Gary Bauer

If anyone thought that right-wing anti-choice groups were going to spend any time licking the wound inflicted by the last election in which they saw several states reject their efforts to restrict the right to chose, think again:

"The election forces the pro-life movement to go back to what we do best — local grass-roots organizing," said the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition. "We will not go silently into the night."

…

The overall outcome "brings about feelings of great disappointment, of anger," said the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life. "But that disappointment and anger are forms of energy. ...I believe a lot of people on the sidelines for last eight years will now get engaged."

Pavone predicted that activists would stage more mass demonstrations and abortion-clinic vigils. He also said the election results shed light on the movement's weak points, and would prompt new efforts to register anti-abortion voters and mobilize clergy to be more outspoken in future campaigns … "We will do everything to be sure [the Freedom of Choice Act] fails — the damage it would do to the pro-life movement would be immeasurable," said Mahoney. "On the scale of 1 to 10, that's No. 11 of what our job is."

…

"Any time you have a loss like that, you have an opportunity to reassess and come back stronger," said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life. "If they want to see this as a big loss that will set us back, that's OK. Our people are very energized, and ready for Round Two."

This sentiment seems to be sweeping the Religious Right, with Students for Life of America pledging to be unstintingly vigilant and Deacon Keith Fournier vowing to be a part of a “massive resistance” that will not only fight reproductive choice but will end the “culture war” through mass conversion:

We seem to be at war within when we need to join together as one strong voice for life. The real source of the hatred of life is the Devil Himself. The challenge which those whom the late Servant of God John Paul II called “the people of life” face at this crucial time in the history of the West is nothing new. We have been here before in our 2000 year history. The Christian Church goes into Cultures of death and transforms them from within. We can – and we must – do it again in the Third Millennium. Ours is not really a call to a “Culture War” but rather a call to the Conversion of Culture through the conversion of minds, hearts, and lifestyles which will then lead to a transformation of the social structures of governance and way we live our lives together.

In fact, it looks as if the Right is almost welcoming the new Obama administration, sensing it will provide an opportunity for them to mobilize and energize their base as part of new “resistance movement”:

Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said, "I knew, moments after the election results came in, that I was now part of the resistance movement." As part of its "movement," CWA has launched a nationwide telemarketing advertising campaign. In the ad, Wright says, "We face a president and Congress more hostile to unborn children, to marriage, to religious freedom, to free speech, to protecting our country than has ever existed in our history." According to Wright, the ad generated an immediate response of calls from religious conservatives asking "what they could do" to help, NPR reports.

Religious conservative leaders also have been scrutinizing Obama's speeches from the campaign trail for messages they can use to rally their base, NPR reports. In particular, they have publicized a speech Obama made last year to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America in which he said, "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act." The act -- which would need congressional approval before Obama could sign it -- would eliminate most federal and state restrictions on abortion. Gary Bauer, president of American Values, said of the speech, "I found myself thinking, 'My goodness, I can't believe he's going to make it this easy for us to rally our troops to get off the mat and get back to work.'"

And Clenard Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.Org, goes so far as to declare that the election of Barack Obama was the best thing to ever happen to the anti-choice movement:

With the election of Barack Obama, we now have a face to put on the abortion plague and a link to the leader of the abortion industry, Planned Parenthood. Despite our efforts, in reality, the time to make this connection was clouded by the notoriety of the first black president and a failing economy. The result is: people still don't know who Barack Obama is and many are now looking deeper into the president elect's life and associations. The truth is: knowing his defeat would only minimize this exposure to America, God has now set it up for a global impact of astronomical proportions.

OneNewsNow reports that Gary Bauer is very concerned about reports that advisors to Barack Obama secretly met with leaders of Hamas right before the election but forced them to keep quite about it, lest it damage Obama’s campaign.  Of course, the Obama camp insists that the reports are “just plain false,” but Bauer is voicing his concern nonetheless:

Gary Bauer, president of American Values, is troubled by the news. "If the meeting in fact took place, it would be deeply troubling, not only because the meeting would have been with Hamas -- a group that clearly promotes terrorism -- but also...because there would be absolutely no reason in the world for a representative of Barack Obama, as a candidate, to be having such meetings abroad," he contends.

While he hopes the report is not accurate, Bauer suggests it does not really matter. "If it isn't, there is [sic] still plenty of other things that we know happened in the campaign that has [sic] made those of us who are pro-Israel very concerned, and things that have encouraged those who tend to be more pro-Arab-Muslim when it comes to controversies in the Middle East," he adds.

You know, for someone who saw his own presidential campaign unravel amid allegations that he had been having an affair with a campaign manager – allegations which he insisted were “disgusting, outrageous, evil and sick” – you’d think Bauer would be a little less inclined to spread unverified and disputed rumors.

Did you know that Alan Keyes is still running for president?  Well, he is. And I for one am quite pleased about it because it was rather entertaining to read his latest piece in WorldNetDaily blasting Religious Right leaders for being bad Christians because they are backing John McCain rather than him:

Regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, the 2008 election cycle has been a winnowing season for all Americans who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. Both of the major parties nominated individuals whose views discard the nation's founding principle of respect for the authority of the Creator God. Faced with this circumstance, those in full possession of the facts had to make a choice for or against telling the truth. Many so call Christian leaders chose to act deceitfully. They produced voters' guides and made statements pretending that John McCain is pro-life. His record includes some actions that appear to be pro-life and others that could not be. They emphasized the first and ignored the second. If the pro-life position is just a matter of counting votes, they could claim to be justified. But Christian conscience can never be satisfied with a result that accepts as righteous those who appear to do good, but turn their backs on the principle of all goodness, which is the will and spirit of God. Such were the Scribes and Pharisees whom Christ harshly ridiculed and condemned, even though his uncompromising rejection of them led directly to his unjust arrest, torture and crucifixion ... As a matter of political expediency, some leaders in the pro-life cause have been willing harshly to condemn Obama's conscious choice against God, while consciously hiding McCain's similar choice. They have produced deceptive voters' guides that label McCain as pro-life. These same leaders quietly contradict themselves, however, by arguments that take the view that Christians have no choice but to support the lesser of two evils, thus tacitly acknowledging that McCain, too, stands for evil. Though some ignored the thorough arguments I and others have made against the choice-of-evils position, others recognized their truth. They adjusted their rhetoric, taking the position that Christians had to vote effectively to limit evil – or else they would be guilty of promoting it. Slyly, this argument implies that those who conscientiously seek to hear the word of God and keep it are in fact the evil ones … Now those who say that we are morally obliged to support evil in order to limit it suggest that people who fail to do so are somehow responsible for the evil that results. They contend that people who single-mindedly seek out and support a candidate for president whose views and actions consistently align with the commandments are morally culpable. Anyone, therefore, who does not vote for the evil they prefer (in this case John McCain) is casting a vote for the evil they oppose (in this case Barack Obama.) This comes close to the unforgivable stance of the Pharisees, who ascribed evil to one whose only crime was to follow the will of his father God.

Presumably, leaders like James Dobson, Gary Bauer, and Tony Perkins don’t particularly appreciate being called “Pharisees” and having their commitment to God questioned and criticized by right-wing fundamentalist fruitcakes because of their political choices … which is something to which a lot of people on the left side of the political spectrum can undoubtedly relate.

Last week Gary Bauer warned that at some point down the line, God will "take his hand of protection off of America" if the country doesn't get its act together and stop coddling gays, finally outlaw abortion, and elect John McCain.

And it looks as if that GOTV strategy is being picked up by others on the Right, judging by Jane Chastain's latest column in WorldNetDaily.

Chastain admits that many Christian voters might be confused about things like the economy, healthcare, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so they should just get "back to basics"

Examine the stands of these two candidates —and more important, their records – on the moral issues, and vote accordingly. Then, you can rest assured that this country will be in good hands.

The Ten Commandments given to Moses are not suggestions. They represent God's moral law – and it has never changed. The first commandments are about honoring God and your earthly parents. Next comes God's law against murder. God leaves us no wiggle room when it comes to the shedding of the innocent blood of another human being.

It is no accident that abortion is the most divisive moral issue in America today. God's law may be inconvenient at times, but it is still God's law.

But just in case they are still confused over how to vote, Chastian concludes with a pretty straight-forward argument that God will destory America if Obama is elected:

If you call yourself a Christian and you are still flirting with abortion, or flirting with voting for a candidate who condones the taking of an innocent life, no matter how small, sick or vulnerable, you are only fooling yourself about your Christian commitment – but you will not fool God!

...

If 9/11 wasn't a wake-up call for America, then the financial meltdown of 2008 should be. How many more warnings will God give us before he lifts his hand of protection that has been over this country for more than 200 years? He did not spare the children of Israel. He will not spare the United States of America!

Sarah Posner has a good piece up at Religion Dispatches on Lou Engle, founder of The Call, and his recent branching out from this militant anti-abortion proselytizing and into the marriage debate and the upcoming election. 

Engle, as Posner explains, is best known for his efforts to turns hordes of young men and women into warriors for Christ and “raise up of an army of spiritual warriors for revival” and is becoming something of a regular figure in the political Religious Right movement, appearing with notable figures such as Tony Perkins and Mike Huckabee before and during his recent “The Call” rally in Washington, DC:

The Call’s advisory board is stacked with prominent Pentecostal and charismatic preachers, leading figures in the controversial apostolic movement, which is elevating a new generation of self-appointed prophets and apostles, African-American and Latino religious leaders, charismatic publishing giant Stephen Strang, and religious right leaders like Perkins, Harry Jackson, and Gary Bauer.

The religious right political leadership’s keen interest in Engle was evident at The Call held on the National Mall in August. The day before the event, the public relations firm Shirley Bannister introduced Engle, flanked by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and former Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, at a press conference just a few blocks from the White House. Perkins, one of the most visible political leaders on the religious right, noted Engle’s influence on young evangelicals, who he claimed were even more conservative on abortion than their parents, though he cited no surveys or polls to support the claim.

…

Engle, per his custom, likened his crusade against abortion to Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement. He rocked back and forth, as though davening, preached against Roe v. Wade, and shouted, as the crowd prayed and spoke in tongues, “this is a Passover Day for America. Today, we plead the blood of Jesus on the doorpost!” Purity covenants, requiring abstention from even thinking about sex outside of marriage, were distributed. Participants were urged to consecrate themselves, to be ready for the moment when Jesus “is going to rule over Washington, DC and the world.”

“Repentance and revival cannot start in the building behind me,” said Huckabee, his back to the Capitol, “until it starts in the temple inside me.”

But when he’s not leading day-long rallies such as this or the anti-gay marriage one scheduled at San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium this weekend, Engle and his army can be found at International House of Prayer he co-founded in Kansas City where they direct their prayers toward things like remaking the US Supreme Court … and rather successfully at that, according to Engle: 

Engle unabashedly credits prayer for George W. Bush’s presidency and his subsequent appointment of Supreme Court Justices who upheld the ban on so-called “partial birth abortion.” “The praying church deals with the demonic realm, so that God raises up one and brings down the other,” Engle said in a recent video on The Call’s web site, explaining how prayer proved victorious over satanic forces in the spiritual warfare of an election, adding, “I directly attribute [Bush’s election] to the prayers of the saints.”

Young people at his House of Prayer, said Engle, had been praying about judges for three years when Sandra Day O’Connor retired and William Rehnquist died. As if to prove to his acolytes that their prayer and fasting is not in vain, Engle maintains that their prayers and prophecies shaped the Supreme Court. “One of the young ladies had a dream,” Engle asserted, “that a man named John Roberts would be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.” He beams with pride. “Don’t you think those kids were baptized with confidence? Their prayers, I believe, were literally moving a king to appoint a justice who has now led a court that has banned partial birth abortion. Don’t tell me prayer doesn’t shape a nation.”

That is the title of this good piece by NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty on how John McCain managed to go from reviled enemy of the Religious Right to panderer extraordinaire in just eight years.

Hagerty recounts who McCain openly attacked the Right with his "agents of intolerance" remark back in 2000 and how despite Gary Bauer's efforts to help him adjust the tone and direction of the attack, there was no confusion on the part of Religious Right leaders regarding what he meant: 

"It was very hurtful," recalls Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. "When you attack two of their leaders — and those two people were much more important leaders in 2000 than they are today – well, it damaged McCain with a lot of the grassroots."

And then McCain only compounded the problem this year when he sought the support of John Hagee and Rod Parsley only to reject them when he was forced to answer for their views, something that Richard Land points out only went to show how clueless McCain is about the GOP's right-wing base:

Land says the controversy showed how little McCain knew the constituency he was trying to woo. "Both of these guys hold positions which anyone who knows evangelical life well would know would be problematic for someone running for national office," Land says. "I think McCain and his advisers just didn't know the lay of the land."

The interesting thing about this, which Land doesn't mention, is the fact the Right was not mad at McCain for seeking the support of Hagee and Parsley because they held crazy views unrepresentative of the movement, but because he refused to defend them and their views when they came under attack and ultimately dropped them alltogether. 

But then McCain finally got his act together, started courting them, saying the things they wanted to hear, and finally gave them the VP nominee they had been dreaming of:

In May, McCain began to court the evangelical leaders he had once disdained, with the help of Bauer, his friend and religious insider. All summer, McCain met privately with leaders and stressed his credentials that he is strongly pro-life, anti-same-sex marriage, a religious conservative by record if not by countenance.

Then he threw the first of two punches.

On Aug. 16, McCain and his Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama agreed to be questioned, separately, by Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California. During the televised forum, McCain served up short, definitive answers, just as this evangelical audience wanted it.

...

Bauer was sitting in the front row.

"Even before the event was over during little breaks for TV," he recalls, "people were patting me on the shoulder, saying, 'Oh my gosh, Gary, he's so much better than I thought he would be. This is wonderful!'"

Two weeks later, McCain delivered his knock-out punch to Obama's hopes for winning traditional evangelicals when he announced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.

At that moment, some 250 evangelical leaders were meeting in Minneapolis. Land, who was there, says they jumped to their feet and cheered.

"The first appointment in a supposed McCain admin is who he picked for vice president," Land says. "And he picked someone who is a rock star among pro-lifers, Catholic and Protestant. There's not a pro-life activist in the country who didn't know exactly who Sarah Palin was before John McCain ever picked her as his vice president."

And that is how John McCain shed his pariah status among Evangelicals - by completely caving to their demands. 

Gary Bauer is complaining about the use of the “race card” and declares that John McCain is the real victim here.  Bauer says that “the race card is used to cower conservatives into silence” and that the left “portrays any criticism of Obama as somehow racist.” 

But the most interesting thing is this admission:

There are many ways to play the race card.  One way is to exploit ancient prejudices and stereotypes of one race as inherently inferior to another.  John McCain knows that one well.

He was the improbable victim of racism eight years ago when it was suggested to some South Carolina voters that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. In fact, McCain’s adopted daughter, Bridget, is from Bangladesh.  It’s the type of racism employed by the David Dukes of the world, and it diminishes us all.  

McCain was indeed smeared by these sorts of efforts back in 2000 … by George Bush, Karl Rove, and Tucker Eskew, whom the McCain campaign recently brought on board:

But when I read the news that the McCain campaign had hired Tucker Eskew -- the Republican political hack who orchestrated a smear campaign against McCain's wife and daughter during the 2000 South Carolina primary -- it finally dawned on me: John McCain has adopted Gov. George W. Bush's South Carolina primary strategy.

Back in 2000, after McCain's surprising victory in the New Hampshire primary, George W. Bush and Karl Rove did two things: They adopted John McCain's reform message, claiming the Bush, not McCain, was a "reformer with results." And they went negative, attacking John McCain's record and character through numerous surrogates. Many, in the McCain campaign, including McCain himself, blamed Eskew, Bush, and Rove for spreading stories about Cindy McCain's drug use, about their adopted daughter Bridget's birth, and about whether McCain's Vietnam captivity had left him unbalanced.

Bauer seems to have a real memory problem regarding what happened during the 2000 election, which is odd considering that he was running for President at the time. He had ended his own campaign and endorsed McCain just days before the South Carolina primary, so surely he knows that McCain’s famous “agents of intolerance” speech was partially a response to the vicious attacks he had received in South Carolina … at least he should, since he helped him draft it.  

Presumably, Bauer didn’t intend to compare Bush, Rove, and McCain’s own staffers to David Duke … but that is just what he did, nonetheless.

During the recent Values Voter Summit, Gary Bauer warned that a dirty bomb was going to be detonated in Washington, DC at some time in the future and only John McCain could prevent/respond to it. 

But apparently Bauer was too late, as the Traditional Values Coalition declares that one has already been detonated in California:

In a deliberate act of judicial tyranny, the California Supreme Court dropped a dirty bomb on our entire nation. And its shock-wave impact is absolutely devastating---especially to every state that doesn’t yet have a marriage amendment.

...

The impact of the homosexual marriage ruling in California will be devastating to every other state in the union without a marriage amendment in their constitution, if Prop 8 fails. The homosexual agenda is clear: They intend to use California as a staging area for an assault on the rest of the nation.

...

Think of all the unintended consequences that we cannot even foresee at this time. Where will it end?

It’s your children, your grandchildren, their beliefs, your beliefs, your money, and your liberties that are at stake this election. Let’s work together to protect them. Let’s restore marriage to its Biblical and Holy significance of 1 man and 1 woman.

Let this be a lesson to all of us - when we think that the Right's rhetoric cannot get any more paranoid or overwrought, we can always count on TVC to surprise us. 

I know I have written about this before and that there are bigger issues facing this nation at the moment, but it is driving me nuts, so I am writing about it again.

As I marveled at last time, the conventional media wisdom that John McCain's decision to tap Sarah Palin as his running mate was a sign that he was reclaiming his reputation as a "maverick" despite the fact that the choice was a complete and utter capitulation to the Religious Right.

I'm fully aware that trotting out definitions of words is a hackneyed device, but in this case, it seems kind of relevant - Maverick: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party.

Back in 2000, McCain established his reputation as a "maverick" by bucking his "party" and especially the "group" of Religious Right activists who constitute that party's base with his infamous declaration that they were "agents of intolerance" and a "corrupting influences on religion and politics." So at least in that context, his reputation as a maverick was not completely underserved. 

But since then, he has completely caved to the realities of Republican politics, fallen back in line, and cravenly sublimated himself to the Right's demands.  Yet, for some reason, the media fails to recognize this glaringly obvious fact. 

But even more amazing is the fact that, ever since he named Palin to his ticket, the Religious Right has begun praising McCain's "maverickness."

Shortly after McCain made the announcement, the Family Research Council hailed Palin as "McCain's Co-Maverick." Earlier this month Gary Bauer declared that his "maverick reputation" would "appeal to swing voters." And now, buried in this long US News article, we get Michael Medved saying "Both Palin and McCain are mavericks, authentic, and original."

What group or party does the Right think McCain thwarted in picking Palin, other than his own VP short list of Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge?  The media and the pundits?  Whoever it was, it certainly wasn't the GOP or the Religious Right.  

For the media, McCain initially established his "maverick" reputation by exhibiting independence from the Republican Party and the Religious Right.  He has since negated that persona in a multitude of ways, much to the delight of the Republican Party and the Religious Right, who are now inexplicably crowing that McCain's "maverick" reputation will be advantageous in November.    

It seems that the media considering McCain a "maverick" because he once parted ways with the Republican Party and its right-wing base, and the Republican Party and its right-wing base thinks he's a "maverick" because he picked a running mate that confounded the media.

Needless to say, both cannot be true.  And, in fact, neither is.

Frankly, the fact that the Religious Right is now hailing McCain for his "maverick" reputation shows just how undeserved that reputation really is.