Republican Party

As we’ve noted several times in the past, the National Black Republican Association is a fringe right-wing group that seems to have little in the way of staff or money, yet still manages to generate attention for itself every election cycle by running ridiculous ads and then waiting for the media to report on them:

[NBRA Chair Frances] Rice managed to put up a "Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican" billboard in South Carolina this year, and, leading up to the elections, ran a radio ad in swing states. In the ad a black woman says, "Dr. King was a real man," and another responds, "You know he was a Republican."

Rice said she wanted to start a conversation about the history of the Republican Party. The tactic proved its worth in media coverage. She ticks off the news outlets that covered the campaign.

"I spent a few thousand and garnered half a million in free coverage by my estimate," Rice said.

Given the success the NBRA has had with this tactic, they apparently have bigger plans in mind:  

A Sarasota-based group that grabbed national headlines when it put up several billboards in Florida proclaiming "Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican" says it will be doing it again.

This time the National Black Republican Association says it would like to put up 50 of the controversial billboards in Denver. The group wants the billboard to be up in time for the Democratic National Convention which is scheduled for August 25th - 28th.

Hmm … considering that the convention is now less than two weeks away, that seems like an expensive and almost impossible task.  But just to make sure, I called the advertising specialists at The Media Team in Denver to inquire about the cost and possibility of actually doing so.  

When I told them that I was interested in finding out the cost and availability of 50 billboards in Denver for the week of the convention, they literally laughed at me.  They then explained that the only things available at this late date would be Spanish language and low traffic billboards and, when I asked how much it would cost, hypothetically, to rent just one prime location billboard for the week of the convention, the estimate was $25,000, with the rates for other billboards ranging from $5,000 to $18,000 depending on location.  

So unless the NBRA has several hundred thousand dollars on hand – and a time machine that allows them to go back and make reservations for the billboards before they were all booked – it looks like this is just another self-aggrandizing boast designed to make it seem as if the NBRA has any influence at all.  

Earlier today, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins participated in an on-line Q&A on The Washington Times’ website during which he set out the characteristics the Right is looking for in John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate.  His choice of words that the running mate “needs to be strong where he is weak” by having “have a record of delivering” on the issues that matter to the Right suggests that he, like so many others, is not particularly enthused about McCain:

Question: There has been a lot written about possible VP candidates for McCain that will be acceptable to the Christian value voters. Who are a few possibilities that you could see this coalition being comfortable with?

Answer: To date I have resisted the temptation to play the name game. Rather, I have focused on the qualities we would like to see in John McCain’s running mate. His running mate needs to be strong where he is weak, someone who is not reluctant to talk about the issues that remain top priority for most social conservatives; the sanctity of human life, the preservation of traditional marriage and the strengthening of the family. Not only must this person be able to communicate a concern and a commitment for these issues, they have to have a record of delivering on these and other issues.

So who would be a good choice?  Mike Hucakbee, of course:

Answer: There is no question in my mind that Mike Huckabee would raise the intensity level of support for John McCain, something the Senator really needs. I do have some policy differences with Mike, but we share a common view on most, if not all, of the social policy issues. I think he would compliment John McCain and I would be supportive of him as John McCain's running mate.

It seems that just about every right-wing activist currently supporting McCain wants him to pick Hucakbee and is warning him not to pick Mitt Romney.  In fact, as we reported yesterday, McCain is currently in Michigan meeting with former Huckabee supporters who are telling him the same thing yet again.  And just in case that message hasn’t yet sunk in, another group of Huckabee supporters in Ohio are starting groups all over the state in order to get the message out: 

Some Ohio social conservatives say they know whom they don't want John McCain to pick as his running mate: former Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney.

In a move that may say as much about their continuing uneasiness regarding McCain as it does about their mistrust of Romney, an alliance of Buckeye State social conservatives is trying to form a group: Social Conservatives Against Romney.

Although McCain is keeping his potential vice-presidential choices a tightly held secret, Romney is said to be on the short list.

"Christians are praying earnestly for the right person," said Diane Stover, a Parma resident who was a delegate for GOP candidate Mike Huckabee, a favorite of many social conservatives, in the Ohio primary. "McCain wouldn't have been our person. But we definitely feel like it would be a huge help to John McCain to pick someone we can be confident will represent the value-voter position. I don't think it helps him (McCain) at all in Ohio if he picks Romney."

…

Jane Maines of Hamilton, also a former Huckabee delegate, said the anti-Romney Ohioans hope their group will spread to other states.

Stover and Maines are among about a dozen activists who met near Cincinnati last week, with Stover participating via phone from the Cleveland area, to discuss how to launch the group.

"We're hoping this will become hugely widespread," Maines said.

Presumably, the fact that McCain is not ruling out the possibility of naming a pro-choice running mate is only going to displease the Right further:

IN A WIDE-RANGING INTERVIEW aboard his campaign plane this morning, John McCain said that he is open to choosing a pro-choice running mate and named former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge as someone who merits serious consideration despite his support for abortion rights. McCain also criticized Barack Obama's presidential campaign for attempts to "politicize" the debate over Georgia and criticized President Bush for failing to recognize the true nature of Vladimir Putin.

"I think that the pro-life position is one of the important aspects or fundamentals of the Republican Party," McCain said. "And I also feel that--and I'm not trying to equivocate here--that Americans want us to work together. You know, Tom Ridge is one of the great leaders and he happens to be pro-choice. And I don't think that that would necessarily rule Tom Ridge out."

Matt Taibbi, fresh off his time undercover at John Hagee’s church, returns to the pages of Rolling Stone to chronicle John McCain’s on-going struggle to win over the Christian Right. Taibbi tracked down Mat Staver of the Liberty Counsel who was deeply involved in the July meeting in Colorado where a variety of right-wing heavy-hitter decided to finally  back McCain because they basically had no other option and then issued their own “Declaration of American Values” which, Staver tells Taibbi, they want to make clear was not a declaration of support for McCain:

It's McCain's newfound status as the lesser of two evils that recently won him a previously unthinkable triumph — the pledged support of more than 100 Christian groups who met in Denver on July 1st to create a so-called "Declaration of American Values." Organized by Mat Staver, chairman of the fundamentalist group Liberty Counsel, the declaration was an attempt to reunite a Christian right that, as Staver tells me, had suffered "through a fractious primary season. There were a lot of hurt feelings." The group — which included notables on the religious right like Phyllis Schlafly and Tim Lahaye — settled on a list of 10 basic principles, including the perennial sanctity of life and anti-gay-marriage stuff, as well as some weirder and less biblically obvious demands supporting unfettered gun ownership and opposing taxation "of a progressive nature."

And while the group came out in support of McCain, Staver is anxious that this not be interpreted as a broad expression of enthusiasm by the Christian right. "Uh, the media somewhat didn't accurately report that," he says with obvious fright in his voice. "This wasn't a Declaration of American Values in support of John McCain. This was a statement of support for those core values." It was agreed, Staver clarifies, that supporting McCain in this election was merely the best choice for the "short term." And the reason for that, he says, is that the election of Barack Obama would "decimate American values." From there, Staver is off and running about Obama's record on abortion rights and gay marriage, and how generally an Obama election would bring about the end of civilization; he said almost nothing about McCain.

This is a point Staver seems eager to get across, as he told the same thing to Dan Gilgoff back in July, explaining that their support for McCain was done out of political necessity and is aimed at asserting their influence within the Republican Party in order to try and prevent this sort of situation in the future: 

Last week's decision by nearly 100 conservative Christian activists meeting in Denver to coalesce around presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain was a major coup for a candidate whose relationship with the Christian Right has been famously stormy. But the Denver meeting's organizer, Mathew Staver--founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law--says the activists' new unity around McCain should not be taken as evidence of a stepped-up religious outreach effort by the Arizona senator, or as a sign that evangelicals are warming to him personally.

In fact, Staver said in an interview yesterday that much of the Denver meeting was focused on building a long-term strategy for the Christian Right to avoid getting stuck with another figure like McCain.

Taibbi also relates this anecdote, which suggests either that James Dobson has changed his mind once again on whether he’ll support McCain or that his spokesman can’t keep track of his waffling:

As a result, the most influential leaders on the Christian right are keeping their distance. "Uh, no," says a spokesman for Focus on the Family, when I ask if Dobson has changed his mind about McCain, even with Obama on the ticket. "He hasn't changed his mind. No way."

We’ve written about the National Black Republican Association a few times in the past, mostly to point out that they are a small, fringe group that tries to make a name for itself every election season by doing things like running ridiculous ads about how the "Democratic Party is a racist party.” 

Over the weekend, the Sarasota Herald Tribune published a lengthy profile of NBRA Chairman Frances Rice and her antics, which seem to be accomplishing little more than angering and alienating her would-be political allies:

When hearing that the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Jim Greer, had expressed disappointment in her magazine, The Black Republican, which Greer had secured party money to publish, Rice dismissed it with a wave of her hand.

The magazine featured a picture of Ku Klux Klan members burning a cross, with the caption "Every person in this photograph was a Democrat."

Article titles included "Democrats embrace their child molesters," and "Top 10 Democratic sex scandals in Congress," and "Democrats wage war on God."

…

"Obviously we weren't consulted before she decided to do any of this," said Tony Cooper, president of the Tampa Black Republican Club. "It's a fruitless debate and it may conjure up more ill will toward the party. We should be spending money on debating the Democrats on the issues."

Said Deon Long, president of Florida's Federation of Black Republican Clubs: "We thought those billboards were asinine."

…

Greer, the state party chairman, said the party is no longer donating to the NBRA. While pictures of himself and Gov. Charlie Crist were on the cover of the magazine, along with favorable articles about them, Greer said he had no knowledge of the other content until after the magazine was published.

"Mrs. Rice has some very strong views on certain issues," Greer said. "It showed us that before we donate to anything, regardless of how it appears, the party needs to ensure it takes a look at all the content."

The article notes that Palm Beach County Republican Party donated $20,000 to start the NBRA back in 2005 and, since then, “nearly everyone else originally part of the NBRA … has since dropped out. The original board included eight members from around the country, and Rice's husband. In a matter of months, all the board members except Rice, her husband and Cadogan resigned.”  Apparently the final straw came after Rice insisted on sending out a press release praising President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina. 

Rice appears to run the organization with an iron fist, accusing those who disagree with her or not a being “a real Republican” and seemingly having a complete disregard for tax laws governing non-profit organizations, with the Tribune reporting that Rice has shuttered NRBA’s 527 and is relying on donations that have come through the NBRA’s non-profit 501c4 arm to engage in what appears to be partisan electoral work despite the fact that “under the IRS code, [501 c4s] are not allowed to help elect candidates or push partisan politics as their primary purpose.”

But Rice seems to have no regrets about her tactics or her role as a fringe, right-wing activist – in fact, she seems to thrive on it:

"This is the first time in my life that I have felt I am actually doing something about what the Democrats have done in the past and are doing now to black people," Rice said. "If the Democrats had left us alone after the Republicans freed us from slavery we wouldn't be having this discussion today. They are keeping blacks in virtual slavery."

It was just five months ago that James Dobson declared unequivocally that he would not, under any circumstances, ever support John McCain for president, saying “I cannot, and I will not, vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience.”   In fact, so opposed to McCain was Dobson that he went so far as to organize an effort to secure one million signatures in opposition to McCain’s nomination and then publicly reiterated his vehement opposition to his nomination just a few months later.  

But wouldn’t you know it, like every other craven political calculation and empty threat he has ever made, Dobson has changed his mind and concluded that Barack Obama is such a monumental threat to this nation that he almost has no other choice but to blatantly violate his own conscience for the greater good of the Republican Party:

Conservative Christian leader James Dobson has softened his stance against Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, saying he could reverse his position and endorse the Arizona senator despite serious misgivings.

"I never thought I would hear myself saying this," Dobson said in a radio broadcast to air Monday. "... While I am not endorsing Senator John McCain, the possibility is there that I might."

So why is Dobson suddenly changing his tune?  In short, he is absolutely terrified of Obama:

He is also supportive of the entire gay activist agenda.  We're not just talking about showing respect for people and equal rights for all citizens of the United States.  It’s not referring to it in those terms. He’s talking about homosexual marriage. I mean, he makes no bones about that. He's talking about hate crimes legislation which would limit religious liberty, I have no doubt about that, that ministers and others - people like us - are going to very quickly be prohibited from expressing your faith and your theology on certain views.  … Just so many aspects of his views on that issue that keep me awake at night frankly … that he is so extreme, that he does threaten traditional family life and pro-moral values … This has been the most difficult moral dilemma for me.  It’s why you haven’t heard me say much about it because I have struggled on this issue.  And there are some concerns here that matter to me more than my own life and neither of the candidates is consistent with my views in that regard. But Senator McCain is certainly closer to them then Senator Obama, by a wide margin. And there's no doubt, at least no doubt in my mind, about whose policies will result in more babies being killed. Or who will do the greatest damage to the institution of marriage and the family. I'm convinced that Senator McCain comes closer to what I believe. So I am not endorsing Senator McCain today … But as of this moment, I have to take into account the fact that Senator John McCain has voted pro-life consistently and that's a fact. He says he favors marriage between a man and a woman, I believe that. He opposes homosexual adoption. He favors smaller government and lower taxes and he seems to understand the Muslim threat, which matters a lot to me – I am very concerned about that.

Below is the full transcript of today’s program in which Dobson and the Southern Baptist Convention's Al Mohler explain just how “alarming” Barack Obama’s political and theological views are and the dire threat he poses to “traditional family life and pro-moral values":

When Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, recently sued Troy Newman over the use of the name, he certainly opened up a can of worms.

A number of former OR activists issued a statement on Newman’s behalf, calling for Terry’s repentance for “unbiblical lifestyle decisions”; “[W]e can no longer remain silent while Mr. Terry continues to fleece unsuspecting pro-life people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for his personal and selfish gain,” they added. Terry responded with his own list of supporters vouching for his character.

And Flip Benham, who runs Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, put aside his distaste for Terry (“Giving more money to Randall Terry is like giving booze to an alcoholic,” he has said) to attack both Newman and the former OR activists who criticized Terry. “These are the same ones who would not stand with Operation Rescue leadership in the fall of 1993 and call the premeditated shooting (murder) of abortionists, sin,’” wrote Benham, recalling the darkest period of the militant anti-abortion movement.

But while Flip Benham’s Operation Rescue and Troy Newman’s Operation Rescue remain locked in their bitter name dispute, there is at least one thing they can agree on: Barack Obama.

Newman’s OR called for anti-abortion activists to descend upon an Obama appearance at the National Council of La Raza convention in San Diego this past weekend:

“Abortionists are famous for targeting minority communities and those who are most vulnerable. When Obama throws his support behind the abortion industry, he is also tacitly supporting the exploitation of Latinos and African Americans,” said Operation Rescue spokesperson Cheryl Sullenger. “Operation Rescue urges all pro-life supporters in the San Diego area to let their voices be heard in protest of Obama’s extremist abortion policies, and his tacit approval of the abortion industry’s despicable pattern of racial exploitation.”

Meanwhile, Benham’s group is conducting an anti-abortion campaign in Atlanta, which doesn’t seem to have much to do with Obama. But in announcing a church OR plans to picket, the group adds:

According to their bulletin, this is a UCC church which will host the Human Rights Campaign Gospel Concert. The HRC is the largest group advocating gay & lesbian rights and the UCC is the denomination of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barak Obama. For the first time in the history of our nation, we have a man running for president who is neither a Christian nor a patriot.

Lest John McCain get too excited about this new source of support, they don’t have a whole lot of nice things to say about him, either. Benham wrote back in October, “[T]here is no way we true evangelical Christians will support Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, or Romney.”

And Randall Terry, who led a small band of protesters against GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani over the winter, recycled the same language (“an enemy inside your camp”) for McCain in an interview with Playboy:

Q: What impact would a John McCain presidency have on the pro-life agenda?

A: If McCain would appoint judges who would overturn Roe, it could be a huge boon. I don’t think we have any assurance that would happen. Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor were all appointed by Republican presidents who did not do their homework. If presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. had done what they said they would do, we would already have overturned Roe because we wouldn’t have had Kennedy, Souter and O’Connor. There’s a very strong movement afoot in the conservative wing of the Republican Party to deny McCain the White House. Their attitude is, an enemy outside your camp makes you vigilant and unites you, but an enemy inside your camp makes you dead because he can cut your neck in the night or poison your food by day.

Cal Thomas’s syndicated column, which is printed in hundreds of newspapers, seldom strays from the right-wing line. There is one subject, though, where Thomas has been critical of the Right: The columnist, who helped establish the modern Religious Right as a lieutenant for Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, has since denounced such “cynical harvesting” of conservative Christians’ votes. There was a “perception that the church had become an appendage to the Republican Party,” he wrote, adding that “little was accomplished in the political arena and much was lost in the spiritual realm, as many came to believe that to be a Christian meant you also must be ‘converted’ to the Republican Party and adopt the GOP agenda and its tactics.”

But if Thomas is nominally a critic of the Religious Right, he is still unable to resist employing its most crass and shameless tactic: attacking the faith of his political opponents. Reacting to Barack Obama’s outreach to young Christians, Thomas attempts to disqualify Obama from the religion.

Obama has declared himself a committed Christian. He can call himself anything he likes, but there are certain markers among the evangelicals he is courting that one must meet in order to qualify for that label.

Thomas offers an interpretation of media reports on the particulars of Obama’s faith—what the candidate says about hell, for example—and pronounces a verdict: Not only is what is supposedly in Obama’s heart “contrary to what Evangelicals and most Catholics believe,” Thomas claims, but he is not even a Christian. Instead, according to the columnist, Obama is a “false prophet.”

Here’s Obama again: “I don’t presume to have knowledge of what happens after I die. When I tuck in my daughters at night and I feel like I’ve been a good father to them, and I see that I am transferring values that I got from my mother and that they’re kind people and that they’re honest people, and they’re curious people, that’s a little piece of heaven.”

Any first-year seminary student could deconstruct such “works salvation” and wishful thinking. Obama either hasn’t read the Bible, or if he has, doesn’t believe it if he embraces such thin theological wisps.

Obama can call himself anything he likes, but there is a clear requirement for one to qualify as a Christian and Obama doesn’t meet that requirement. One cannot deny central tenets of the Christian faith, including the deity and uniqueness of Christ as the sole mediator between God and Man and be a Christian. Such people do have a label applied to them in Scripture. They are called “false prophets.”

This kind of perverse attack is nothing new—indeed, WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah offered a similar column a couple weeks ago on his far-right website. And in practicing this kind of politics, Thomas is merely joining alongside marginal groups who assert that only those with certain political views can be “true Christians,” and more broadly, rejoining the Religious Right effort to merge religion and partisan politics.

But while the rumors casting aspersions on Obama’s faith continue to swirl aimlessly in e-mail forwards, on disreputable websites, and among fringe groups, today they are being uncritically promoted in hundreds of newspapers. Thomas—even as he denounces in name the Religious Right, and even as he promotes a book against political polarization—is doing his part to legitimize religious inquisition as a campaign strategy.

You know that something odd is happening within the Republican Party when a high-profile Religious Right leader is publicly advising John McCain NOT to seek the endorsement of other high-profile Religious Right leaders.  

And you know that something really odd is happening when that figure is Ralph Reed, whose own political career tanked thanks to McCain’s own investigation into the corrupt world of Jack Abramoff.   Yet here Reed is, nearly two years later, doling out campaign advice to McCain as the candidate struggles to overcome the controversy generated by the endorsements of John Hagee and Rod Parsley:

John McCain should stop seeking endorsements from evangelical pastors and instead appeal directly to their church members, said Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition executive director.

“John McCain doesn't need to be standing at a bank of microphones next to a particular leader,'' Reed said in an interview on Bloomberg Television's “Political Capital With Al Hunt,'' to be broadcast today. “My advice would be stay away from endorsements and stick to the issues.''

…

Reed, 46, said McCain's strategy of wooing evangelicals shouldn't be “top down,'' and his meetings with leaders and activists should be held in private.

“He needs to connect with them'' by touting his opposition to same-sex marriage and his anti-abortion record, said Reed, a regional director of President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

…

McCain has made “some real progress'' in repairing his relationship with evangelicals, Reed said. He cited a May 6 speech at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in which McCain promised to choose judges in the mold of U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Both were among the five justices who voted in June 2007 to weaken the senator's landmark campaign-finance law.

“It was one of the best speeches on judicial conservative philosophy from a Republican nominee in my career,'' Reed said.

McCain clearly needs some help on figuring out how best to woo the right-wing base he needs in November, but it’s not clear that he should be taking advice from a guy who lost his own Republican primary race because of his history of exploiting that base for professional gain.

It is no secret that, heading into the 2008 election, the Republican Party’s right-wing base is anything but energized about having to vote for John McCain.  Facing dim prospects, the McCain campaign is doing what it can to court the Right, as is the RNC, while Religious Right power-brokers are working overtime to get pastors involved all over the country. 

For instance, a few weeks ago, Kenyn Cureton, the Family Research Council’s Vice President for Church Ministries, appeared on Janet Folger’s “Faith2Action” radio program where he revealed their plans to encourage pastors to speak out leading up to the election and, in his words, “cross the line”:

 “The pastors need to speak clearly about it. I’ll tell you we are working with the Alliance Defense Fund on a series of sermons this fall for pastors to preach, so that they educate their people on the issues.

“We’re gonna be talking about the value of life, the value of family and the value of freedom, basically talking about abortion and stem-cell research,” he continued, “and then also about the gay agenda and then finally about our Christian heritage and how it’s being stripped from every corner of society. And then finally we’re gonna be doing a candidate comparison message that is going to ask pastors to cross the line.”

At the time, it wasn’t know exactly what FRC and the Alliance Defense Fund were planning, but today the ADF revealed that it intends to find preachers who are willing to defy the current tax laws and openly challenge the IRS:

A conservative legal-advocacy group is enlisting ministers to use their pulpits to preach about election candidates this September, defying a tax law that bars churches from engaging in politics.

Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., nonprofit, is hoping at least one sermon will prompt the Internal Revenue Service to investigate, sparking a court battle that could get the tax provision declared unconstitutional. Alliance lawyers represent churches in disputes with the IRS over alleged partisan activity.

The action marks the latest attempt by a conservative organization to help clergy harness their congregations to sway elections. The protest is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 28, a little more than a month before the general election, in a year when religious concerns and preachers have been a regular part of the political debate.

As Americans United’s Rob Boston put it, “If a few misguided churches want to become cogs in a political machine, they can simply give up their tax exemptions and play by the same tax and election-law rules as everybody else.”   But the Right refuses to do that and has decided, instead, to challenge the constitutionality of the law in the court.

And given the current make-up of the Supreme Court and the likelihood that the next president will be placing one or more justices on the Court, it is quite possible that the outcome of this right-wing legal challenge, should it make it to the high court, will rest heavily on the outcome of the very election they are seeking to influence.