Posts on Washington

Mike Huckabee’s decision to sign on with an entertainment talent agency might suggest he intends to take his act to late-night television, but in the meantime, he’s shoring up his political base.

First, Huckabee’s breathlessly promoted announcement was simply the formation of a PAC—pretty standard stuff for a politician. Likewise, it’s hardly a shock to hear he’s going to be campaigning for John McCain.

But it was a big surprise to see Huckabee grant a very friendly interview to the Club for Growth, an anti-tax attack group that started off early and aggressively running TV ads against Huckabee in Iowa. The candidate bit back over the last year, scandalizing conservative fusionists by calling the group “the Club for Greed.” Now, here he is chatting about vice-presidential picks for a Club for Growth web video.

And he’s scheduled to do a fundraiser for the Family Policy Institute of Washington, a state affiliate of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. He’ll be appearing alongside Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. Dobson and Perkins were among the Religious Right “political bosses” who Huckabee felt snubbed him in favor of candidates like Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson—in fact, just a few weeks ago, Huckabee was blaming them for sinking his campaign:

Mike Huckabee can't definitively explain why he couldn't win the Republican presidential nomination, but he thinks the desire of Christian leaders to be "kingmakers," media coverage and Mother Nature all had something to do with it.

"Rank-and-file evangelicals supported me strongly, but a lot of the leadership did not," the former Arkansas governor says. "Let's face it, if you're not going to be king, the next best thing is to be the kingmaker. And if the person gets there without you, you become less relevant."

Huckabee may be looking at another presidential run in 2012, or he may try to parlay his mailing list into a career as a Religious Right “political boss” himself, but in either case, it appears he’s taking a page from McCain’s post-2000 playbook: find your enemies and suck up to them.

Ken Hutcherson has had a busy winter. The football star-turned-megachurch preacher started off January by taking on one of the largest corporations in the world but ended up embroiled in a fight with his daughter’s high school.

Hutcherson has made rabidly anti-gay activism his defining cause, especially as an advocate for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In 2004 he joined James Dobson and other Religious Right leaders for an anti-gay rally on the National Mall, asserting that he represented “God’s people” and that he knew exactly what was on God’s mind: “There are absolutes and I’m absolutely right on this issue. God does not want marriage to be redefined.”

And in his preaching, he makes clear that his views extend beyond “protecting marriage”:

Reasonable people can disagree over whether gay marriage is a good idea. But Hutcherson goes beyond reasonable, at least to judge by the report of Seattle psychologist Valerie Tarico. … On a Sunday when Tarico was present, Hutcherson was preaching on gender roles. During his sermon, Hutcherson stated, "God hates soft men" and "God hates effeminate men." Hutcherson went on to say, "If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I'd rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end."

In early January, Hutcherson devised a creative plan to take control over Microsoft, the software giant based, like Hutcherson’s Antioch Bible Church, in Redmond, Washington. In order to stop Microsoft’s support for its gay employees—through a nondiscrimination policy and partner benefits, for example—Hutcherson launched a program to convince activists to buy Microsoft shares and donate them to his new AGN Financial Network. Then, according to the plan, Hutcherson could overturn gay-friendly policies at shareholders’ meetings.

While creative, the plan seems pretty futile:

It's unclear what effect, if any, the initiative could have on the stock price. It would be difficult to influence company direction -- just to gain a 1 percent stake in Microsoft, about 31 million people would each have to spend $104 to buy three shares. Microsoft has about 9.36 billion outstanding shares, and its largest holder is Chairman Bill Gates, with 858 million shares, or 9 percent of the total. Capital Research and Management Co. follows with nearly 557 million shares, or 6 percent.

… When asked whether the new initiative is a ploy to make money for his church, Hutcherson said, "Absolutely."

"We're going to need the finances to go to the next companies," he said. "Anything you do successfully needs money."

Nevertheless, the “ploy” has the support of religious-right figures such as Gary Bauer, Richard Land, Paul Weyrich, Don Wildmon, and Harry Jackson.

But it seems the Hutcherson has had to set his sights a little lower, from the corporate board room to the school board meeting. While speaking at a local high school on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the preacher was confronted with a contradiction:

Hutcherson spoke for about 30 minutes, telling the 1,500 students sitting in the school gym about growing up amid racial prejudice and how that led him to hate white people, Taylor said. But, Hutcherson told students, he eventually came to accept King's teaching of acceptance and tolerance, and it transformed him.

As the assembly drew to a close, a female language-arts teacher stood and addressed Hutcherson with a rhetorical question.

"She said something to the effect of 'How can you preach a climate of acceptance and tolerance, but that doesn't apply to gays and lesbians?' " Taylor said. The teacher didn't pose the question disrespectfully, but it was not an appropriate time to begin such a dialogue, Taylor said.

The school apologized for the breach in decorum, but Hutcherson quickly threatened action, demanding that the teachers involved be fired:

"You can see the arrogance that's going on in our public school system with the agenda of making our schools just so open and available to what the homosexual agenda is all about," he remarks. "I'm absolutely amazed at the stubbornness that we've run into in our public education system, especially with teachers who think that nothing can happen to them." …

Hutcherson says the days of Christians just making a little noise and then going away are done. He shares that he told school officials "you are going to have to pay and pay dearly for your decisions in putting my daughter through the amount of stress that you have put her through in the last three weeks."

Meanwhile, Hutcherson has launched a campaign against the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, which he calls a “sex club.”

It’s been a banner year for Florida’s Religious Right. In 2006, activists failed to get enough signatures to put their anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot (despite help from the Republican Party), and its favored candidate for governor lost the GOP primary, leading one conservative commentator to declare that “the once-mighty ‘organized’ Christian-conservative voting bloc is no longer intact.”

The last few months have been a different story. In September, dozens of national religious-right activists converged on Fort Lauderdale for the Values Voter Presidential Debate, including Don Wildmon, Phyllis Schlafly, and Rick Scarborough. Even more headliners came to the state just days later for the Family Impact Summit, including Tony Perkins and Richard Land. All the attention must have paid off: Florida 4 Marriage succeeded in gathering enough signatures to put an anti-gay marriage amendment on the 2008 ballot.

Meanwhile, a CBN report warns of the threat of the “gay agenda” in Washington State, which recently passed a domestic partnership law, and in California, where anti-gay activists are in a frenzy over a recently-passed law that bars schools from promoting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. While this protection is already in effect when in comes to discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity, according to “700 Club” host Pat Robertson, when it comes to gays it’s a matter of “trying to recruit more of the straight population.”

On Monday’s “700 Club,” the show looked at the devastating storms that have wracked the Pacific Northwest, and recalled Pat Robertson’s warnings on the show from 2006. After a private retreat, Robertson announced (on the January 5, 2006 “700 Club”) what he said God had told him about the coming year. Perhaps inspired by Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami that hit Indonesia, Robertson listed off all kinds of natural disasters: “earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, the coasts will be lashed by storms and disasters …” Robertson called it “the birth pangs of a more glorious order.”

Of course, it’s 2007 now, not 2006, but nobody’s perfect. Watch:

What else did Robertson predict for 2006? A “successful conclusion” to the Iraq war, “inconclusive” midterm elections, the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court and the retirement of a “liberal” justice, and a strengthening of Bush’s and the Republican Party’s power in Washington. Well, Alito was confirmed, anyway.

Robertson also made his retreat at the beginning of this year, and while 2007 is almost over, there are still a couple weeks left for what Robertson said God had in store for us:

I don’t know if it’ll be in the fall or September or later on, but it’ll be the second half somehow of 2007.  There will be some very serious terrorist attacks.  The evil people will come after this country and there’s a possibility – not a possibility, a definite certainty - that chaos is going to rule.  And the Lord said the politicians will not have any solutions for it.  There’s just going to be chaos.  … It’s going to happen.  I’m not saying necessarily nuclear, the Lord didn't say nuclear, but I do believe it'll be something like that, that'll be a mass killing - possibly millions of people, major cities injured.  I hope I’m wrong and I hope people will pray and that won’t happen, but nevertheless that seems to be what’s coming up.  And then the Lord said he will restrain the evil people, but he will not restrain them necessarily initially.  And, you know, He doesn’t have to restrain people.

More specifically, Robertson warned that “their targets are New York, Washington, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles.”

UPDATE: On Wednesday’s show, the weather-obsessed Robertson responded to recent ice storms by suggesting it might be God’s punishment for hosting talks between Israelis and Palestinians:

Pat Robertson, who leapt back into the headlines this month with his surprise endorsement of Rudy Giuliani, is now wading into the “War on Christmas.” On Thursday’s “700 Club,” the CBN founder lamented the sad state of affairs that led to the Seattle-Tacoma Airport erecting an artsy “winterscape”:

“This New Age political correctness has been imposed on this nation,” complained Robertson. But, he added an intriguing caveat:

Of course, you’ve got to remember, ladies and gentlemen, this Christmas trees, and all the wreaths, and all the garlands, and all the mistletoe—every bit of them come from Teutonic paganism. They are not an integral part of Christianity. And so for the Seattle airport to say this is a Christmas display, it’s no such thing. It is not a Christian display; it is winter solstice. So if they put up a sign that said, ‘We celebrate winter solstice like the Teutonic gods Thor and Woden,’ they’d probably be more accurate.

So while the American Family Association is busy attacking retailers who offer “family trees” in their catalogs rather than “Christmas trees,” calling it an “offense” to Christians, here Robertson is saying the tree is really a salute to “the Teutonic gods Thor and Woden.”

During “War on Christmas” 2005, the Catholic League caught a Wal-Mart customer service representative offering a very similar theory:

[The Wal-Mart rep wrote,] “The majority of the world still has different practices other than ‘christmas’ which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism.  The colors associated with ‘christmas’ red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom.  Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal.”

Catholic League President Bill Donohue’s response? He launched one of his famous “boycotts” against the retail giant. Will Donohue start a “beef” with Robertson?

Following the rejection of the Right’s political agenda in the last election, there have been a number of news articles written in recent months about a potential split emerging within the evangelical political community, with newer leaders pushing to incorporate issues such as the environment and poverty into the agenda, while old-school leaders seek to quash any efforts to dilute their traditional anti-choice, anti-gay message.  

From this split, some new right-wing leaders appear to be emerging, such as Richard Land who seems to be attempting to position himself as the Right’s new powerbroker, seemingly at the expense of James Dobson.  For his part, Dobson has been keeping something of a low profile, perhaps chastened a bit by the controversy he generated when he suggested that presidential hopeful Fred Thompson was not a Christian.   

Other than appearing from time to time to declare that he won’t support or vote for Rudy Giuliani or John McCain, Dobson has been relatively quiet as of late – but that doesn’t mean that his organization, Focus on the Family, has become any less influential or involved in politics, especially at the state level. Just in the last two days, it has been reported that FOF has hooked up with a new “state policy council” in Washington and is affiliated with a similar organization in West Virginia, both of which have a similar goal:  pushing the right-wing agenda at the state level and energizing right-wing voters ahead of the upcoming elections. 

Oklahoma oil execs and new Sonics owners bankrolled Gary Bauer’s Americans United to Preserve Marriage.

Marriage equality proponents pushing admittedly “absurd” initiative mandating married couples have children within three years

Montana bill would ignore national ID requirements, Maine urges Congress to overturn it. Also: Hawaii, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Vermont and Washington.

A school district in Washington State has prohibited teachers from showing Vice President Al Gore’s documentary on global warming. Last month, a national organization of science teachers turned down an offer of free copies of "An Inconvenient Truth" citing controversy surrounding the film, but Federal Way public schools may be the first school district to ban it outright. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Federal Way School Board enacted the ban after complaints from a local gadfly:

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."
Hardison's e-mail to the School Board prompted board member David Larson to propose the moratorium Tuesday night.

Hardison, who vehemently opposed a plan to prohibit PowerPoint presentations at Federal Way City Council meetings last year, was incensed when he learned that one of his daughter’s teachers planned to show the documentary based largely on a PowerPoint presentation delivered by Gore. Hardison’s wife Gayla, who unsuccessfully ran for Federal Way’s City Council in 2005, also objects to what she sees as the anti-American message of the film:

"From what I've seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of 'bad America, bad America,' I don't think it should be shown at all," Gayle Hardison said. "If you're going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don't think the video should be shown."

Unfortunately, school board president Ed Barney agreed with the Hardisons, invoking the familiar rhetoric of right-wing opposition to teaching science:

Students should hear the perspective of global-warming skeptics and then make up their minds, he said. After they do, "if they think driving around in cars is going to kill us all, that's fine, that's their choice."

Asked whether an alternative explanation for evolution should be presented by teachers, Barney said it would be appropriate to tell students that other beliefs exist. "[Evolution]'s only a theory," he said.

Ward Connerly – who ten years ago spearheaded California’s successful ballot initiative to end affirmative action in education, two years later worked to end it in Washington state, and this year joined the effort in Michigan, where a ban on affirmative action also passed – announced today that he is exploring nine more states: Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming, and Utah. “Three down and 20 to go,” he said in a conference call this morning, referring to the number of states that have ballot initiative procedures.

Connerly was joined by Jennifer Gratz, a white student who sued the University of Michigan after being rejected for admission and who later led the ballot initiative to ban affirmative action outright. Gratz will join Connerly’s American Civil Rights Institute to work on the expansion of these bans. “We've always felt that if we could win in Michigan, we could win anywhere,” she said.

Despite the name of Connerly’s group, efforts like the Michigan ban have been opposed by major civil rights organizations. Connerly did pick up support from one major group: “If the Ku Klux Klan thinks equality is right, God bless them,” he said.

To overturn anti-discrimination law.

For 43 states.

So-called “family policy councils.” More here.

“Takings Project” measures in California and elsewhere, largely funded by developer Howard Rich, could dramatically undermine zoning and environmental regulations, not just seizures.