Posts on Don Wildmon

Does anyone else get the sense that the Religious Right is starting to get a bit terrified about what the election has in store for them and their agenda?

Please vote! Our children's future depends on it!

In my 70 years, I have never seen an election where coverage was so one-sided and biased or where censorship by the liberal media was so widely practiced and where media coverage was so slanted as I have seen in this election process. Their plan is working. The only chance conservatives have is to make sure they care enough to vote.

If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity. This “city set on a hill” which our forefathers founded, will go dark. The damage will be deep and long lasting. It cannot be turned around in the next election, or the one after that, or by any election in the future. The damage will be permanent. That is why it is so important for you to vote and to encourage friends and family to vote. This is one election where your vote really counts.

The virulently anti-gay American Family Association generates buzz and media attention year after year by launching outlandish boycott campaigns – McDonald’s is the latest target. It also doesn’t hurt that their flamboyant founder and chairman, Don Wildmon, more than lives up to his name.

PR is the lifeblood of a group like AFA, so you might think that they’d be thrilled when a longtime supporter of the group rocketed to the top of the media charts. Maybe so, but not when that supporter happens to be the FBI’s only suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks – Bruce Ivins.

Indeed, the nation learned today that Ivins and his wife – who served as president of a local anti-abortion group – were strongly committed to the AFA:

Donations were made to AFA in the name of Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Ivins 11 times between 1993 and 1997. Another donation by the couple was recorded one month after an article about the Greendale incident appeared in the AFA Journal. The Ivins subscribed to the Journal until March 2005.

As we reported last week, Mike Huckabee’s right-wing supporters are going all out in Iowa to try and propel him to victory in the upcoming caucuses, with Vision America, Redeem The Vote, the Iowa Family Policy Institute, and the Iowa Christian Alliance gearing up for ten days of voter registration and mobilization efforts. 

Just in case that is not enough, Marc Ambinder is now reporting that Huckabee himself is scheduled to do his own outreach to the Religious Right, starting with an address to the Iowa Renewal Project: 

Today or tomorrow, Huckabee is a featured guest at the latest pastor briefing of the "Iowa Renewal Project," which aims, in the words of an e-mail Don Wildmon sent to pastors, to "encourage pastors and their congregations to take a stand for morality in their daily lives."

Don Wildmon, is, of course, the president of the American Family Association, one of the Project's key sponsors. He's also endorsed Huckabee.

There is no overt coordination between the project, which has affiliates in South Carolina and New Hampshire, and the Huckabee campaign. But to the extent that pastors who attend the project's briefings are familiar with Huckabee and Wildmon's support for his candidacy, Huckabee's rivals worry that the group amounts to a "campaign organization for pastors" operating on Huckabee's behalf.

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The briefing takes place the Des Moines Marriott and is closed to the press. Huckabee is listed as a guest on the invitation but does not list the event on the schedule his campaign distributed to reporters Sunday.

Huckabee will be joined by the likes of Wildmon, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, and Mat Staver – who have all endorsed him – as well as Newt Gingrich and David Barton, the right-wing pseudo-historian who was last seen in Iowa stumping with Sam Brownback.  

With Brownback now out of the race, can a Barton endorsement be far behind?   And, for that matter, Gingrich has had nothing but good things to say about Huckabee in the past, so perhaps an endorsement from him will forthcoming as well.

From The Washington Times: "The Rev. Donald Wildmon, who founded the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss., and whose evangelical Christian message reaches several million radio listeners and Internet subscribers, will throw his support to Mike Huckabee today, a Republican close to the Huckabee campaign told The Washington Times."

Just days after the Religious Right’s B-team gathered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to question Republican candidates for president (including the ones who didn’t show up), a number of more prominent right-wing figures are convening in Tampa for the Family Impact Summit, sponsored by the Focus on the Family-affiliated Florida Family Policy Council, the Tampa-based Community Issues Council, the Family Research Council, and the Salem radio network.

Advertised topics range from “Christian Citizenship” to “Homosexual Agenda,” but the focus will no doubt be on the 2008 election, and in particular, the effort by Florida’s Right to put a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot—even though gays are already prohibited from marrying by statute.

Below is some background on the featured speakers, from Tony Perkins and Richard Land to Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell.