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Ron Paul's Iowa State Director Dedicated His Career to Fighting 'Evil' Gay Rights

Submitted by Brian Tashman on December 30, 2011 - 2:05pm

As Iowa State Director for the Ron Paul presidential campaign Mike Heath claims to have visited close to three hundred houses of worship on Paul’s behalf, more evidence of Heath’s rabidly anti-gay background while a Religious Right activist in Maine is coming to light. Before Maine’s marriage equality law was repealed, Heath contended that the legalization of same-sex marriage led to bad weather because “our elected officials overturned a law of nature, and in its place paid honor to evil and unnatural practices,” and Warren Throckmorton, who first uncovered that Paul was boasting about an endorsement from a pastor who advocates for the death penalty for gays and lesbians, notes that Heath was also the Board Chairman of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, one of the most fringe and virulently anti-gay groups in the country.

In Maine, Heath urged the legislature to re-criminalize homosexuality, saying it would “be prudent to reinstate Maine’s anti-sodomy law,” and worked to overturn the state’s marriage equality law, declaring, “Homosexuality has absolutely nothing to do with marriage. Homosexuality is a sickness.”

In an interview with AFTAH president Peter LaBarbera last year, Heath said that homosexuality is not only “inconsistent with the Word of God but it’s inconsistent with biology and common sense,” and that “there is only one position on homosexuality and it’s the one that we take”:

He also alleged that homosexuality will “erode the strength of our nation”:

Heath even claimed that gay rights is “evil” and “nutty,” writing that the “‘gay’ ideology is going to go the way of the Berlin wall” and pledging, “I want Maine to be the place where the ‘gay’ wall starts to crumble.” Heath said that he intends to “take back” the rainbow flag from gay right advocates, saying: “God gave us the rainbow long before the sexual disorientation mob stole it. The rainbow reminds us of His mercy. He will never destroy the world again with a flood. Let's just the tell the loud mouth ‘gays’ that the Rainbow flag belongs to us now. It is a symbol of God's judgment that will fall on them if they persist in their sinful ways”:

Years ago we said the "gays" were going to go after the children. Everyone laughed thinking we were nuts.

In August the Maine Supreme Court perverted a nineteenth-century definition of adoption. They unanimously ruled that nineteenth century Mainers imagined homosexual adoption and allowed for it in their definition. Maine state government is now placing kids in "queer" homes through both the foster care and adoption systems.

There was never legislative approval for any of this, I don't believe. It was all created by unelected Judges and bureaucrats. The entire Middle School System in Maine is now moving toward the provision of prescription contraceptives to 11 year old girls without parental knowledge. Don't think that the King Middle School incident is the end of the story. No way. That is just the beginning. The only thing that will turn that around is a lawsuit that may be filed this Friday. The people of Portland, Christians especially, don't care enough to do ANYTHING. So, guess what. The political and cultural pressure is going to grow and grow. The tyranny of "gay" ideology has already silenced the church of Portland. It is only a matter of time before the cancer spreads throughout Maine.

You think John the Baptist is the only one in history to be silenced by a tyrant? It happens all the time. It isn't supposed to happen here. It is, however, already happening because Christians voluntarily silence themselves. Portland, our largest and most influential city, is leading the way. In the early nineties I compared Portland to Sodom. Little did I know.

While the front line of this war seems to be the schools the front line is actually the heart of every Christian in Maine. The front line is not the mind of the Christian. We already know the difference between right and wrong. The front line is our hearts. Do we care? Do we have the courage to do something about it?

Taxpayers are funding re-education groups called Civil Rights Teams in most of Maine's public schools. These communist-lite groups intimidate Christian faculty and students into silence about sexual immorality in the name of "civil rights." It is insane, and it is working. Evil is like that.

If we care more about our dogs and cats than our God-given obligation to raise our children and grandchildren up in the way they should go then God must be thinking about vocal chords for rocks.

You might conclude that I am not hopeful about Maine's future. Nothing could be further from the truth. This "gay" ideology is going to go the way of the Berlin wall. It is only a matter of time. It can't come soon enough for me. One person told me the backlash would come in five or ten years. As far as I'm concerned the backlash is going on right now. I'll never give in to these people, these evil ideas. Most Mainers feel the same way I do. They are going to speak. They are going to react. It is only a matter of time. Only a sad and pathetic minority embraces these nutty ideas about sex.

I want Maine to be the place where the "gay" wall starts to crumble. How about you? Lets take the word "gay" back from them. How about the rainbow? Lets take that back also.

The Maranacook Community School in Readfield has a rainbow flag hanging in their lobby. It was placed there by the school's noisy and pathetic "gay" rights student group. Rather than ask that a Christian flag be placed next to it, how about we just take the rainbow back. God gave us the rainbow long before the sexual disorientation mob stole it. The rainbow reminds us of His mercy. He will never destroy the world again with a flood. Let's just the tell the loud mouth "gays" that the Rainbow flag belongs to us now. It is a symbol of God's judgment that will fall on them if they persist in their sinful ways. Let's tell them that.

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House GOP Picks Ethically-Challenged Freshmen for Judiciary Committee

Submitted by Brian Tashman on December 21, 2010 - 11:32am

The House Republican Leadership recently announced that incoming Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and Arkansas Congressman Tim Griffin have been assigned seats on Rep. Lamar Smith’s Judiciary Committee. Marino and Griffin, who were profiled in Right Wing Watch’s The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress, are peculiar picks for a committee which has “jurisdiction over matters relating to the administration of justice in federal courts, administrative bodies, and law enforcement agencies” since both Republicans were dogged by corruption and ethics scandals prior to their successful bids for Congress.

Marino resigned from his position as a US Attorney in the wake of a brewing scandal over his ties to resort owner and convicted felon Louis DeNaples. He described DeNaples as his “close friend” and provided a reference for DeNaples when he attempted to win state approval to have slot machines at his resort.

But when Marino’s own office opened an investigation into DeNaples over his ties to organized crime, Marino's assistants discovered the reference and the Department of Justice (DOJ) transferred the case to the US Attorney of Binghamton, NY. The DOJ later launched an investigation of Marino “for allegedly violating several department guidelines” over the “reference letter he wrote to help Louis DeNaples get a casino license,” but the investigation ended once Marino resigned.

Responding to criticism about his ties to DeNaples, Marino declared during an interview that he has evidence the DOJ gave him permission to serve as a reference. However, Boryk Krawczeniuk of The Times-Tribune found that DOJ officials never gave him permission, and Marino failed to produce his “evidence.” Krawczeniuk writes that the DOJ confirmed to multiple news outlets that Marino never sought or received such permission: “an Associated Press story, quoting an anonymous Justice Department source, said the department had ‘no record’ that Mr. Marino sought or received Justice authorization to serve as a reference for Mr. DeNaples. A Justice spokeswoman confirmed the department had no such record last week to The Citizens’ Voice newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, which is owned by the same company as The Times-Tribune.”

Eventually, Marino backed away from his false claim that he was given permission from the DOJ, and “told the Sunbury Daily Item he never asked the Justice Department for permission to serve as a reference.”

After Marino resigned in order to end the DOJ investigations into his actions, he quickly obtained a $250,000-a-year job as “DeNaples’ in-house lawyer.” In his financial disclosure form, Marino under-reported his income and stated that his DeNaples’ salary was just $25,000 annually.

The conservative blog RedState’s Zack Oldham said of Marino’s actions: “The reality is just as bad as–if not worse than–the optics of this scandal.”

Marino’s relationship with DeNaples and his attempts to cover-up his ethics troubles were not his first encounter with ethics questions. As a District Attorney, Marino approached a judge to toss out his friend’s conviction on drug charges. After the Judge refused, the Luzeme County Citizens Voice reports that Marino “approached another judge and won the expungement, but the plan backfired when the second judge learned of the first judge's involvement in the case.”

Despite the corruption accusations, false statements, and the DOJ investigation which plagued Marino’s legal career, House Republicans still picked him for a Judiciary Committee post. Perhaps, Marino was picked due to his staunchly anti-immigrant views, as incoming Judiciary Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) intends to use the committee to push a hard line agenda that includes overturning the 14th Amendment’s of birthright citizenship. Marino opposes comprehensive immigration reform, backs Arizona’s draconian SB 1070, and was endorsed by Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, which has been described as a “nativist extremist organization.” Just as Smith said that President Obama was “awfully close to a violation of [his] oath of office” as a result of his immigration policy, Marino said he would consider impeaching the President over his handling of immigration.

Like Marino, freshman Tim Griffin was forced to resign as a US Attorney and faced his own ethics questions. Griffin worked his way up through the Republican Party ranks through his work in opposition research and was known as “a protégé of Karl Rove.” He worked for the Bush presidential campaigns and has ties to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Griffin then aided efforts in the Bush White House to replace US Attorneys with partisan appointees, and then-US Attorney Paul Charlton said that Griffin “spread the rumors around the White House that Bud Cummins,” who was the US Attorney of Northeast Arkansas at the time, “was not a good U.S. attorney.”

When Cummins was fired, Griffin was appointed to take his place. Deputy Attorney General Paul McNaulty later testified that “Cummings was fired to make a place for Griffin at the urging of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers,” the former White House Counsel. Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s Chief of Staff, wrote in an email that “getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.” Former US Attorney David Iglesias, said that Tim Griffin “never should have been U.S. Attorney, he was fundamentally unqualified.”

However, Griffin resigned from his position as US Attorney when the BBC uncovered documents showing his work in “vote caging” operations in Florida while he was working for the Bush reelection campaign. Griffin tried to suppress the vote by designing and sending out “caging lists” which “were heavily weighted with minority voters including homeless individuals, students and soldiers sent overseas.”

The Arkansas Leader wrote that “The White House intended to fully consolidate the entire federal criminal justice system into its political operation” and Griffin’s “resignation or dismissal ought to be imminent.” Griffin resigned from his post as US Attorney on May 30, 2007.

Now, two former US Attorneys who resigned under the cloud of scandal will have seats on the Judiciary Committee. By selecting Marino and Griffin, the Republican leadership rewarded coveted posts to two freshmen with serious and troubling ethics questions on the committee which oversees the court system, the rule of law, and law enforcement.

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Vander Plaats: Entire Iowa Supreme Court Must Resign

Submitted by Brian Tashman on December 8, 2010 - 5:08pm

After Bob Vander Plaats and Religious Right groups successfully defeated three Iowa Supreme Court justices in November’s retention vote, now Vander Plaats thinks that the entire bench should resign. Vander Plaats, who was recently called by The Hill one of the most important figures that every “Republican presidential hopeful” should “have on speed dial,” says of the four remaining justices that “because of their presence on the court today I think there’s a credibility issue and an integrity issue.” The Iowa Supreme Court unanimously ruled in April of 2009 that the ban on same-sex marriage violated the state’s constitution, and since then outside groups like the American Family Association and the National Organization for Marriage poured in funding to help Vander Plaats convince voters to give three of the judges the boot in November.

Vander Plaats is the founder of The Family Leader, which hopes to make the concerns of the Religious Right and social conservatives a prominent part of the 2012 Iowa Caucuses. According to Vander Plaats, since the voters rejected three of the judges, one should just assume they would have voted against retaining the entire bench: “If all seven would have been on the ballot all seven of them would have been voted off.”

He went on to say, “I believe it is now time for the four remaining Supreme Court justices to respect the will of the people and uphold the honor of the court by resigning in a timely fashion. This is how we hold judicial activism in check.” But wouldn’t respecting “the will of the people” require an actual vote on the four judges?

Apparently, Vander Plaats doesn't believe that he is in any way obligated to actually "respect the will of the people" by stepping down from political activism even though he lost his own bid to become the Republican nominee for governor in the Iowa primary earlier this year.

Demanding the mass resignation of the Iowa Supreme Court prior to a retention vote isn’t Vander Plaats’s only concern. He now wants the state legislature and governor to block the opening of a new abortion clinic in Iowa, saying he hopes Republicans will “beef up our legislation to prevent such a thing from happening in the state of Iowa.”

As Vander Plaats emerges as one of Iowa’s most powerful right wing activists, it remains to be seen how many Republican state legislators will resist his extremist calls.

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Former Operation Rescue Spokeswoman Wins Seat in Congress

Submitted by Brian Tashman on November 24, 2010 - 11:45am

After a contentious recount, Rep. Dan Maffei has conceded to Republican Ann Marie Buerkle, who led the Upstate New York Democrat by just 567 votes. While Buerkle ran as a Tea Party conservative, she has her political roots in the anti-choice movement. Buerkle formerly served as her region’s spokesperson for Operation Rescue, the militant anti-choice and anti-gay organization founded by Randall Terry. Terry, like Buerkle, is from Upstate New York where he made a run for Congress and started his career of attacking “murderous abortionists and demonic homosexual sodomites.”

According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, Buerkle “was the local spokeswoman for Operation Rescue when the group demonstrated outside of a gynecologist’s office in 1989. In that protest, 44 abortion protesters who blocked the entrance to the office were charged with trespassing. Earlier that year, she was with a group that carried a blackened fetus named ‘Baby Choice’ to a protest at Planned Parenthood in Syracuse, where 14 protesters were arrested.”

Buerkle told a Tea Party rally that under Democratic leadership “we lose more and more freedoms every day” and that if Republicans don’t win the election, “by 2012 we’re not going to recognize the United States of America.” One threat to freedom that Buerkle falsely alleges is that “the Obama Health and Human Services Department is planning to compile a federal health record on all U.S. citizens by 2014, and will include information on each individual’s Body Mass Index in the files.”

Although she strongly supports budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy and Wall Street, Buerkle believes she would be able to cut the deficit by ending the near-non-existent federal funding for abortion. Buerkle has embraced other right-wing beliefs, calling for the elimination of the Department of Education and charging that climate change isn’t real and that “a lot of the global warming myth has been exposed.”

Buerkle claims her political and social views have not changed since her days of working for the radical Operation Rescue and organizing demonstrations to stop women from accessing health clinics, but now Buerkle appears to fit comfortably with the "Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress."

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Believers in American Exceptionalism More Likely to Support Torture

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on November 19, 2010 - 3:49pm

We have written about the ways that Tea Party candidates, Religious Right leaders like David Barton, and pundits like Glenn Beck have been promoting the idea of a divinely-inspired American Exceptionalism, and attacking President Obama for being an enemy of exceptionalism who is out to destroy it. 

A new survey released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute makes it clear that there’s fertile ground for politically exploiting this concept, especially among Republican voters. When voters were asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement that “God has granted America a special role in human history,” 58 percent of Americans agree. Not surprisingly, white evangelicals agreed overwhelmingly – 83 percent – along with 76 percent of those who identify with the Tea Party movement and 75 percent of Republicans. Among Democrats, about half – 49 percent – agree. More than two thirds of Americans with no religious affiliation reject the idea that God has given the US a special role in history.
 
Perhaps more interesting is the survey’s findings that white Americans who affirm this notion of divinely inspired American exceptionalism are much more likely to favor military strength over diplomacy as the best way to preserve peace than those who reject exceptionalism, and significantly more likely to believe that torture can be justified. Americans are about evenly split on the question of whether torture can ever be justified against suspected terrorists, but only about a third of Republicans and those identifying with the Tea Party agree that torture can never be justified. Fifty-five percent of those who believe in a divine role for the US believe torture can sometimes be justified; only 42 percent of those who reject that role are willing to accept torture under some circumstances.
 
It’s worth noting that half of white evangelicals believe that torture can never be justified, making this one among several issues in which Tea Party supporters are to the right of other Christian conservatives even though there is major overlap between the two groups. E.J. Dionne and William Galston of the Brookings Institution, in a paper commenting on the survey findings, note that “While white Christian conservatives and Tea Party supporters are in broad agreement on many issues, there is a harder edge to Tea Party views on immigration, multiculturalism, and Islam.”
 
Those differences could contribute to the ongoing public struggles to define what the 2010 election meant and what kinds of issues should be considered part of the Tea Party agenda. The crucial role played by Latino voters in Democratic Senate victories in Nevada, California, and Colorado also point to ways in which the Tea Party movement’s hard-edge positions on immigration and Islam, and its lack of concern about racial discrimination, could interfere with efforts by some GOP and Religious Right leaders to broaden the demographic base of the Republican Party. 
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Neo-Confederate Radical Catches GOP Wave, Elected to Arkansas State House

Submitted by Brian Tashman on November 16, 2010 - 4:09pm

As the Republican Party lurches farther to the right and comes to the successful conclusion of its Southern Strategy, even the party’s most radical candidates can win elections. In an open Democratic seat in Arkansas, where Republicans made significant gains in the election, Republican candidate Loy Mauch defeated his Democratic opponent. According to the Arkansas Times, State Representative-elect Mauch is a staunch Neo-Confederate who is “a current member of The League of the South,” a white supremacist group, and an avowed opponent of Abraham Lincoln and his legacy. He describes the Confederate Battle Flag as “a symbol of Jesus Christ” and “Biblical government,” and an affiliate of the Sons of Confederate Veterans he led presented a speech entitled “Homage to John Wilkes Booth.” David Koon of the Arkansas Times writes:

For seven years, Mauch was the commander of James M. Keller Camp 648 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He stepped down as commander last year. In 2004, angered by the city of Hot Springs' refusal to remove a statue of Abraham Lincoln displayed in the Hot Springs Civic and Convention Center, the Keller Camp hosted a conference in Hot Springs called "Seminar on Abraham Lincoln — Truth vs. Myth," with a keynote address called "Homage to John Wilkes Booth."

Mauch said that he believes Lincoln didn't follow the Constitution. Of the statue of Lincoln in the convention center, Mauch said: "I didn't think it had any place down in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He wasn't friendly to Arkansas. He didn't have anything to do with Arkansas. Nobody in Arkansas voted for him."

A prolific writer of letters to the editor (Garland County Democratic Party chair George Hozendorf said one of the only things he knew about Mauch was that he recalled a letter to the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record in which Mauch advocated for enlarging the controversial Confederate flag and Confederate soldier statue at the fork of Central and Ouachita Avenues), Mauch took pen in hand in 2008 during the controversy stirred up by Huntsville businessman James Vandiver's decision to respond to the election of Barack Obama by flying a Confederate battle flag in front of his motel.

"The government has lost its moral authority over God-fearing Americans," Mauch wrote to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "I wish more patriots like James Vandiver would take their stand for what the Confederate Battle Flag truly symbolizes."

When asked what the Confederate flag symbolizes, Mauch said: "It's a symbol of constitutional government. It's a symbol of Jesus Christ above all else. It's a symbol of Biblical government."

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s profiles of the League of The South, which calls for Whites to “establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities,” and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which has ties to extremist groups such as the League and the Council of Conservative Citizens, reveal their radical underpinnings. The SPLC has documented the Southern Republican politicians who have ties to such racist groups, and Mauch appears to be the latest example of a politician who views the Southern Confederacy with nostalgia and praises its history with religious fervor and nationalistic devotion.

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Meet Congressman-Elect Raul Labrador: Bryan Fischer’s Favorite Tea Partier

Submitted by Brian Tashman on November 5, 2010 - 11:53am

Following Tuesday's election, RWW will bring you our list of the "The Ten Scariest Republicans Heading to Congress." Our second candidate profile is on a hero to Idaho's Religious Right and Tea Party movements, Raul Labrador:

In the Republican primary to see who would face off against Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick, Raul Labrador ran to the right of his very conservative opponent who was endorsed by Sarah Palin and the NRCC. Labrador rallied support from Religious Right and Tea Party groups in order to upset Republican Vaughn Ward, whose campaign imploded, and he went on to defeat Rep. Minnick.

Labrador made his right-wing views clear when he announced his campaign in an email “to a former Idaho blogger known for his extreme conservative views.” He supports withdrawing the US from the United Nations, returning to the Gold Standard, and eliminating the Department of Education. Labrador even wants to repeal the 17th Amendment and end the right of voters to elect their Senators, bizarrely saying that it is “the constitutional position to take” and the only way to make sure “that US Senators are actually beholden to the people.”

In the State House, Labrador said he will work “tirelessly to defund and repeal Obamacare” and spearheaded the passage of a bill which compels the Attorney General to challenge the health care reform law in federal court and bars the government from mandating coverage. When speaking to radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, Labrador maintained that the law was “historic, but remember, Benedict Arnold was also historic, he betrayed our nation. And I think the Democratic Party betrayed our nation yesterday as well.”

An anti-government zealot, he backed bills which seek to reaffirm Idaho’s sovereignty from the federal government, to limit “Congress’ power under the commerce clause,” and to stop the federal government from enforcing gun laws.

He won support from the Religious Right community and the American Family Association’s director of public policy and talk show host Bryan Fischer, who compared gays to terrorists and believes that Muslims should be prohibited from building mosques in the US, called Labrador his “good friend” and the two hosted Tea Party rallies together. Labrador voted to make the federal government “provide for the presence of God in the public domain,” supports the ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers from serving in the military, and opposes same-sex marriage rights.

The Family Research Council Action PAC ran radio ads endorsing Labrador, who supported him as a result of his 100% anti-choice record: he voted to allow medical professionals to refuse contraceptives, voted in favor of increasing burdens on women seeking to terminate their pregnancy, and lauds his opposition to abortion in all cases. Penny Nance of the far-right Concerned Women for America showered praise on Labrador, the National Right to Life Committee extolled his “exemplary pro-life record,” and he was a principal legislative ally of Idaho Chooses Life.

A proponent of corporate interests, Labrador wants to scrap the progressive income tax in favor of a national sales tax, supports the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, and signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. Even though he opposes the Stimulus, as a State Representative he repeatedly voted in favor of spending federal money provided by the Stimulus. On immigration, Arizona’s notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio endorsed Labrador, who has said that illegal immigrants are “going to have to self-deport.”

Raul Labrador’s fanatical mission to rewrite the Constitution and dismantle the federal government has generated massive support from the Tea Party, and Religious Right figures like Bryan Fischer and Peggy Nance have given Labrador their blessing as a result of his rigid anti-choice and anti-equality views. As a result of the election, Labrador is set to bring his extremist views and rightwing platform from the Idaho State House to the US Congress.

 

 

 

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Tealigious Right Gloats, Thanks God for GOP Victories

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on November 4, 2010 - 3:54pm

Two days after the Election Day conservative tide, Newt Gingrich, David Barton, and Jim Garlow held a conference call for conservative Christian pastors to talk about what it all means. The call brought together Gingrich, an establishment Republican who has been courting the Religious Right for a future presidential bid; Barton, a long-time fixture of the Religious Right who has become a Tea Party celebrity thanks to Glenn Beck; and Jim Garlow, who hails from the dominionist wing of the Religious Right and led religious opposition to marriage equality in California. The elections, they said, were a rejection of secularism and evidence of a new religious Great Awakening that would move America to the right for decades to come.

Gingrich, while touting the massive Republican wins in Congress and state legislatures as profoundly historic, also called attention to the million-dollar Religious Right-led campaign that led to the rejection of three marriage equality-supporting Iowa Supreme Court justices in retention elections.  “Taking on the judicial class,” said Gingrich, and telling judges that “we are not going to tolerate enforced secularization of our country,” is “one of the most important things we can engage in.” 
 
Barton reveled in the Republican takeover of the Iowa house, and said he believed that a constitutional amendment denying gay couples the right to marry would be one of the first things to come before the state legislature. Even though Republicans fell just short of taking the Senate, Barton said he thought enough Democrats would be intimidated by what happened to the judges to let an amendment move forward: “This is what we call hanging a bloody scalp on the gallery rail.”
 
Gingrich and Barton both gloated that Republican wins in state legislatures and governorships put the GOP in a position to gerrymander voting districts in a way that will make it hard for Democrats to recover during the next decade.
 
All the speakers spoke of the elections as an embrace of the notion of a divinely inspired “American Exceptionalism” that Glenn Beck has been promoting and that a number of Tea Party-backed candidates were sounding as a campaign theme. Barton said that that 90 percent of the congressional freshman class is “pro-God, pro-life, pro-faith, and pro-family.” He repeated the theme that was pounded by speaker after speaker at the Values Voter summit – that fiscal and social conservatism can’t be separated.
 
In fact, Garlow and Barton went even further, asserting a biblical underpinning for an approach to economics that is probably even further to the Right than many Tea Party activists. Taxation and deficit spending, they said, amount to theft. The estate tax, Barton said, is “absolutely condemned” by the Bible as the “most immoral” of taxes. Jesus, he said, had “teachings” condemning the capital gains tax and minimum wage.   This, he declared, was “a great election for biblical values.”
 
Barton and Garlow discussed the many prayer and fasting campaigns that took place around the elections, and whether there was a way to prove their impact. While Barton said it would be tough to come up with empirical data, he called it historically “irrefutable” that there was an impact from so many people praying and fasting for conservative election victories. “There’s no way from a biblical or historical standpoint you can do that and not see God intervene or move.”
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The Boys on the Bus, Religious Right Style

Submitted by Peter Montgomery on October 28, 2010 - 2:18pm

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins hosted a conference call for FRC activists to hear from Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas. Perkins, who recently said gay teens commit suicide because they know they’re abnormal, is in Iowa, where he has joined the FRC-National Organization for Marriage bus tour that is targeting state Supreme Court judges who ruled last year favor of marriage equality. While it was a unanimous decision, Religious Right groups are urging voters to reject the three justices who are up for retention this year.  Gohmert spent some time with the Iowa bus earlier this week. Gohmert and Perkins mocked the pro-equality judges, saying they hadn’t studied law or biology if they thought there was no difference between a man and a woman and a man and a man.

Most of today’s call focused on the elections and on how right-wing activists can make sure the crop of new Republican lawmakers doesn’t abandon their principles when they get to Washington. Gohmert was actually harder on the GOP than Perkins, complaining about the Party’s leadership, saying they didn’t understand that they had made mistakes by pushing Republicans into supporting the financial bailout and failing to fight harder against the hate crimes act, which, said Gohmert, “pushed us so far down toward the dustbin of history.” He sighed when asked about the House Republicans’ much-ballyhooed “Pledge to America,” saying that while it was beautifully written, it avoided social issues and failed to include real commitments to move legislation and deadlines for achieving progress.
 
Gohmert insisted that Republicans “can’t compromise on principle” and warned against getting “weak-kneed.” He said the principles that made the country great are faith in God, devotion to the traditional family,  and a hard work ethic. He worried that if Republicans win a majority and don’t deliver, Tea Party activists may just decide to abandon the GOP and start a third party, which would help the Democrats take back control. 
 
Perkins bragged that FRC Action is expanding its reach and said its Faith, Family & Freedom fund was active in “five or six” states with hot congressional and senate races. He said he believes that there’s an “awakening” among Americans who understand that they have a responsibility to determine the future of their country – and that if they populate the GOP with enough good people they can reform the party.
 
Gohmert, who recently said that God has ordained Christians to run the country, sounded a similar theme on today’s call. He said God gives the sword to government to punish evil, and urged “true Romans 13-believing Christians” to understand that America’s founders set things up so that the people are the government. “We are given the sword in this country.” He told them that God had blessed American Christians and that they’re expected to use the sword of government and hire (elect) servants (public officials) “to do what we tell them.”
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Ralph Reed’s Anointed Candidates

Submitted by Brian Tashman on October 27, 2010 - 12:10pm

After receiving support and encouragement from potential presidential candidates like Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, and Mike Pence, Ralph Reed’s new group is now courting voters by running radio ads to defeat vulnerable Democratic incumbents. Here are some of the Republican candidates that the Faith and Freedom Coalition say have “a big belief in faith and freedom,” and are hoping to elect to the US House:

  • Iowa’s Brad Zaun, who is challenging Leonard Boswell, “had to be told by West Des Moines police in 2001 to stay away from a former girlfriend who had accused him of harassing her, a police report shows. The woman called police in the early morning hours in April 2001 to complain that a former boyfriend, identified as Zaun, had gone to her home and had pounded on her windows. ‘Brad yelled from outside calling her slut and other names,’ the police report states.”
  • Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee was accused by his ex-wife of “harassment, intimidation and physical abuse.” Divorce records show that DesJarlais was accused of “dry firing a gun outside the Plaintiff’s locked bedroom door, admission of suicidal ideation, holding a gun in his mouth for three hours, an incident of physical intimidation at the hospital; and previous threatening behavior ... i.e. shoving, tripping, pushing down, etc.” Following the divorce, the police were called on DesJarlais for harassing his ex-wife.
  • Allen West, the tea party sensation challenging Ron Klein in Florida, is closely tied to the Outlaws motorcycle gang, which is involved in criminal activity such as drug dealing and lists convicted murderers on its website as members. Members of the Outlaws are even present at his campaign stop, where they have been accused of intimidating Democratic trackers. West himself called on his campaign supporters to make his opponent “scared to come out of his house,” and was forced to leave the military after he “threatened to kill a police officer, then fired a 9mm next to his head to make the threat credible.”
  • Pennsylvania’s Lou Barletta promised to make the city of Hazelton “the toughest place on illegal immigrants in America” by passing draconian laws to stop illegal immigrants from receiving housing or employment. While the Mayor became an all-star to the anti-immigrant movement, his city “has the highest unemployment rate of any city in Pennsylvania.”

Reed is running cookie-cutter ads to help their favored candidates:

It's us vs them. Big government vs a big belief in faith and freedom.  Scott DesJarlais vs Lincoln Davis.  Davis is a 'Them,' like Obama, like Pelosi. He voted for their Stimulus Plan that wasted our money, for taxpayer funded bailouts of Wall Street, for taxpayer funded abortion. DesJarlais is one of us. He says faith in God and the freedom to become all we want to be made America great. We must choose an ‘us.’ Someone who gets it, will protect our freedom and defend our faith. Please vote faith, vote freedom, vote DesJarlais. Because it’s us vs. them.

 

PFAW
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