2008 election

As we have stated again and again and again over the years, the media seems to have basically two ways of writing about the Religious Right:  1) they are dinosaurs on their way to extinction, or 2) they are galvanized, unified and motivated to reshape America.

And which of these narratives the media is presenting at any given time depends largely on how the Republicans did in the most recent election.  Thus after the 2008 election in which Barack Obama and the Democrats won significant victories, we saw articles like this in Newsweek:

The End of Christian America
The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

...

This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

That was in April 2009. 

Today, of course, Republicans recently won significant victories in the last election, so now Newsweek is running this new cover story:

One Nation Under God
Powerful new rhetoric on the religious right pits Obama and big government against ‘God’s America’—and promises to galvanize Christians in 2012.

...

Though [Glenn] Beck may not be every conservative Christian's idea of a leader, many moderate conservatives agree that the old-guard religious right—represented by Pat Robertson and James Dobson—and their social priorities have ceased to hold much sway in Washington. Further, they believe that something like Christian patriotism, what in theological circles is often called “American exceptionalism,” has replaced abortion and gay marriage as the rallying cry of the religious right

...

Evangelicals characteristically see themselves as a persecuted group whose values are under assault by the mainstream culture, and Beck has most successfully (and visibly) reframed those values in terms of patriotism. The enemy is no longer “moral relativism,” a term that encompasses sexual promiscuity, divorce, homosexuality, and pornography. It’s socialism, the redistribution of wealth, immigrants—a kind of “global relativism” that makes no moral distinction between America and every other place. Beck speaks frequently about God’s special destiny for America. “We used to strive in this country to be a shining city on the hill,” he said at the “Restoring Honor” rally in August. “That’s what the Pilgrims came here for. That’s what they thought this land was. It’s what our Founders thought ... It is the shining example of a place where people work together in peace and friendship and worship God and make things better together.”

Sarah Palin, arguably the other emergent leader of the religious right, echoes this rhetoric. “Molding the crooked timber of humanity requires the grace of God,” she writes in her new book, America by Heart. “We have to know what makes America exceptional today more than ever because it is under assault today more than ever.” With this rhetoric, Beck and Palin are tapping a deep place in the American Protestant psyche ... But Beck’s gift, and Palin’s, is to articulate God’s special plan for America in such broad strokes that they trample no single creed or doctrine while they move millions with their message. Jerry Falwell had a similar gift, and in 1980 his Moral Majority helped make Jimmy Carter a one-term president—and elect Ronald Reagan in a landslide.

Newsweek has even produced two companion pieces - one, a photo-essay entited "Faces of the Christian Right" and another article examining possible GOP presidential candidates in terms of their appeal to the Religious Right.

Just last year Newsweek reported that we had "entered a post-Christian phase" in America where religion was going to play less and less of a role in politics. 

And today Newsweek is reporting that the influence of Christian conservatives remains substantial and that they are rallying around the idea of "American exceptionalism" to press their political agenda and have lots of Republican presidential hopefuls to choose from.  

What an amazing turnaround! 

• Towleroad: Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman Confirms in Interview: I'm Gay.
• David Weigel: Florida's Allen West may be crazy, but so far this year, that hasn't hurt Republicans.
• Julie Ingersoll @ Religion Dispatches: Beck’s “Dream”—Our Nightmare.
• Alan Colmes: Funny How Bush Officials Don’t Remember Working With Imam Rauf.
• Media Matters: Martin Luther King III responds to Beck's Aug. 28 rally: My father "wholeheartedly embrace[d] the 'social gospel'".
• Rachel Slajda @ TPM: How 30 Million DVDs Sent In 2008 Election Fuel The Anti-Mosque Debate Today.
• Jim Burroway @ Box Turtle Bulletin: David Bahati’s Plan for Genocide.

The Pacific Justice Institute is not a particularly well-known group.  In fact, it is quite likely that most people who read this blog don't even recognize the name ... but they probably recognize this video:

That is Brad Dacus, PJI 's President, explaining before the 2008 election how failure to pass Prop 8 in California would be akin to failing to stop Hitler.

But just because PJI is less well-known than many of the other right-wing legal groups, that doesn't mean that it doesn't have some rather high-profile supporters, like Karl Rove and James Dobson:

Addressing a group of roughly 600 people, a senior advisor to former president George W. Bush recently spoke on the importance of faith, family and freedom -- the "timeless values of America."

At the Pacific Justice Institute's 2010 Celebration of Justice Banquet in Anaheim, California, Karl Rove exhorted listeners to defend these values and to make an "argument" for them in all communities. He praised the family as the source that defines America and molds its individuals, saying, "It's in the family where hearts and minds of children are shaped. If society loves and cherishes life, it is because families love and cherish life."

...

He exhorted the audience to continue taking a stand for the values in which they believe, concluding that "if we stay in the fight, we will win the fight. If we love our country, we need to defend our country."

Other gala speakers included PJI attorney Brad Dacus, Dr. James Dobson, and Father Frank Pastore of Priests for Life.

For those that are interested, the East Bay Express ran a good profile of Dacus and PJI last year:

Religious convictions have compelled Dacus to take on such cases as a fight to allow Bakersfield students to opt out of a homosexual teacher's class, a tussle with a Utah public school that he claims was peddling a book "promoting witchcraft" via the Scholastic Book Club catalog, and — while employed by the conservative Rutherford Institute — the defense of the family of a teenage Nebraska boy who, with his parents' help, had his girlfriend arrested for seeking an abortion. For the courts to find in favor of the girl, Dacus told Time in 1994, would have had "a chilling effect" on free speech.

I've already written several posts about the right-wing How To Take Back America Conference scheduled for next month, hosted by various Religious Right leaders including Phyllis Schlafly, Janet Porter, Rick Scarborough, Mat Staver, Joesph Farah, Don Wildmon, and others.  But the effectiveness of my efforts to describe it pale in comparison to hearing it directly from the participants themselves. 

Fortunately, earlier this week several of the hosts gathered for a pre-conference webcast and Porter has now posted several videos from the webconference, starting with a segment featuring Schlafly urging people to attend the event and another featuring General Jerry Boykin previewing his presentation on "the threat of Islamic extremism."

But I'm not posting them because, frankly, they are not that interesting ... at least not in comparison to this segment featuring Scarborough declaring that this conference is the first step to bringing together the Right in order to "turn out the infidels" and fill Congress with true leaders like Rep. Michele Bachmann.  Declaring that the 2008 election felt like a crucifixion, Scarborough took solace in the fact that "God always does his best work right after a crucifixion" and said that now was the time for Christians to rise up, stop Obama from "stealing from the American people" and save this nation (skip ahead to the section between the 6:00 to 8:00 minute mark):

That was followed by a rambling ten-minute presentation by Porter who wallowed in the various conspiracy theories that she's been fixated on recently about government internment camps and mass evacuation buses and a nefarious plot by the government to kill millions of Americans under the guise of providing flu vaccines.  Behold:

Have I mentioned that Mike Huckabee and Michele Bachmann are both going to be speaking at this event?

Just yesterday I wrote a post explaining that, thanks to the recent announcement that he was heading a new Religious Right organization known as the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Ralph Reed appeared to be "succeeding in resurrecting his reputation and re-establishing himself as a bona fide leader of the Religious Right."

And, despite the fact that this new effort currently consists entirely of Reed, one adviser, one actual employee, and a bare-bones website, I think it is safe to say that the "Ralph Reed Redemption Tour" is officially underway now that he is getting long profiles written up by the Associated Press:

Ralph Reed was once a powerful force in Republican politics, able to marshal millions of religious conservatives to the polls while leading the Christian Coalition.

Then his political career took a tumble in 2006 when he was clobbered by a lesser-known opponent in the Republican primary for Georgia lieutenant governor, leading some to conclude Reed's days as an influential GOP figure were over.

But Reed is searching for a dose of redemption. He's launched a new venture that supporters hope will bolster a Republican Party struggling to find its footing after the 2008 election and a recent string of embarrassing scandals.

"I don't view it as a comeback," Reed said in a recent interview. "I view it as something I've always done — trying to be part of the solution and trying to build at the grass roots (level)."

The startup, known as the Faith and Freedom Coalition, is little more than a Web site, but Reed hopes to turn it into a strident new force that uses social media to capture a broader, younger and more diverse audience.

Perhaps most telling, the man who helped cement religious conservatives into a solid GOP voting bloc said he won't focus his group on social issues, but rather the economic crisis.

"This is not the Christian Coalition redux," Reed said. "It's a much broader attempt. Our primary focus is jobs, the economy, taxes, creating economic opportunity. That's the number one issue in the country right now."

Other than a lukewarm statement from Roberta Combs, current president of the Christian Coalition, saying "there is always room for more people who want to start organizations," the article doesn't really contain any particularly new or revealing information, with the exception of this key quote:

Reed said his organization is looking to be more inclusive by reaching out to Jews, Hispanics, blacks and any other group receptive to a fiscal conservative message.

"It's going to look different from the vehicles we have now. It's going to be younger, it's going to be more strident," he said. "It's going to be principled but less ideologically reflexive. And it's going to have a broader issues agenda."

How exciting. A “broader” and "more strident" version of the Christian Coalition? I can't wait to see how that turns out.

Yesterday, President Obama extended some benefits to same-sex partners of US government workers, but progressive groups and activists were decidedly unimpressed.  We released a statement calling it a "very small step in the right direction" and urged the president to live up to his own rhetoric about being a "fierce advocate" for gay and lesbian Americans and many others issued similar statements.

On the opposite side, Religious Right groups blasted the move, calling it an affront to traditional marriage and a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act while accusing Obama of pandering, with the Family Research Council saying he was using taxpayer funds to "placate an angry portion of his base" while Concerned Women for America called the move an "outrageous abuse by the president to benefit his supporters and quell their criticism of him.”

In fact, the idea that President Obama was somehow caving to a bunch of gay rights whiners seems to be predominant theme of the Right's response:

A Christian pastor and staunch opponent of same-sex "marriage" says President Obama threw a bone to homosexual activists yesterday, but they're acting like "playground bullies" because he's not moving quickly enough to enact their top priorities ... Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr., chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, believes President Obama issued the directive in order to placate homosexual activists who are upset that the Obama Justice Department defended DOMA in a legal brief earlier this month -- a move that was at odds with Obama's campaign pledge to repeal DOMA.

Apparently, the prospect of activists trying to hold a president to his campaign rhetoric is completely foreign to the Right ... or at least it is now that they are no longer in power because, in case they have forgotten, when George W. Bush was in office and making nominations to the Supreme Court, they were very very vocal in demanding a “return on their investment” and crowed repeatedly about how Bush had kept his promise when he nominated John Roberts. And when Bush later nominated Harriet Miers, the Right went absolutely bonkers, accusing him of betraying the very voters who had put him in office, forcing Miers to withdraw her nomination and then, when Bush subsequently nominated Samuel Alito, the Right went back to crediting him for once again living up to his promise.

It is especially hypocritical of Jackson, of all people, to be claiming that activists are acting like "playground bullies" for holding President Obama to his promises, considering that, ahead of the 2008 election, Jackson told Jay Sekulow that if John McCain were to win the election, they were going to make sure that McCain knew that they got him elected and that they expected a significant return on their investment (skip ahead to the 3:25 mark):

Sekulow: Senator McCain becomes President-elect McCain, what's the message? What is the message you say to him as President-elect?

Jackson: Well, I think you say to him "we got you elected." If he gets elected, it's only going to be because Christians turned out en masse at the last minute, without being really wooed by him, and then we need to say "look, we have several key priorities, we need to protect life" and we can go down the list of things that we're very concerned about. But we need access - most people don't realize that we did not have as much access to President Bush in the last term that we should have had by rights, having put him in 2004.

One of the things that has constantly amazed me over my years of watching the Right is how often new “grassroots” organizations pop up to speak out on a particular issue and then, just as suddenly completely disappear only to reappear years later as if nothing has changed.

This tendency has been particularly noticeable on the issue of judicial nominations and I’ve written about it before regarding the Judicial Confirmation Network, which was launched back in 2005, ran a bunch of ads and issued a bunch of press releases about the Democrats’ unfair treatment of President Bush’s judicial nominees and garnered a bunch of press, only to go completely silent until they re-appeared on the scene to try and make it an issue in the 2008 election and position itself the lead the opposition to President Obama’s Department of Justice and judicial nominees.

The fact that, for months if not years at a time, groups like the JCN exist in name only never seems to dampen their claims to influence or their ability to get quoted in the press.

And now we can add Kay Daly and the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary to the list of those groups who go utterly dormant for years on end, only to re-emerge when the timing seems right. 

Despite the fact that Daly’s organization has been defunct for more than two years at this point, she has a new op-ed in Human Events blasting Sen. John Kyl for failing to stop Elena Kagan’s nomination to be Solicitor General:

Obama’s DOJ nominees, and Kagan in particular, put a spotlight on Kyl to exert the leadership required for the GOP whip, who is also a member of the Judiciary Committee. At the very least, we expected him to ask Kagan serious questions, and demand answers, that reflected knowledge of her prior statements and the fact that she is a rumored Obama favorite for the Supreme Court. Instead, Kyl barely lifted a finger to expose Kagan’s radicalism, and not only failed to rally the GOP as whip, but even voted to approve Kagan’s nomination in committee -- something that even Sen. Specter would not do.

There is still time for Kyl to show leadership and provide a “teaching moment” on the Constitution and America’s legal culture. When Elena Kagan and similarly troubling Obama nominees come to the floor of the full Senate, Kyl should vote NO, urge his fellow conservatives to do the same, and do everything in his power to give Americans a better view of Obama’s true agenda.

Daly’s tagline says that she is “president of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary,” which, while true, is something of a truism considering that CFJ’s staff has always consisted solely of Daly.  

And, of course, her exhortations and claims to represent grassroots activists might carry more weight if she hadn’t been completely AWOL for the last several years.

A quick look at her website reveals that the organization has not issued a press release since November 2006, nor has any of its data on judicial confirmations been updated since the 109th Congress, while it’s “Judicial Appointments Status Report” is current as of 10/18/2006. In fact, everything on its website is at least two years out of date. Even Daly’s blog goes dormant for months at a time, with her last post having gone up back in October until she returned today to let everyone know that she had a new piece in Human Events.

Like cicadas, these right-wing groups emerge, make a loud racket for a short period of time and then all but disappear, only to re-emerge down the road and start the whole process over again.

And yet, for some reason, they still manage to be taken seriously by right-wing media outlets who willingly give them platforms and by even mainstream media outlets which are apparently either unaware or unconcerned that these shell groups exist primarily to create the appearance of grassroots support for an issue.

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.

First we had Janet Folger writing us a letter from prison in 2010 and delivering newscasts from early 2009 and now, via Good as You, it looks like Focus on the Family has gotten its hands on whatever time-travelling device Folger has invented in orded to send back their own 16-page warning letter [PDF] from the years 2012:

Dear friends,

I can hardly sing “The Star Spangled Banner” any more. When I hear the words,

O say, does that star spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

I get tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. Now in October of 2012, after seeing what has happened in the last four years, I don’t think I can still answer, “Yes,” to that question. We are not “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a majority of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, and hardly any brave citizen dares to resist the new government policies any more.

The 2008 election was closer than anybody expected, but Barack Obama still won. Many Christians voted for Obama – younger evangelicals actually provided him with the needed margin to defeat John McCain – but they didn’t think he would really follow through on the far left policies that had marked his entire previous career. They were wrong.

Once left-leaning Justices took over the Supreme Court, Focus reports, gay marriage and abortion were mandated, the Boy Scouts were forced to disband, Christian schools were shut down and homeschoolers fled the country, religious speech was drastically curtailed and conservative radio was forced off the air, the Pledge of Allegiance was ruled unconstitutional, guns were taken away, pornography was rampant, taxes had sky-rocketed, Christian publishers had all gone out of business, Bush adminstration officials were targeted and imprisoned, and terrorists were constantly unleashing attacks on American soil.

And it was all the fault of those Christians who had voted for Obama:

When did this all start? Christians share a lot of the blame. In 2008 many evangelicals thought that Senator Obama was an opportunity for a “change,” and they voted for him. They simply did not realize Obama’s far-left agenda would take away many of our freedoms as a nation, perhaps permanently (it is unlikely that the Supreme Court can be changed for perhaps 30 more years). Christians did not realize that by electing Barack Obama, the most liberal member ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, they would allow the law, in the hands of a liberal Congress and Supreme Court, to become a great instrument of oppression.

Many people thought he sounded so thoughtful, so reasonable. And during the campaign, after he had won the Democratic nomination, he seemed to be moving to the center in his speeches, moving away from his earlier far-left record. No one thought he would enact such a far-left, extreme liberal agenda.

But the record was all there for anyone to see. The agenda of the ACLU, the agenda of liberal activist judges in their dissenting opinions, the agenda of the homosexual activists, the agenda of the environmental activists, the agenda of the National Education Association, the agenda of the global warming activists, the agenda of the abortion rights activists, the agenda of the gun control activists, the agenda of the euthanasia supporters, the agenda of the one-world government pacifists, the agenda of far-left groups in Canada and Europe – all of these agendas were there in plain sight, and all of these groups provided huge support for Senator Obama. The liberal agenda was all there. But too many people just didn’t want to see it.

Christians didn’t take time to find out who Barack Obama was when they voted for him. Why did they risk our nation’s future on him? It was a mistake that changed the course of history.