« Religious Right
May 9, 2008
The Right Prepares to Challenge the IRS
It is no secret that, heading into the 2008 election, the Republican Party’s right-wing base is anything but energized about having to vote for John McCain. Facing dim prospects, the McCain campaign is doing what it can to court the Right, as is the RNC, while Religious Right power-brokers are working overtime to get pastors involved all over the country.
For instance, a few weeks ago, Kenyn Cureton, the Family Research Council’s Vice President for Church Ministries, appeared on Janet Folger’s “Faith2Action” radio program where he revealed their plans to encourage pastors to speak out leading up to the election and, in his words, “cross the line”:
“The pastors need to speak clearly about it. I’ll tell you we are working with the Alliance Defense Fund on a series of sermons this fall for pastors to preach, so that they educate their people on the issues.
“We’re gonna be talking about the value of life, the value of family and the value of freedom, basically talking about abortion and stem-cell research,” he continued, “and then also about the gay agenda and then finally about our Christian heritage and how it’s being stripped from every corner of society. And then finally we’re gonna be doing a candidate comparison message that is going to ask pastors to cross the line.”
At the time, it wasn’t know exactly what FRC and the Alliance Defense Fund were planning, but today the ADF revealed that it intends to find preachers who are willing to defy the current tax laws and openly challenge the IRS:
A conservative legal-advocacy group is enlisting ministers to use their pulpits to preach about election candidates this September, defying a tax law that bars churches from engaging in politics.
Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz., nonprofit, is hoping at least one sermon will prompt the Internal Revenue Service to investigate, sparking a court battle that could get the tax provision declared unconstitutional. Alliance lawyers represent churches in disputes with the IRS over alleged partisan activity.
The action marks the latest attempt by a conservative organization to help clergy harness their congregations to sway elections. The protest is scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 28, a little more than a month before the general election, in a year when religious concerns and preachers have been a regular part of the political debate.
As Americans United’s Rob Boston put it, “If a few misguided churches want to become cogs in a political machine, they can simply give up their tax exemptions and play by the same tax and election-law rules as everybody else.” But the Right refuses to do that and has decided, instead, to challenge the constitutionality of the law in the court.
And given the current make-up of the Supreme Court and the likelihood that the next president will be placing one or more justices on the Court, it is quite possible that the outcome of this right-wing legal challenge, should it make it to the high court, will rest heavily on the outcome of the very election they are seeking to influence.
Posted by Kyle at 4:22 PM | Permalink
May 7, 2008
Dobson Nominated for Radio Hall of Fame
Focus on the Family urges its activists to vote for him: "Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, has been helping families worldwide over the radio airwaves for more than 30 years. Now, his daily radio broadcast has received a nomination for induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame. For the first time, the public is invited to vote."
Posted by Kyle at 11:56 AM | Permalink
Because the National Day of Prayer is not Enough
So says Faith and Action: "Faith and Action, America's only Christian missionary outreach to government officials located on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, will hold a news conference in front of the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow, Thursday, May 8, at 4:00 PM, to announce its national effort to enlist support for a National Ten Commandments Day."
Posted by Kyle at 11:37 AM | Permalink
April 29, 2008
The Triumphant Return of the Christian Coalition
Times have been tough for the Christian Coalition in recent years. Since its meteoric rise to prominence under the helm of Ralph Reed in the1990s, the Coalition has become but a shell of its former self since Reed’s departure in 1997.
While Reed struck out on his own only to see his once promising political career strangled by his ties to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff , the organization he built has likewise struggled to stay in business, losing nearly all of its relevance in the political arena:
After Reed’s 1997 exit, the Christian Coalition continued to deteriorate and, by 1999, found itself $2.5 million in debt, as well as facing the repayment of back taxes after having had its tax-exempt status revoked and fines for having improperly supported Newt Gingrich’s election and sharing its mailing list with right-wing Senate candidate Oliver North.
The Coalition moved its headquarters to Washington, DC in 2000 and just a few months later was sued by 10 black employees who alleged that they had been forced to eat in a segregated section and enter the office through the back door. The Coalition settled the suit for a reported $300,000 and its decline continued. Revenue shrank from a high of $26 million in 1996 to just $1.3 million in 2004 and the organization soon found itself facing lawsuits from landlords, lawyers, and clients for failure to pay its bills. In 2002, nearly broke and in shambles, the organization was forced to relocate to South Carolina, and was even sued by its moving company as it tried to collect $1,890 on an unpaid bill
Since then, the Christian Coalition only seems to be able to generate press when it gets embroiled in embarrassing fights, like when state chapters sever their ties with the national organization and then start suing each other or when they try to hire a new president to turn the organization around, only to have him resign before ever taking office because they are unwilling to consider broadening their agenda.
Still, the Coalition continues to limp along, occasionally getting some press for its efforts on behalf of “net neutrality” but, beyond that, doing nobody knows what since they haven’t even issued a press release in six months.
But just because the Coalition has been dormant for years doesn’t mean they are not longer capable of quickly reacting to breaking developments that threaten this nation:
Miley Cyrus should be held accountable for taking the semi-topless Vanity Fair photos, Michele Combs, a spokesperson for Christian Coalition of America, tells Usmagazine.com.
"Disney should reprimand her," Combs says.
Combs is calling for a televised press conference, where "Miley should say it was a mistake and that kids have to be very careful at such a young age." (Cyrus issued a statement, apologizing; the Disney Channel claims the magazine "manipulated" her, which Vanity Fair denies.)
"Kids look up to her," Combs adds. "Something needs to be done."
Miley, 15, also admitted in the interview that Sex and the City is her favorite TV show.
"If she's gonna go out there and represent wholesome values, she needs to be more accountable for her actions," Combs says.
Combs adds that famed photographer Annie Leibovitz has "a reputation for doing racy things ... Miley should have thought this out before she agreed to go in front of Annie."
She said the photos — as well as other ones of a lingerie-clad Cyrus that recently hit the Internet — are "very disappointing ... sad.
The photos are "gonna hurt a lot of people," Combs says. "It's gonna hurt her image.
Posted by Kyle at 4:14 PM | Permalink
April 28, 2008
Alan Keyes In a Nutshell
It appears as if Alan Keyes’ presidential hopes have officially come to an end … at least for this year.
After launching a vanity campaign last summer, Keyes had high hopes for a solid showing in Iowa that never panned out. Keyes then relocated his campaign to Texas, where he pledged to deliver a major breakthrough that likewise never materialized.
Without apparently actually bothering to withdraw from the Republican Primary, the Keyes campaign went quiet before it emerged earlier this month to make a major announcement that he would be officially leaving the Republican Party to seek the Constitution Party’s presidential nomination.
The Constitution Party’s convention was held over the weekend and Keyes did not fare well:
Things aren't working out well for Alan Keyes. The perennial candidate with a worse electoral track record than Harold Stassen spent most of his adult lifetime in the Republican Party. He lasted in the Constitution Party for less than two weeks.
…
Chuck Baldwin -- a preacher, radio show host, and columnist who actually agreed with the Constitution Party's platform on the issues in question -- beat Keyes 3-to-1, a margin worthy of Barack Obama or Barbara Mikulski. Paleocons praised the Constitutionalists for sticking to their principles, which they did, but Keyes's odd notions about how to win friends and influence people also contributed to his drubbing.
Following his embarrassing defeat, Keyes granted an interview to Missouri Viewpoints where he expressed bitterness over being repeatedly stabbed in the back by every party he belongs to. Recounting that he had been “invited in by the leadership of the Illinois party” to run against Barack Obama, he complained that the party then failed to support him and instead, as he put it, “tried to kill me.” Keyes noted that there seems to be a pattern in all of his campaigns and activities where “people invite me in, and then they kill me; they invite me in and then they kill me; they invite me in and then they seek to kill me.”
But with his loss in seeking the Constitution Party’s nomination, Keyes finally has it all figured it all out and explains it as only he could (see full interview here):
The Lord shared with me that, Alan, the child that you are defending in the womb … in the act of procreation, people are joyfully, ecstatically, with great joy in every fiber of their being, saying "yes" to the coming of that new life. The invite the child in. And then in abortion, they kill it. So what, in point of fact my political career is, is the paradigm and pattern of that which I am trying to stop for the child. I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion. You're invited in, but they kill you. You're invited in, but they kill you.
Posted by Kyle at 4:20 PM | Permalink
April 24, 2008
McCain Wins By Losing
Suffice it to say that John McCain and Wisconsin Right to Life (WRTL) have had something of a rocky relationship in the past, engaging in extensive litigation over the senator’s flagship McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation ever since WRTL ran ads back in 2004 targeting WI senators Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold despite a provision in the law “banning ads that mention the names of candidates for public office within certain ‘blackout periods’ ranging from 30 to 60 days before an election--if funds from corporations or unions are used to pay for the ads.”
As the Weekly Standard explained:
McCain has thrown himself into the McCain-Feingold litigation with unusual fervor, personally intervening in Wisconsin Right to Life's lawsuit rather than relying solely on the lawyers for the Federal Election Commission and Justice Department who are charged with defending the constitutionality of federal election laws. "It is not a common, ordinary occurrence" for sponsors of federal legislation to become involved in litigation over their handiwork, notes Bradley A. Smith, a law professor at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, who served as FEC chairman during Bush's first term and is a vocal opponent of McCain-Feingold as well as most other regulation of elections. "How rare it is I can't tell you, but it's more common just to file an amicus [friend-of-the-court] brief."
The case ended up going all the way to the Supreme Court and McCain even filed a brief in which he argued that WRTL’s actions were “a classic case of business corporations funneling unregulated monies to an advocacy group to pay for ads that will influence a federal election” in violation of the law.
Unfortunately for McCain, he ended up losing the case on a decision written by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by Justice Alito and and others whom he voted to confirm to the Court.
But it looks like WRTL isn’t one to hold a grudge, because they have now endorsed him and are citing his pledge to appoint more justices like Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court as one of the key reasons:
The Wisconsin Right to Life Political Action Committee today announced its endorsement of Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential race.
Senator McCain has a stellar 100% voting record on protecting unborn children from abortion. He opposes the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion on demand in the United States and he voted to ban the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure. He opposes taxpayer funding of abortion and supports legislation that would require parental notification prior to a minor's abortion.
Senator McCain opposes human cloning and the intentional creation of human embryos for research purposes. He has stated that he would nominate U.S. Supreme Court justices in the mold of Justices Roberts and Scalia.
Presumably, all McCain needs to do to rack up support from his former Religious Right foes is to keep pledging to appoint the type of judges they demand, even if that means ones who will strike down legislation and views he otherwise champions.
Posted by Kyle at 4:21 PM | Permalink
April 23, 2008
Perfect Timing
As we noted last week, ever since courting John Hagee and receiving his endorsement in February, John McCain hasn’t been quite sure how to handle the controversy that came with it, at times trying to distance himself from Hagee and then turning around and bragging about his close ties with him.
When he was asked about the endorsement by George Stephanopoulos over the weekend, McCain basically summed up his have-it-both-ways position by saying it was probably a mistake to seek it while maintaining that he is glad to have it.
While McCain has gone out of his way to repudiate Hagee’s anti-Catholic statements and views, he’s hasn’t weighed in on Hagee’s other controversial views, such as his belief that New Orleans was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina because the city “had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.”
McCain was probably hoping that Hagee would stop saying outrageous things like that and that the controversy would eventually go away – but that is not what is happening because, as Think Progress reports, Hagee continues to insist the New Orleans was targeted for destruction by God because a “homosexual rally” was being planned for the following Monday:
[Dennis] Prager followed up by asking [Hagee] if all natural disasters are a result of “the divine hand” and if there is “any natural disaster that is not the result of sin?” Hagee responded by saying “it’s a result of God’s permissible will” and “that there was going to be a massive homosexual rally there the following Monday,” which he said “was sin”
PRAGER: Right, but in the case, did NPR get, is this quote correct though that in the case of New Orleans you do feel it was sin?
HAGEE: In the case of New Orleans, their plan to have that homosexual rally was sin. But it never happened. The rally never happened.
PRAGER: No, I understand.
HAGEE: It was scheduled that Monday.
PRAGER: No, I’m only trying to understand that in the case of New Orleans, you do feel that God’s hand was in it because of a sinful city?
HAGEE: That it was a city that was planning a sinful conduct, yes.
Considering that McCain is scheduled to be in New Orleans tomorrow, this might be a good time to get him on the record again about just how glad he is to have Hagee’s endorsement.
Posted by Kyle at 1:16 PM | Permalink
April 18, 2008
Huckabee: No Hard Feelings
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.
Posted by Ezra at 6:24 PM | Permalink
April 16, 2008
Keyes Makes It Official
Alan Keyes has officially left the Republican Party: "Former Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes announced Tuesday night that he has left the GOP and is considering joining the Constitution Party. Keyes, who also ran as a Republican to challenge Barack Obama's U.S. Senate bid in Illinois in 2004, says he is talking with leaders and rank-and-file members of the Constitution Party."
Posted by Kyle at 4:59 PM | Permalink
Perkins' Invitation Lost in the Mail?
Yesterday we wrote a post about various Religious Right figures blasting the “Compassion Forum” that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama participated in over the weekend. Among those most bitter about the event was the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins who dismissed the entire thing as a sham mainly because he wasn’t invited to take part:
[O]rganizations like FRC, which have historically addressed faith issues, were not invited to participate or even submit questions to the candidates. Instead, the event's radical board, which included pro-abortion and homosexual advocates, used the forum as an opportunity to chip away at the traditional agenda of the faith-based community.
Well, as it turns out, the folks over at Faith in Public Life, who organized and co-sponsored the event, have something to say about that:
Perkins claimed that he was not invited to the Forum. In fact, Perkins was invited to attend the Forum AND the VIP reception for faith leaders held beforehand. He never responded to the invitation.
So much for that complaint.
But while we are rehashing old blog posts, we may as well note that the other part of that post dealt with the fact that John McCain subbed the event entirely and the fact that nobody on the Right seems too upset about it. In fact, someone from McCain’s religious outreach team reached out to the Brody File to spread the word that McCain’s faith is “extremely private” and that he won’t be talking about it.
Needless to say, that sort of attitude isn’t going over too well with the Right:
Pastor Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council says not much is known about McCain's personal faith, except that he was raised in a family that believed religion was to be kept private. But Schenck contends that does not comport with the beliefs, customs and practices of evangelicals.
"We live with a mandate to preach the gospel, to unashamedly testify what Christ has done in our lives, to generously share that information with others," says Schenck. "... And John McCain has yet to give that kind of public testimony, and it's undermining the confidence of evangelicals in John McCain."
Schenck believes McCain's reluctance to talk more in-depth about his faith is not a good thing for him, his support base, or the country.
McCain’s faith may be private, but if he wants to win over the Religious Right, he’d better start offering up some public testimony, because that is what they want to hear.
But McCain had better not be too open about his faith because Schenck will just start criticizing it as “woefully deficient” and saying that it shows that he has "no real moral philosophy." Oh wait, no he won’t – he reserves that sort of criticism for Democrats.
Posted by Kyle at 4:42 PM | Permalink
Older Religious Right posts: