California

James Dobson dedicated his radio program today to explaining his sudden decision, which we mentioned earlier, to go to California this weekend to join Lou Engel, Tony Perkins and others for a massive "The Call" rally of prayer and fasting in the name of saving "traditional marriage."

In the clip below, Dobson has just explained that he received a letter from Rev. Jim Garlow, one of the leading organizers of the "yes on 8" movement pleading with Dobson to attend and, after reading it, felt God's hand on his back telling him to attend "The Call."  Dobson chokes up explaining that despite having been on the go for weeks and being exhausted, he knew God wanted him there.  Dobson had to call his son to tell him he couldn't babysit for his grandson this weekend as planned and his son Ryan then confirmed that God wanted him in California instead.  Dobson could barely keep it together when he explained that "the Lord must be involved in this" and then hands over the program to Garlow, who also gets choked up and speaks of their level of spiritual desperation and their constant "crying out to God" to save California because they are "watching the destruction of Western civilization."

Biblical Family Advocates has issued a press release so that its president, Pastor Phil Magnan, can tell all the gays who want to get married that, even if they do get the right, it’s not going to change the fact that Jesus still hates them:

Regardless how people package it, Christ hates the lawlessness of homosexuality. Homosexual marriage is a lawless relationship whether it's legal or not. And I have news for the homosexual community and those who have joined their unholy alliance; God owns the sacred institution of marriage, not the State, so they should stop tampering with what God has joined. Government and the people have a responsibility to uphold what God has instituted.

Should I feel discriminated against because I cannot marry my brother or sister or a 12 year old girl? Should I feel discriminated against because society chooses to be godly or moral? Discrimination based on good moral judgment is a protection for the stability of society and upholds godly morals for future generations. A government that allows homosexuals to marry would be endorsing the unnatural.  Equal protection under the law should never mean the protection and promotion of what is immoral or harmful. Keeping same sex couples from marrying restrains them from corrupting the wholesome sanctity of marriage.

It is eternally reprehensible that the pro same sex marriage movement is working to codify their perversion of the marital union; which has an even broader agenda. This agenda will end up being forced into the religious institutions around us, as well as force children to accept immorality in every venue of education. Evidence for this is already painfully known in the forced homosexual indoctrination of kindergarteners' in California and Massachusetts. Acceptance of same sex unions will inevitably punish families who oppose it. As a Pastor and Minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the homosexual community must be warned that they are at odds with Jesus Christ Himself, who condemned those who cause children to stumble into sin.

Just yesterday I was writing that the GOP's right-wing base was planning on launching an all-out culture war in an effort to rebuild their party in the wake of an Obama victory. 

And today the LA Times reports that social conservatives are already maneuvering to take control of various elements of the party, especially the Republican National Committee:

The social conservatives and moderates who together boosted the Republican Party to dominance have begun a tense battle over the future of the GOP, with social conservatives already moving to seize control of the party's machinery and some vowing to limit John McCain's influence, even if he wins the presidency.

In skirmishes around the country in recent months, evangelicals and others who believe Republicans have been too timid in fighting abortion, gay marriage and illegal immigration have won election to the party's national committee, in preparation for a fight over the direction and leadership of the party.

Apparently, it is going to come down to a decision about whether the RNC will be chaired by a more moderate figure aligned with Florida Governor Charlie Crist, someone like Michael Steele, or someone like South Carolina GOP Chairman Katon Dawson who believes that "moderating our party is what caused us to lose power" in the 2006 elections.

According to the Times, the Right has already won a number of seats on the national committee and is intent on putting someone in power that will make their culture war agenda into the foundation of the party's future:

It was frustration with the Bush-led Republican National Committee that prompted a number of conservatives this year to try to upend the system. Conservatives won seats representing California, Iowa, Alaska, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina and Michigan. One new member is a popular black preacher from Detroit, Keith Butler, who presides over a mega-church.

"There is a new blood in the party that is interested in communicating the message of the party -- the conservative message," said Kim Lehman, executive director of the antiabortion group Iowa Right to Life, who in July defeated a state legislator for one of the state's seats on the national committee.

Rick Warren is often considered one of the most influential leaders of the so-called "New Evangelical" movement that is working to expand the evangelical agenda beyond its anti-gay, anti-abortion traditions to embrace things like poverty, climate change, and human rights.   As we've pointed out before, Warren's reputation of not being part of the old-school Religious Right tends to make people overlook the fact that he does share a great many of their views ... as he says, the only real difference between himself and someone like James Dobson is their tone.

While the media might be fooled by this distinction without a difference, the Religious Right certainly hasn’t been and earlier this week Jan LaRue, formerly of Concerned Women for America, penned a column in which she complained that churches in California were not being active enough in mobilizing support for Prop 8 and called out Rick Warren specifically:

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, hosted a Presidential Candidates Forum at the church on Aug. 16. He asked John McCain and Barack Obama if the California Supreme Court got it wrong when it overturned the definition of marriage.

Here’s a question for Rick Warren: Do you think the court got it wrong? If you do, where’s your support for Prop 8? There’s no mention of it on Saddleback’s Web site. Your office isn’t returning calls requesting information. You hosted an AIDS summit. Where’s your Prop 8 summit?

It was a good question, considering that back in 2004, Warren declared the question of where presidential candidates stand on the issue of "homosexual marriage" to be one of the "5 issues that are non-negotiable" to Christians. As such, it was odd that he hadn’t taken a public stand at a time when the issue is on the ballot in his home state.

Well, Warren is silent no more:

Pastor Rick Warren is endorsing the effort to protect traditional marriage in California.

The well-known Christian author says people in California need to vote "yes" on Proposition 8 because for "5,000 years, every culture and every religion...not just Christianity...has defined marriage as a contract between men and women."

And Warren says "there is no need to change the universal, historical defintion of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population." As Warren puts it: "This is not a political issue -- it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about."

He urges people to vote "yes" on Proposition 8 on November 4 to preserve the biblical definition of marriage.

UPDATE: Via Sarah Posner, here's the video of Warren's endorsement

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. 

The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center has unveiled a new ad highlighting the fact that between 1997 and 2006, anti-affirmative action gadfly Ward Connerly has "lined his own pockets with over $7.6 million from his two tax exempt non-profit organizations; American Civil Rights Institute and the American Civil Rights Coalition."

The BISC points to this recent article on Connerly from The American Conservative that sums up his career by explaining that while "his activism is not entirely cynical" he has somehow managed to acquire "wealth and fame for accomplishing nothing":

But don’t spend too much sympathy on Ward Connerly. The Right’s point man on affirmative action doesn’t need political successes to be a success. While his plans sputter and his former achievements are overturned, Connerly is still being handsomely rewarded. Once he received favored status from the conservative movement, his future was guaranteed. As an activist, Connerly has made millions opposing affirmative action. As a businessman and consultant, he has also made hundreds of thousands in large part because of it.

Between 1999 and 2005, Connerly’s nonprofits, the American Civil Rights Institute and the American Civil Rights Coalition, didn’t challenge a single affirmative-action law. Yet donations climbed to almost $2 million per year. The share that Connerly paid to himself, or to his private for-profit consulting firm, Connerly and Associates, also dramatically increased. In 1998, 22 percent of his nonprofits’ revenue was paid to Connerly in salary or to his firm. By 2001, Connerly’s salary and the fees charged by Connerly and Associates ate up 49 percent of the nonprofits’ combined revenue. Most of the money paid to the firm was listed on tax forms as “speaking fees.” In 2006, when Connerly took up a concrete goal in political activism—ending Michigan’s affirmative-action policies—the cut of nonprofit revenue paid to him and his firm rose to 66 percent of total receipts, nearly $1.6 million.

Connerly’s nonprofits employ him for 30 hours a week and two others full time. The nonprofits then hire him from Connerly and Associates to make speeches. In 2003, ACRI and ACRC paid him $314,079 while he managed two people. By comparison, that year the National Action Network, which receives about $1 million in public funds, only paid Al Sharpton about $4,000. The Claremont Institute, a neoconservative think tank in California, paid its top executive $132,000, and its staff is 9 times the size of Connerly’s. The Heritage Foundation paid its president $292,000 to manage a staff of over 180. The primary financial responsibility that Ward Connerly had at his nonprofits that year was paying his firm over $400,000 for Ward Connerly the consultant, Ward Connerly the speaker, Ward Connerly the political maven—and occasionally a security detail to guard him.

If people are up in arms over the latest mailing from the Virginia GOP, they ain't seen nothing yet. 

Check out this report from The Press-Enterprise in California:

The latest newsletter by an Inland Republican women's group depicts Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama surrounded by a watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken, prompting outrage in political circles.

The October newsletter by the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated says if Obama is elected his image will appear on food stamps -- instead of dollar bills like other presidents. The statement is followed by an illustration of "Obama Bucks" -- a phony $10 bill featuring Obama's face on a donkey's body, labeled "United States Food Stamps."

The GOP newsletter, which was sent to about 200 members and associates of the group by e-mail and regular mail last week, is drawing harsh criticism from members of the political group, elected leaders, party officials and others as racist.

The group's president, Diane Fedele, said she plans to send an apology letter to her members and to apologize at the club's meeting next week. She said she simply wanted to deride a comment Obama made over the summer about how as an African-American he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

"It was strictly an attempt to point out the outrageousness of his statement. I really don't want to go into it any further," Fedele said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "I absolutely apologize to anyone who was offended. That clearly wasn't my attempt."

...

"I didn't see it the way that it's being taken. I never connected," she said. "It was just food to me. It didn't mean anything else."

...

Sheila Raines, an African-American member of the club, was the first person to complain to Fedele about the newsletter. Raines, of San Bernardino, said she has worked hard to try to convince other minorities to join the Republican Party and now she feels betrayed.

"This is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican Party," she said. "I'm really hurt. I cried for 45 minutes."

...

The newsletter is not the first such episode Barajas has had to respond to this week. The Sacramento Bee on Wednesday posted an image it said was captured from the Sacramento County GOP Web site that showed Obama in a turban next to Osama bin Laden.

It said: "The difference between Osama and Obama is just a little B.S." The site also encouraged members to "Waterboard Barack Obama," a reference to a torture technique. The Sacramento County party took down the material Tuesday after being criticized.

Mark Kirk, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County GOP chairman, said he expects Chairman Gary Ovitt to also have a talk with Fedele and to attend the group's local meeting next week to discuss the issue with members, although the county GOP has no formal oversight role over the club. Kirk said these kinds of depictions hurt the party's ongoing efforts to reach out to minorities.

I wonder if you could use those Obama Bucks to buy the Obama Waffles they were selling at the Values Voter Summit.

At press conference earlier today in Washington, two of the GOP’s elder statesmen – former senators John Danforth and Warren Rudman – tried to convince reporters that vote fraud is a serious problem and could call the election into question. What they failed to say is that there is no evidence of widespread vote fraud.

On the other hand, there is undeniable proof of countless acts of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. All you have to do is open a newspaper to know that.

Today in New Hampshire, the former head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for New England was indicted for lying to investigators about his role in a successful effort to jam the phones of the New Hampshire Democratic Party and its allies on election day in 2002.

And today in California, a former Republican congressional candidate pleaded not guilty after being indicted for obstructing an investigation into a letter sent by his campaign to 14,000 legally registered voters with Hispanic surnames informing them that “they could be deported for voting if they were in the country illegally or were an immigrant.”

We trust that Danforth and Rudman will hold another press conference tomorrow, this time to talk about the proven threat of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. But we’re not holding our breath.

Fred Barnes is dismayed that the first two presidential debates have been so boring and uninformative and wishes that, instead of taking about the economy, healthcare, and the war, they would focus more on the social and wedge issues that the Right loves  … kind of like the faith forum hosted by Rick Warren back in August: 

Oddly enough, it wasn’t a journalist who staged the best debate between McCain and Obama. It was an ordained minister, Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California, the author of best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life. In separate sessions, he asked the same questions, first of McCain, then of Obama.

Their answers gave voters a far better idea of what makes the two candidates tick than all the policy-reality questions asked in the two official presidential debates and one vice presidential debate.

What did Warren ask? Questions like, who is the wisest person you know and do you listen to that person? And what is your greatest moral failure and what is America’s.

Here are more Warren questions: What have you changed your mind on? What was your toughest decision? What does your faith and your trust in Jesus Christ mean to you on a daily basis? When does life begin? What’s your definition of marriage? Does evil exist? What is worth sacrificing American lives for? How do you define “rich”? What would you do as president for the millions of orphans in the world?

In an hour with each candidate, Warren managed to draw more out of McCain and Obama than either Brokaw did last night or Jim Lehrer did in the first presidential debate. There’s a lesson in that that the media professionals would be wise to learn.

Apparently it is the purpose of presidential debates is to skew the issues to focus on those that help McCain rally his base.  Heck, why not just have Warren moderate them all? Maybe he could offer to personally pray with McCain, like he’s done with Sarah Palin.  Or better yet, why not just have James Dobson moderate the debates? After all, the only real difference between the two, as Warren admits, is tone.