The Family Research Council was not overly-impressed with the President’s latest State of the Union address, complaining that President Bush “failed to challenge the new majority to advance core family and cultural issues”:
[T]he President failed to challenge the new majority to advance core family and cultural issues, issues that many in the new majority campaigned on last year. These same issues will motivate pro-family Americans to rally around an administration that needs support.
“With two years left in the Bush Presidency, the stakes for families couldn’t be higher. What will become of the culture of life, the defense of marriage, and permanent family-friendly tax policies?
Mr. President, fight for the American family and American families will stand with you!”
The FRC was so unimpressed with the President’s speech that FRC’s Tony Perkins released his own video response in which he warned that “today we have the most anti-family leadership in Congress that Washington has seen in over a decade,” saying the “stakes for the American family could not be higher”:
It seems as if FRC is sticking with its delusion that Republicans merely need to dedicate themselves to advancing the right-wing agenda in order to win the support of the American people.
And if FRC is going to keep making this argument, then we’ll just have to keep reminding them of the uncomfortable truth:
Fully half of the twenty GOP incumbents who lost their seats in the House on Tuesday received either a 100% ranking from the joint Family Research Council Action/Focus on the Family Action voter guide or the endorsement of Gary Bauer’s Campaign for Working Families – and five of the losers received both.
At the same time, five of the six GOP senators who lost their re-election bids received both a 100% ranking form FRC/FOF and a CWF endorsement (the exception being Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee.)
…
The idea seems to be to convince themselves and the rest of the country that Republicans lost 28 seats in the House and 6 in the Senate because they were insufficiently committed to the Right’s agenda.
Unfortunately for Bauer, Dobson and Perkins, their own voter guide (PDF) and list of endorsements suggests otherwise.
House: GOP Incumbent Losses
AZ-05 (Hayworth) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
CA-11 (Pombo) – 57% FRC/FOF Ranking
CT-05 (Johnson) – 28% FRC/FOF Ranking
FL-22 (Shaw) – 57% FRC/FOF Ranking
IN-02 (Chocola)- 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
IN-08 (Hostettler) – 71% FRC/FOF Ranking, CWF Endorsement
IN-09 (Sodrel) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
IA-02 (Leach) – 42% FRC/FOF Ranking
KS-02 (Ryun) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking
KY-03 (Northup) – 57% FRC/FOF Ranking, CWF Endorsement
MN-01 (Gutknecht) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
NH-01 (Bradley) – 57% FRC/FOF Ranking
NH-02 (Bass) – 28% FRC/FOF Ranking
NY-19 (Kelly) – 57% FRC/FOF Ranking
NY-20 (Sweeney) – 57% FRC/FOF Ranking
NC-11 (Taylor) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
PA-04 (Hart) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking
PA-07 (Weldon) – 71% FRC/FOF Ranking, CWF Endorsement
PA-08 (Fitzpatrick) – 71% FRC/FOF Ranking
PA-10 (Sherwood) – 85% FRC/FOF Ranking
Senate: GOP Incumbent Losses
MO (Talent) 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
MT (Burns) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
OH (Dewine) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
PA (Santorum) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
RI (Chafee) – 25% FRC/FOF Ranking
VA (Allen) – 100% FRC/FOF Ranking and CWF Endorsement
If the Republicans lost seats to more progressive candidates because right-wing voters were angry that the party “had abandoned their ideology” – as Bauer, Perkins, and Dobson claim – then how do they explain the fact that 10 of the 20 House members and 5 of the 6 Senators who lost were obvious champions of that ideology and agenda as determined by their own voter guide and list of endorsements?
