Posts on Janice Crouse

I really need to stop taking vacations, because I end up missing out on entertaining arguments/easy blog fodder such as this absurd quote Michael Barone saying the “liberal media attacked Sarah Palin because she did not abort her Down syndrome baby” or this press release from Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America warning the media not to “dare [to] try to destroy Sarah Palin”  … because if they do, Crouse explains, they’ll all end up losing their jobs: 

Crouse concluded, "Sarah Palin, the newest star on the political horizon and the most natural campaigner since Ronald Reagan, is not only a Republican, she is also a woman.  She is not only a woman, she is a conservative woman.  She is not only a conservative woman, she is a Christian conservative woman.  It is entirely predictable, but unconscionable, that the media would consider her fair game for personal destruction.  They must realize, however, that their bias and distortions all but destroyed their credibility during the 2008 presidential campaign.  Now, major newspapers are cutting staff, network viewership is declining, and more and more people are bypassing the mainstream media in an effort to find the truth.  If the mainstream media continues with their politics of personal destruction, they are earning their own destruction."

It seems like jus a few weeks ago Crouse was offering unsolicited advice to Palin, telling her that her “life experiences and intuition” equipped her “just fine for the job” of Vice President and explaining that all she had to do was convince America that “you can be trusted, that you are honest, and that you are authentic.”

As I recall, all she ended up managing to do was convince America that she was not qualified to be president if necessary.

Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America is quite proud of her PhD, proclaiming herself “a recognized authority on sex trafficking, the United Nations, U.S. domestic issues, as well as national and international cultural, children's and women's concerns.”  Of course, it turns out that her PhD is actually in Communication Theory from the State University of New York at Buffalo, so how that makes her an expert on sex trafficking is hard to understand.

But now comes a situation in which her PhD is actually relevant and so she is offering debate advice to Sarah Palin:

Dr. Janice Crouse, political commentator for Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee, is an expert on presidential communication.  The former presidential speechwriter (Bush 41) said, “In a move distinctly different from Eisenhower’s abandonment of Richard Nixon when he got in trouble with the press, John McCain (R-Arizona) invited Palin to his ranch in Sedona, Arizona, where she will spend two days preparing for the debate — thus sending a signal of his continued support for his veep pick and providing a haven where she will be able to regroup from the vicious attacks and regain her confidence before she faces the ultimate test of her candidacy.”

How chivalrous of McCain to protect Palin from the mean old press so that she can cram for a few days before her big test.  And what expert advice does Crouse have for her?

(1)   First and foremost, be yourself, and remember — as Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense — we are endowed with the intelligence to equip us for self-governance: the colonists didn’t need a monarch to rule them, Reagan didn’t need State Department geeks to tell him how to win the Cold War, and you don’t need inside-the-beltway pundits to tell you how to be Vice President.  Your life experiences and intuition equip you just fine for the job.

(2)   You don’t have to know everything or be an expert in foreign affairs; you are training for a debate, not a television quiz show like Jeopardy.  If you duck and dodge like the vast majority of Washington pols, you will not retain the public’s admiration (52 percent favorability rating even after all the attacks).

(3)   Counter Sen. Joe Biden’s (D-Delaware) phony talk about his blue-collar background with the facts regarding the elitism of the leftist ticket, focusing on Sen. Obama’s (D-Illinois) extreme voting record, his radical friends and associates, and the extraordinary number of Obama earmarks in his short Senate tenure.

(4)   Push your actual executive decision-making experience in contrast to Obama’s appalling number of “present” votes during his Senate tenure.

(5)   Emphasize the role of Frank Raines (Obama’s financial advisor) and the leftist Congress in the current financial crisis.

(6)   Last, your primary job is to convince the public that you can be trusted, that you are honest, and that you are authentic.  The election, ultimately, will depend on the public’s assessment of the candidates’ trustworthiness — especially in this time of national upheaval over the national financial crisis.

Because nothing will demonstrate Palin’s honesty and authenticity and show that she can be trusted quite like engaging in thoroughly bogus attacks about earmarks and Obama’s advisors.

Following up on our earlier post about the release of a line of Hallmark cards for same-sex weddings, Concerned Women for America is out with a release of its own – one decrying Hallmark’s efforts to endanger children and destroy the family:  

Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America (CWA), said, "Hallmark is jeopardizing its brand as a family-friendly company.  Customers used to be able to trust Hallmark to produce quality products that were safe for all ages.  Now parents will need to steer their kids from Hallmark's section of the greeting card aisle and away from its previously heartwarming movies for fear that they too will push homosexual messages."

Janice Crouse, Director and Senior Fellow of CWA's Beverly LaHaye Institute, said, "By latching onto the latest fad generated by the homosexual special interest groups, Hallmark is negating its image as a wholesome company that promotes American values and pro-family principles in its products.  American businesses have a corporate responsibility to the public that buys their products.  Instead of bolstering campaigns by special interest groups like the homosexual activists, corporations like Hallmark should be protecting American culture from those forces that would destroy the family and create a public environment that is detrimental to general well-being, especially children's well-being."

As we have noted several times before, Mike Huckabee’s primary campaign strategy to date has been focused almost exclusively on wooing evangelical voters – a strategy that paid off handsomely in Iowa:

Religion played a huge role in Mike Huckabee’s triumph in the Iowa Republican caucuses, though there are some mixed signals for him on the road ahead. On the Democratic side, it was fresh blood — and an outcry for change — that helped propel Barack Obama to his victory in the state.

Eight in 10 Huckabee supporters said they are born again or evangelical Christians, according to an entrance poll for The Associated Press and television networks. Another six in 10 said it was very important to share their candidate’s religious beliefs. In both categories, none of the former Arkansas governor’s opponents came close to that kind of support.

While it seems obvious to most that Huckabee’s success can be directly attributed to his ability to convince Religious Right voters that he is one of them, Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America doesn’t see it that way.  In fact, she rejects that notion all together and instead sees Huckabee’s Iowa victory as evidence of his ability to overcome anti-Evangelical bias among participants in the Republican caucus: 

While 46 percent of Evangelicals voted for Huckabee, more than half of them (54 percent) split their vote among the four other candidates (Romney, McCain, Thompson and Paul). 

…

Huckabee had to overcome extraordinary anti-Evangelical bias.  The message of Iowa is that anti-Evangelical bias was extraordinary and overwhelming.  Eighty-seven percent of non-Evangelicals voted against Huckabee, whereas only 66 percent of all Iowa Republicans voted against him — an astounding 21 percent gap.  [Exit polls] shows that among those who self-identified as non-Evangelicals, Huckabee finished 4th (behind Romney, Thompson and McCain).  It is significant that Huckabee got only 14% of non-Evangelical votes, while Romney got 19% of the Evangelical vote.

Huckabee was too busy running as a “Christian Leader” to make much of an effort to court non-evangelicals, so his limited support among that group is not surprising and certainly isn’t evidence of any sort of “anti-Evangelical bias.” 

By comparison, Huckabee won the support of a plurality (36%) of self-identified Republicans in Iowa, but only 17% of independents.  According to Crouse’s logic, Huckabee must have also somehow managed to overcome extraordinary anti-Republican bias as well.  

Concerned Women for America’s Janice Shaw Crouse comments on Mitt Romney's "faith" speech, saying "The hostility and distrust of Evangelicals far exceeds that faced by the Mormons," while Gary Cass, Chairman and CEO of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, calls on Romney to "renounce the historic Mormon hostility to Christianity."

Earlier this month, an organization known as the Sexual Minorities Groups in Uganda held a press conference pleading for tolerance and an end to government harassment which was quickly met by right-wing protests: 

The issue came to the fore in Uganda this month when an advocacy group, the Sexual Minorities Groups in Uganda, took the unprecedented step of holding a news conference to demand recognition. Even so, most hid their faces behind masks.

That prompted demonstrators from the Inter-faith Coalition of church groups to rally in Kampala demanding a crackdown. They waved placards like "Arrest all homos" and railed against a U.S. newspaper intern who had written on homosexuals in Uganda.

As Human Rights Watch explained:

Homosexual acts are criminalized in Uganda under a sodomy law inherited from British colonial times, although punishments were substantially strengthened in 1990. Section 140 of the criminal code punishes “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” – interpreted to include consensual same sex relationships- with a maximum of life imprisonment. 

“For years President Museveni’s government has drummed up homophobia and denied the basic rights of LGBT people for his own political advantage,” said Juliana Cano Nieto, researcher in the LGBT rights program at Human Rights Watch. “If lesbians and gays can be punished simply for speaking up for their rights, the freedoms of all Ugandans are endangered.” 

Of course, the Right here at home loves it, with Janice Crouse of the Beverly LaHaye Institute, hailing the Ugandan protestors for standing up when “the Devil is attacking them”:

I thank the Lord that we have people in Uganda who are devoted Christians who are willing to go out there at the beginning, at the outset, to say “you’re not going to change our culture, you’re not going to have influence here.  We stand up for what is right, what is legal, and what is part of the culture of Uganda.” 

REUTERS/James Akena

Last month, Right Wing Watch detailed Focus on the Family’s attempt to blindly attribute the correlation between declining teen sex rates to the promotion of abstinence-only education. As we pointed out, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

A news release from the abstinence-only education organization Project Reality continues the shoddy statistical analysis, detailing the overlapping decline in the teen pregnancy rate among 10-14 year olds with the increase in abstinence-only education. Project Reality’s director comments:

Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America attacked Code Pink, a “women-initiated” anti-war protest group, for advocating policies that are somehow too masculine. From the Dallas Morning News:

[Crouse] said Code Pink members "talk out of both sides of their mouths."

"They emphasize their femininity but advocate policies that are very aggressive and more often associated with men," she said.

"They cloak it all in a soft pink covering, when underneath they are hard as nails," she said. "They advocate for the most radical of leftist positions," such as impeachment of the president.

It does seem odd to claim that opposing war – Code Pink’s central issue – is the “aggressive” policy. Beyond simply insulting its opponents by impugning their gender – like Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a “faggot” – it’s unclear what CWA means by policies “associated with men.” Back in 1998, of course, Concerned Women for America called for the impeachment of President Clinton. But lest CWA be accused of cloaking themselves in “a soft pink covering,” just look at the group’s policy director, the former boxer and insurance salesman Matt “Bam Bam” Barber.

"There's a utopian view that women ought to be able to have sex any time they want to without consequences that's the bottom line of all these bills," said Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America on congressional efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancies – and thus reduce abortion.

In particular, this supposed sex-driven “utopian view” is about the availability and use of contraception. The bills include measures to expand access to contraceptives and funding for comprehensive sex education, which teaches both abstinence and safer sex. In addition, Congress is considering the Access to Birth Control Act, which would ensure women can fill contraceptive prescriptions at pharmacies. CWA, which holds that pharmacists should be able to withhold prescriptions based on their personal beliefs, says the bill “would criminalize ‘Freedom of choice.’”

Eighty percent of adults agree that birth control should be accessible and that it should be dispensed without discrimination or delay and covered by health insurance, according to a new poll. The Lake Research Partners poll also found 88 percent support for teaching comprehensive sex education.

Said in response to widespread pro-choice victories in 2006. Right hopes youth, women will come around.

Some PBS stations are reportedly set to air a three-part BBC series entitled “A Brief History of Disbelief” which seeks to “uncover[] the hidden story of atheism.” 

Not surprisingly, the Right doesn’t like it at all:

Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute for the conservative group Concerned Women for America, told Cybercast News Service that "airing the program gives credibility and cohesiveness to individuals who seek to undermine the beliefs and values on which democracy and the American dream are founded."

"One has to wonder why it is so important to them for everyone to understand their 'disbelief,'" she said. "The program is not a dispassionate, positive voice - as they claim. Instead, it is clearly demagogic and propagandistic."

Perhaps Crouse is not the best judge of what is or is not “dispassionate” considering that Beverly LaHaye, the namesake of the institute which Crouse heads, believes that “Christian values should dominate our government. The test of those values is the Bible. Politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public and private lives do not belong in office.” And when it comes to demagogic, it’s hard to top this:  “In recent times, Western Civilization has willingly chosen to exchange the faith and logic of a Biblical worldview for an irrational secularism based on an unthinking and cruel relativism. This foolish exchange is at the root of the glaring injustices of modern American public policy.”

But CWA is not alone in opposing this program:

By airing "Disbelief," [Peter] Sprigg [of the Family Research Council] added, PBS is "revealing their bias against Christianity, against traditional faith."

…

"If they really want to be objective, they need to have a three-part series documenting the evidence in favor of Christianity," he added.

Indeed.  PBS hardly ever runs anything about Christianity.  

Responding to a large-scale study from the Guttmacher Institute showing that the vast majority of Americans do engage in premarital sex – “which calls into question the federal government's funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds,” as the study’s author said – Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Wade Horn defended abstinence-only programs, claiming that by withholding comprehensive education on safer sex, the programs “help young people delay the onset of sexual activity” and thus reduce the contraction of sexually transmitted diseases.

Media Research Center ’s Robert Knight called it “tragic.” Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth called it “immoral.” Concerned Women for America ’s Janice Crouse called it “unconscionable.” What are they talking about? A couple deciding to have a kid. If Vice-President Cheney thought that some of his biggest supporters would congratulate him on a new grandchild – or at least restrain themselves from sending out press releases – he had to be disappointed at the right-wing reaction to his daughter’s pregnancy and her plans to raise the child with her lesbian partner.

According to the Right, gays just aren’t fit to be parents – and raising a child is akin to a malicious act. CWA’s Crouse told ABC that Cheney and her partner are “deliberately bringing a child into the world without a father, leaving a great gaping hole” and that leads to “all sorts of negative outcomes — drug use, juvenile delinquency. You name it.” Crouse’s former fellow Concerned Woman Bob Knight went further, claiming that the “child has been conceived with the express purpose of denying it a father,” and “they're shortchanging this child from the start." LaBarbera described the situation as “fatherless by design,” and decry the couple’s plans to “model immoral homosexual behavior before innocent children.”

Carrie Gordon Earll of Focus on the Family was a little more tactful, saying, "Just because you can conceive a child outside a one-woman, one-man marriage doesn't mean it's a good idea. Love can't replace a mother and a father.” She also talked, obliquely, about gay adoption, saying it “intentionally denies children either a mother or a father” and put the “desires of adults” above the “needs of children.” In this she echoed radio talker Kevin McCullough, who wrote that Cheney and her partner were withholding a father “purposefully, simply to stroke one's own desire to have a child - sort of like a new handbag, or pair of shoes.”

Gay advocates pointed out that Mary Cheney’s home state, Virginia, recently passed a constitutional amendment to bar her partner, Heather Poe, from marrying her (or even entering a legal arrangement to approximate marriage), and so the efforts of the right-wing will have a real, deleterious effect on the child’s family situation. “Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child,” said Jennifer Chrisler of Family Pride.

But the Right took the opposite view: that Cheney was getting in the way of their anti-gay mission. Crouse told the L.A. Times, “Not only is she doing a disservice to her child, she's voiding all the effort her father put into the Bush administration.” Knight said, "Mary and Heather can believe what they want, but what they're seeking is to force others to bless their nonmarital relationship as marriage" and to "create a culture that is based on sexual anarchy instead of marriage and family values.”