritage aside, and replacing it with nothing more than the conscience of lone individuals, we lay the groundwork for moral anarchy. And that is because there is nothing that cannot be justified if the only moral benchmark is what men and women posit to be right and wrong. Indeed, every monster in history has followed his conscience.

The danger is so great in fact that even the moribund Christian Coalition was obligated to speak out against this effort to “ban Christmas and God from the public square,” saying the AHA “has an elitist contempt for Americans believing in God” and urging their “millions of supporters to call the city of Washington, DC and Congress to stop this un-Godly campaign." Even Mat Staver weighed in to call the campaign "insulting" while American Family Association president Tim Wildmon called it "stupid."

We had mentioned a group called In God We Trust once before when they inexplicably demanded that Barack Obama publicly denounce a series of “Imagine No Religion” billboards that the Freedom From Religion Foundation had placed around the country … and so it is no surprise that they would weigh in on this latest affront and do so by attempting to link the AHA to the Right’s most-hated nemesis – the United Nations:

"These ads are a deliberate attack on American traditions, beliefs and customs by a United Nation's affiliated group that espouses a radical anti-American agenda and is funded by an zealot who believes that the U.S. is a backwards nation full of imbeciles," says In God We Trust Chairman Council Nedd.

…

"This ad campaign is yet another attempt by America-hating snobs to mock and attack our nation's traditions and culture" says Nedd. "The AHA is not some harmless little atheist group. These people hate America and they are working with our nation's enemies to attack our heritage."

It has been less than twelve hour since the historic election that saw Barack Obama become President-elect of the United States and the Democratic Party widen its margins in the House and Senate, and while we are still months away from them actually taking office, the Religious Right is already warning that their first order to business will be to presecute Christians:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, believes Senator Obama was elected, in large part, because the church in America has failed to address sin in its own ranks and also in society.

Perkins says Christians should pray for and return to a biblical model of holiness and righteousness. And believers in America, he adds, should prepare for persecution.

Tony Perkins"We are going to see, I think, unprecedented attacks against our faith through measures like the hate crimes [legislation] to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act," he says. "We're going to see attacks on innocent human life through the Freedom of Choice Act, trying to erase all the gains that have been made in the pro-life movement. And I think even our freedoms are going to come under attack."

And before that happens, other right-wing leaders are rallying the troops to launch their own right-wing attacks with Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, declaring that Obama has already "failed miserably":

"Americans have made a grave mistake in electing Barack Obama to the presidency," Fr. Pavone wrote. "He said during the campaign that he does not know when a human being starts to have human rights. How can one govern from that starting point of ignorance? Governing is about protecting human rights; to do it successfully, you have to know where they come from, and when they begin. The President-elect has already failed that test miserably."

Fr. Pavone sounds a note of defiant confidence, declaring that the pro-life movement is winning in the culture and that "a new chapter of the pro-life movement has just begun. ...We will keep marching toward that pro-life America we seek, and won't stop until we get there."

For its part, the Christian Defense Coalition has announced its own "The Birmingham Letter Project" which they plan to use to "challenge the radical pro-abortion policies of President-elect Barack Obama":

"We will be coming to Washington, D.C., as President-elect Obama is sworn in, to boldly stand as public and prophetic witness for life. As the pro-life community, we will not go silently into the night and allow the violence to continue. Instead, we are issuing this national call for the pro-life community to come to the streets of our nation's capital and be a prayerful voice for those who have no voice.

As for the "conservative movement" that was so badly damaged by President George Bush, Phyllis Schlafly declares that they are already in the process of rebuilding:

"I think we’re going to be looking for new leaders who express conservatism across the board – whether its sovereignty, limited spending, limited government, cuts in spending, cuts in taxes, the social issues – to simply reject these groups who are trying to muscle into the driver’s seat of the Republican Party, such as the multinationals with their ‘free-trade globalism’ agenda ... We have about 30 very good members of Congress who are destined to become good leaders.”

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal have a long history dating back to Perkins' days in the state legislature that continues to this day, with Perkins working closely with the Governor during the Hurricane Gustav recovery efforts earlier this year:

Governor Jindal is a friend of mine with whom I worked closely during my time in the legislature when he was the Secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals. Having the opportunity to work alongside him and his staff in the last several days from sun-up to past sundown, I am greatly encouraged and impressed with his leadership and the dedication of his staff to getting essential relief to the citizens of the state and restoring critical infrastructure.

On Friday, Jindal announced his appointments to the Louisiana Commission on Marriage and Family, and guess who was among those he chose?

Tony Perkins, of Baton Rouge, is the president of Family Research Council, a family advocacy organization.. Perkins will serve as an individual with expertise in community programs and assistance, as required by statute.

As Bayou Buzz put it, "Jindal ran and was elected as a social conservative and a number of his appointments appear to reflect that political agenda" and that includes not only Perkins but also Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defense Fund.

If Jindal is planning his own presidential run in 2012 should McCain-Palin lose, it is probably safe to assume that he'll have Perkins and the extremely influential Family Research Council in his corner from the get-go.   

One of the things I find most entertaining about the Religious Right is their vehement opposition to any effort to broaden the so-called “evangelical agenda” to include anything beyond the Right’s core anti-gay, anti-abortion agenda and their constant attempts to justify their rigidly narrow focus.  

Starting back in 2006 after the GOP got thumped in the mid-term elections and the media stopped talking about “values voters” and began to write about the emergence of a “new evangelical” movement, right-wing leaders were telling anyone who would listen that religious efforts to help the poor or protect the environment were all well and good but were just way less important than opposing gays and abortion:

"It's not a question of the poor not being important or that meeting their needs is not important," said Paul Hetrick, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, Dobson's influential, Colorado-based Christian organization. "But whether or not a baby is killed in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, that is less important than help for the poor? We would respectfully disagree with that."

When Rev. Joel Hunter was tapped to take over the Christian Coalition, he ended up leaving his position before he even began because they wanted to have

nothing to do

with his efforts to broaden the Religious Right’s agenda and then, in 2007, when the National Association of Evangelicals’ Richard Cizik stared working on issue of climate change, right-wing leaders including James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, Gary Bauer, and Rick Scarborough demanded that he be

fired and his efforts shut down

because they were afraid that it would end up undermining their old-school agenda:

More importantly, we have observed that Cizik and others are using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time, notably the sanctity of human life, the integrity of marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence and morality to our children.

But what angers the Right even more than that is Democratic efforts to reach out to religious communities and voters.  The Religious Right has always hated and attacked such efforts, regularly accusing Democrats of “hijacking” faith to promote an ungodly agenda because, you guessed it, it takes away from their own efforts to use religion to bolster their own narrow agenda:

Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs for the Family Research Council, an influential conservative lobbying group, said he objects to the Democrats' approach. He said it is morally problematic to equate poverty issues, as serious as they are, with abortion.

"It's not that, as Christians or as people, we shouldn't be helping out those who need it," he said. "But when it comes right down to it, if you're never born, you're not going to be poor. If you're not born, you're not going to be afflicted with illnesses. They're trying to say there's some sort of equivalency when it comes to these issues. I personally think that's wrong."

Can’t argue with that, I guess.  You can’t be poor or sick if you were never born, and so FRC is committed to making sure that you are born so that you can then be poor and get sick, at which point … well, you are on your own because those aren’t thing that they really care about.

In the last several days, we’ve seen a variety of Religious Right leaders blast the National Republican Campaign Committee for pulling its advertising from the re-election campaigns of both Rep. Michelle Bachmann (MN) and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (CO), with David Barton trying to save Musgrave himself and the Family Research Council threatening the NRCC that it will cut off its own efforts to raise money on their behalf. 

Why is the Right so upset about this decision? Because, as FRC explains, when the NRCC abandons the Right’s “shining stars on the Hill,” they are abandoning the Right:

David Nammo is executive director of FRC Action PAC. He says whether it was going to give Bachmann and Musgrave money or stop running ads for them, the NRCC sent the wrong message to social conservatives by announcing it was pulling support for the two conservative lawmakers.

Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)"What conservatives hear when they hear that is, 'Wow, the Republican Party isn't going to back people who are strong on our issues on the Hill.' And it's also going to frustrate and even confuse the people who want to support these two congresswomen," Nammo laments.

"We want people to get out and to vote for these two congresswomen," the conservative activist continues. "They are shining stars on the Hill. They stand for social conservative issues."

That is what Tony Perkins told the New York Times:

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative Christian lobby based in Washington, said in an interview, “It’s more important than the presidential election.”

“We’ve picked bad presidents before, and we’ve survived as a nation,” said Mr. Perkins, who has made two trips to California in the last six weeks. “But we will not survive if we lose the institution of marriage.”

So dire is the threat that Lou Engle is gathering his prayer warriors in an effort to call forth divine intervention and save America from the forces of evil:

Preachers from other parts of the country have dropped everything and moved to California in recent months. Lou Engle, who leads TheCall, a charismatic prayer ministry in Washington and Kansas City, Mo., with a large following among youth, moved with his seven children to California in September. He is holding large prayer rallies up and down the state, urging people to pray and fast for the 40 days leading up to the election. Some people are giving up solid foods; others are giving up clothes shopping or their favorite television shows.

“We believe there is a spiritual battle in an unseen realm, and that’s why I’ve called for united prayer for divine intervention,” Mr. Engle said. “It’s a defining moment for the definition of marriage in American history.”

For his part, Perkins begins laying the blame should McCain go down in defeat, saying that he’s failed to make marriage an issue in the campaign and is therefore failing to secure the electoral support of the anti-gay movement:

Mr. Perkins of the Family Research Council said the Proposition 8 forces had not benefited from the Republican presidential campaign of Senator John McCain of Arizona or even by his selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, an outspoken Christian conservative, as his vice-presidential running mate.

“He’s not helping, and he’s not being helped by the support for the marriage amendment,” Mr. Perkins said, in contrast to the campaigns of President Bush.

I expect that we’ll be seeing a lot more of this finger-pointing from the Right if McCain loses next week.

When Rep. Michelle Bachmann basically accused every Democratic member of Congress of being un-American last week, it unleashed a wave of financial support for her opponent and scared off the National Republican Campaign Committee, which pulled its advertising on her behalf ... and the Family Research Council is not happy about it and threatening to shut down their own efforts to raise money for the NRCC: 

The Family Research Council's (FRC) political arm ripped Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) Thursday for withdrawing ad spending on behalf of two endangered Republican candidates.

FRC President Tony Perkins said in a letter to Cole, chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee (NRCC), that the committee "is abandoning social conservative candidates" by pulling ads from the reelection races of Reps. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.) and Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.).

...

Perkins, an influential conservative leader, said in his letter that he believes Cole, whose committee has been hemorrhaging money in an uphill battle against Democratic congressional candidates, "made a grave error in judgment" by pulling ads from Musgrave's and Bachmann's districts.

"The left is attacking both of these outstanding women because they are true conservatives," Perkins said. "They vote pro-life and pro-family."

Perkins wrote that both candidates are in "winnable districts," and that "pulling funds from their campaigns sends the wrong message to their supporters and gives their opponents a chance to produce headlines that the NRCC has undermined these campaigns."

"This is no time to cut and run from a fight," Perkins wrote.

He added that he will "urge supporters" of the FRC to stop contributing to the NRCC "until it starts supporting and fighting for conservative candidates in close races."

Time Magazine's Massimo Calabresi just wrote an entire blog post lamenting the fact that "in the three presidential debates, McCain and Obama have completed a surprising sweep: no mention of 'God,' the 'Lord,' or even a higher power."

Calabresi concludes by declaring that this is especially "noteworthy" to "people who care about the presence of religion in politics."  And whom would those people be? 

"Whether intentional or not the discussion of God and the role of faith appears to have been relegated to the Saddleback forum in this general election,” says Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, who calls the development “troubling.”

Of course Perkins is troubled by it - his whole purpose in life is to equate God with the Republican Party and if the candidates aren't talking about God or the social issues the Religious Right care about, then his role in the process is diminished. 

If Calabresi is going to make bold declarations regarding "people who care about the presence of religion in politics," he might want to try and find examples beyond Religious Right activists who've dedicated their entire careers to trying to mix the two in a very dangerous way.

For the last week or so, as the economy continues to dominate the news cycle and presidential election, the Right has been lamenting that their anti-abortion, anti-gay agenda has been relegated to the back burner and wishing that they could choose right-wing moderators to run the debates.  

But since they can’t do that, they’ve decided to do the next best thing and petition Bob Schieffer, the moderator of the final debate, to make sure their issues play prominent in tonight’s debate.  Earlier this week, Ken Blackwell, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council, wrote an "open letter" to Schieffer decrying Tom Brokaw's failure to work their agenda into the last debate:

Mr. Brokaw’s choice of topics for the second debate robbed the American people of what was intended to be a look into the more personal and controversial aspects of the candidates. In that debate focusing on domestic policy, there was not a single question about the Supreme Court, gun control, abortion, gay marriage or immigration. It strains credulity to assert that of the more than 1,000 questions offered to Mr. Brokaw, he could not find any that spoke to these issues.

And now the FRC has followed suit. Declaring that “no issue our nation faces is more important than the protection of innocent unborn life,” the FRC has launched a petition to try and pressure Schieffer into asking questions designed to rally so-called “values voters” behind John McCain:

The American people face many crucial issues in this year's elections, including the state of the economy, immigration, health care, the environment, and foreign policy.  The first two presidential debates this year, however, have failed to include the most pressing social issues on the minds of values voters.  We the undersigned urge you to ask questions along the lines of those listed below, which discuss the future of marriage and the sanctity of human life.  These are questions that matter to all Americans, and you have the last remaining opportunity for the American people to compare the candidates' answers as they appear together for the final presidential debate of 2008.

* Do you believe that the U.S. Constitution contains a right for homosexuals to marry?
* Would you change the traditional definition of marriage contained in the federal Defense of Marriage Act?
* Do you support the Defense of Marriage Act's provision allowing states not to recognize same-sex marriages from other states?
* Have you ever opposed any ballot initiative seeking to define marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman?
* Do you agree or disagree with the Supreme Court's decision allowing the government to ban abortions that kill a partially born baby?
* Have you ever supported or opposed any law designed to protect the lives of babies that have survived an attempted abortion?

Moderating a debate is a great responsibility that rests on your shoulders.  We ask that you exercise that responsibility with great care to ensure that the American people have the chance to know where the candidates stand on every pressing issue. 

And just in case this effort doesn’t work out, FRC Action is doing its own part to support McCain by running anti-Obama ads in several battleground states:

Today, FRC Action PAC announced an initial $100,000 TV and radio ad campaign in key battleground states aimed at educating voters on Senator Barack Obama's promise to make the radical "Freedom of Choice Act" his top priority as President. The "Freedom of Choice Act" will overturn virtually all federal and state limitations on abortion. The ad campaign is a response to the Matthew 25 initiative, which sought to mislead voters and downplay Obama's extreme pro-abortion views. The initial TV and radio ad buy will run this week in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Michigan, with additional television commercials airing in the Washington, D.C. market. The radio ads will target Christian radio stations that earlier this year carried the Matthew 25 campaign.

For the last several days, the Right has been up in arms over this audio clip of Virginia Senate candidate Mark Warner warning that the state was on the verge of being taken over by the Religious Right

"Next weekend, you're going to see a coalition that has just about completely taken over the Republican Party in this state.

"And if they have their way, will take over state government, made up of the Christian Coalition, made up of right-to-lifers; but it's not just the right-to-lifers, it's made up of the NRA; but it's not just that, it's made up of the home schoolers; but not just that, it's made up of a whole coalition of people that have all sorts of different views that I think most of us in this room would find threatening to them and what it means to be an American.

Not surprisingly, it is being shopped around by Warner's opponent, Jim Gilmore,  who is currently getting crushed in the polls. 

So offensive were Warner's remarks, apparently, that the Family Research Council felt compelled to issue a statement:

Today, FRC Action decried comments made by Democrat Party Senate candidate Mark Warner. Warner, who served formerly as Governor of Virginia, was recently recorded speaking at a Democratic Party event. In his speech, Warner accused pro-lifers, homeschoolers, and members of the National Rifle Association, as threatening to "what it means to be an American."

...

"You have to wonder what Mark Warner finds so offensive about these groups," said FRC Action Executive Director David Nammo, "Is it the open practice of one's faith or the insistence on the right to bear arms that threatens Warner's America? The protection of innocent human life or the desire of parents to educate their own child? Perhaps Mark Warner should explain to the citizens of Virginia what parts of the Constitution he does agree with since it is clear he holds much of it suspect."

Oddly, nobody at the Family Research Council seems to know how to do any basic "research" - or understands the meaning of the words "recently recorded" - because, if they did, they'd realize that they probably should have issued this statement back in 1994 when Warner actually said it in relation to right-wing efforts to elect Iran-Contra criminal Oliver North ... or at least back in 2001 when the the RNC and Gilmore first tried to use the quote against him:

RADIO ATTACK AD DRAWS ANGRY DENIAL BY WARNER ; NATIONAL GOP SPOKESMAN DEFENDS COMMERCIAL
31 October 2001
The Richmond Times-Dispatch

Republicans launched a sharp-edged radio advertising attack on Mark R. Warner yesterday, saying the Democratic gubernatorial candidate views abortion foes, home-school advocates and "people of faith" as a threat to the nation.

Warner angrily denied the claim and demanded the GOP pull the commercial.

The 60-second ad is produced and paid for by the Republican National Committee, led by Gov. Jim Gilmore. It features a conversation between a man and a woman during which the woman suggests that Warner considers social and religious conservatives as "wanting to radically change American life, and said our views were threatening."

...

The commercial is based on remarks attributed to Warner seven years ago, shortly before Virginia Republicans met in Richmond to nominate Iran-contra figure Oliver L. North for the U.S. Senate.

North went on to lose to incumbent Democrat Charles S. Robb. At the time, Warner was chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia.

...

Referring to the expected nomination of North, a favorite of the Republican Party's conservative activists, Warner, according to a state GOP-supplied transcript, reportedly told the National Jewish Democrat Council on May 25, 1994:

"Next weekend, you're going to see a coalition that has just about completely taken over the Republican Party in this state.

"And if they have their way, will take over state government, made up of the Christian Coalition, made up of right-to-lifers; but it's not just the right-to-lifers, it's made up of the NRA; but it's not just that, it's made up of the home schoolers; but not just that, it's made up of a whole coalition of people that have all sorts of different views that I think most of us in this room would find threatening to them and what it means to be an American.

Yesterday we noted Fred Barnes fantasizing over the idea of having Rick Warren moderate more presidential debates so as to ensure that right-wing social and wedge issues could dominate the agenda.  It seems that he is not alone on the Right in wishing that their issues were playing a bigger role during this election cycle, because now the Family Research Council is weighing in, practically begging John McCain to start talking about abortion, marriage, and religion so that they have something to get excited about:

With the economy on the mind of almost every American it was no surprise that last night's presidential debate, the second of three, was again dominated by economic issues. However, Americans should be given credit for being able to focus on several important issues at once. While the economy is of paramount importance it does not exclude concern about and interest in core issues like life, marriage and family. This is especially true for values voters ... With just one debate left, millions of values voters are still anxiously waiting for an honest exchange on the fundamental issues of life, marriage, and religion.

In essence, FRC is saying that while "values voters" care about our tanking economy and various wars and all that, what they really care about are gays and fetuses and if McCain doesn't start talking about those things, he'll only have himself to blame if he fails to rally them and ultimately loses the election.

Oddly, I was fully expecting this to be the spin they trotted out should McCain be defeated next month. Looks like they are just getting an early start.

Frankly, I don't have anything to add to this quote from Tony Perkins which I assume is supposed to be some sort of defense of Sarah Palin: 

Some leading opinion makers traditionally on the right - from George Will and Peggy Noonan to Kathleen Parker and David Frum - have questioned whether Mrs. Palin has the right stuff or any stuff at all to command the armed forces, direct foreign policy and guide domestic economic policy if Mr. McCain, at 72 and with a history of cancer, wins and then suffers some medical incapacity.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said that whether swing voters and blue-collar white ethnic voters like the way she answers moderator Gwen Ifill's questions Thursday night will depend in part on whether her handlers let "Sarah be herself."

Mr. Perkins said his biggest concern is that she not be "overscripted," adding that Mr. Will and Miss Noonan make important contributions but are applying an overly demanding standard for articulateness to Mrs. Palin.

"Not everybody's an intellectual," he said.