Tag: president

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Preacher in Chief?

As we all know, the president of the United States is elected by and swears to serve all citizens of this nation by protecting and defending the Constitution, not the Bible or any other religious text. America — founded by men who in some instances proclaimed Jesus as their God — was created to assure the freedoms of religion and conscience without regard to an individual’s personal beliefs, creed, or worship practices.

The Republican Party appears to have abandoned any commitment to this tenet of the Constitution and is positioned to nominate a preacher in chief, whose first loyalty will be to the dogmas of Christian fundamentalism.

And they have a constituency. Across the country, sprawling corporate religious “lifestyle centers,” serving more as Christian country clubs than as houses of worship, have produced congregations who foster a blend of ostentatious piety, self-righteous intolerance, and unyielding arrogance. For these churchgoers, voting Republican is de rigueur.

Unprecedented amounts of wealth have been amassed in many of these churches, not in small part as a result of the wealth-redistribution policy of the Republican administrations’ faith-based government programs. The threat of losing this power and money may in fact be looming large in the selection of the party’s nominee and in the desperately pious tone, manner, and attitude of the Republican presidential acolytes.

Not to be outdone, the media, particularly cable television punditry and radio talk-show hosts, are reliably helping to advance the idea of establishing a religious “test” for candidates. Although the most recent Republican debate fielded questions created by viewers of YouTube, those questions were vetted and selected by officials at CNN. Thus, all Republican presidential candidates were asked by Wolf Blitzer if they believed in the inerrancy of the Bible. (Any guesses as to how the pack of them answered?)

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a proud member of God’s Own Party and an ordained Baptist minister, may be the most flagrant offender against the Constitution. Huckabee recently told a group of students at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University that his astonishing rise in the Iowa polls is an “act of God.” He has also received letters of endorsement from Tim LaHaye, author of the “Left Behind” series of novels which extol the Rapture as an imminent end-of-the-world phenomenon.

Huckabee has stated on the record that he does not believe in evolution and lists among the most urgent issues facing the country the perils of abortion and gay marriage, as well as threats to the unlimited rights of gun-owners. His frequent statements of religiosity are delivered with a jocular smile and a sense of humor — designed, apparently, to seem non-threatening to anyone who is not a believer.

And, as if this country hasn’t suffered enough division, enough religious hypocrisy, and enough self-righteous intolerance in the last seven years, now we have former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, an ex-moderate of sorts, hastening to join the ranks of Christian soldiers in the Republican Party and seeking like the rest to impose a religious obligation on political service. His immediate motivation, amplified by concern about rival Huckabee, is to gain the White House at any cost, but the ultimate result of his apostasy from reason is to further erode the wall separating church and state in this country — something most Christian fundamentalists believe is a myth concocted by God-hating secular liberals.

Prompted by Huckabee’s surge, Mormon Romney has ramped up his attempt to sway the fundamentalist crowds and seems determined to try to one-up Preacher Huckabee. He may indeed have trumped Huckabee with this mind-bending assertion: “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. … Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.” Can Romney really not know of the suppression, torture, and murder of heretics and infidels by Christians (and members of virtually every other religion) throughout history?

When candidates such as Romney and Huckabee ratchet up their efforts to destroy the separation of church and state established by this country’s founders, it requires those of us in the electorate to ratchet right back. After all, it is an election that will be held in America next November, not an altar call.

Cheri DelBrocco writes the “Mad As Hell” column for MemphisFlyer.com.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: God is a Republican

God (R-Heaven) is much on the minds of the presidential candidates these days, and particularly on the minds of His colleagues in the Republican party.

God, as has been made abundantly clear in recent years, is a Republican and speaks to his partymates regularly. President George Bush has said he hears from Him quite often. Mitt Romney says without religion, there is no freedom (and God doesn’t mind that he’s a Mormon). Mike Huckabee says his rise in the polls is “God’s will.” Rudy Giuliani says the Bible is “the best book ever written,” and John McCain says he sees the hand of God when he hikes the Grand Canyon, though he thinks evolution might still be possible if you think it is. (Ron Paul now has a blimp and apparently doesn’t feel the need to curry God’s favor.)

Using this logic, we must conclude God is in favor of waterboarding, rendition, declarations of unilateral war, lying to grand juries, accepting bribes, unbalanced budgets, Rush Limbaugh, unchecked pollution, allowing people to pray to Him in school, Fox News, and tax cuts.

God is obviously opposed to evolution, gun laws of any kind, illegal immigration, unions, abortion, gay marriage, taxes, the Hollywood entertainment industry (except for Fox Entertainment shows like Family Guy and K-Ville), doing anything about global warming, and income taxes.

Of course, God also speaks to people other than politicians, including many athletes. He makes it possible for lots of dramatic homeruns to be hit and touchdowns to be scored. (God does not like the Memphis Grizzlies, for some reason. My theory is that Hakim Warrick is a Democrat.) And, oddly enough, God speaks to Willie Herenton, also a Democrat. But many of his supporters are Republicans, so that may explain God’s willingness to chat with the mayor.

There’s no denying Republicans have the edge when it comes to the Almighty. He’s in their corner. He answers their prayers. He’s on their side. Not much we can do about it.

Oh, God tosses the rest of us a bone now and then. I appreciate, for example, that he’s allowing my summer flowers to bloom in December. They look really nice with my Christmas decorations. Thank God.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

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Politics Politics Feature

Clinton-Thompson Race Would be Close in Tennessee, Survey Says

CREDIT: FreakingNews.com

Tennesseans tend to pick Republican favorite son Fred Thompson when asked which 2008 presidential hopeful they support, but in hypothetical head-to-head contests, Democrat Hillary Clinton runs very close behind him and ties national Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, a new poll by Middle Tennessee State University shows.

Thirty-two percent of Tennessee adults choose Thompson when asked whom they most favor in the 2008 election. Clinton attracts 25 percent, while Giuliani and Illinois Democratic Sen. Barak Obama draw 9 percent each. Nine percent name Republican Arizona Senator John McCain, and the rest choose someone else.

In a hypothetical head-to-head contest, though, Thompson garners 50 percent to Clinton’s 42 percent, with 4 percent choosing neither and the rest unsure. Considering the poll’s error margin (plus or minus four percentage points), Thompson’s lead over Clinton is small, and the two could even be tied.

Pitted against Obama, Thompson wins more handily, drawing 55 percent compared to Obama’s 34 percent, with 7 percent choosing neither and the rest unsure. In a hypothetical race between Clinton and Giuliani, meanwhile, the two tie, drawing 43 percent each with 11 percent saying they’d vote for neither and the rest not sure.

“In sum, a Thompson-Obama contest would be the best-case scenario for Tennessee’s Republicans under present conditions,” said MTSU poll director Ken Blake.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The Other Gore

Let me stipulate: Al Gore is the deserved winner of the Nobel Prize, just as his film documentary on the subject, An Inconvenient Truth, had previously merited the Academy Award it got. Gore’s unstinting campaign to alert the nation — nay, the world — about the perils of global warming has been his finest hour.

Equally praiseworthy are the political points the former Tennessee senator and vice president has publicly made since his Supreme Court-assisted defeat for the presidency in 2000. An early critic of the Iraq War, Gore accurately foresaw the extent of the debacle, and he has been eloquent and on point concerning the ongoing erosion of Americans’ Constitutional liberties.

Having materialized as a veritable tribune of the people, even an oracle, should Gore not, then, seek again the presidency which, so many think, he was unfairly deprived of?

The answer is no. As Gore himself has noted, such a course would prove divisive and perhaps destructive to his current cause. It would also necessitate his moving away from a position of unquestioned moral authority into the murky untruthiness of politics — a world which, despite his scaling its heights, Gore may never have been ideally suited for.

A current myth has it that, in 2000, a wicked establishment press made the decision to waylay Gore, mischaracterizing as lies his essentially accurate statements about his own past and otherwise finding fault relentlessly. So dedicated did the establishment press become to the downfall of Gore that its members perversely embraced the patently undeserving George W. Bush, who was regarded as an acceptably hail-fellow-well-met alternative to the goody two-shoes Gore.

Or so goes the story.

The truth is not much prettier but is, well, different. In fact, the media animosity toward Gore (and that part was certainly real) was probably born not in indulgence toward good-ole-frat-boy Bush but in solicitude toward the honest if plodding Bill Bradley, the recently retired New Jersey senator who was Gore’s Democratic primary opponent. The unfortunate Bradley was being gleefully attacked by Gore as often and as gratuitously as Gore himself later was by an unforgiving media.

When Bradley and Gore tangled in a debate at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in October 1999, ABC’s Jake Tapper, then with Salon, was watching the affair via closed-circuit TV in a nearby media room. He remembered it this way: “The reporters were hissing Gore, and that’s the only time I’ve ever heard the press room boo or hiss any candidate of any party at any event.” Time‘s Eric Pooley: “Whenever Gore came on too strong, the room erupted in a collective jeer, like a gang of 15-year-old Heathers cutting down some hapless nerd.”

Gore had been mauling the preternaturally docile Bradley fore and aft, on everything from the New Jerseyan’s alleged indifference to disaster aid for Iowa flood victims (The New York Times: “Mr. Gore’s accusation was false and unfair. Mr. Bradley supported the 1993 legislation that provided $4.8 billion in emergency flood relief for farmers …”) to his racial positions. (Campaign chroniclers James W. Caesar and Andrew Busch: “Bradley landed few clean blows and even took some unfair blows from Gore, who charged before [a] mostly black audience that ‘racial profiling’ of blacks by the police ‘practically began’ in Bradley’s New Jersey.”)

The Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas Zúniga recalled the Gore campaign’s “blatantly unfair” attacks on Bradley, as did The Nation‘s David Corn, who found Bradley “more progressive … less irritating [and] sincere in his desire for political reform,” while Gore’s campaign “bends, manipulates, dodges, or obliterates the truth.”

Said Newsday: “Gore effectively criticized former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley for proposing an expensive health care reform, for being too liberal, and being out of touch with ordinary voters … [H]is aggressive tactics worked.”

And the Washington Post‘s Dana Milbank reported Bradley’s responses to Gore in that Dartmouth debate: “‘Attack, attack, attack, every day, the people are fed up with it … You’re the elephant of negative advertising … Why should we believe you’ll tell th e truth as president if you won’t tell the truth as a candidate?'” And, to bring us full cycle, Milbank segued into this: “In the WMUR press room, my colleagues laugh derisively at Gore’s offensives. …”

That feeling, fair or not, was the likely cause of the media animosity and not any imagined bonhomie of Bush’s. The gallant Gore has at length found — and become — his better angel. He should, we should, leave well enough alone.

Jackson Baker is a Flyer senior editor.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The “Ron Paul Revolution”

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Although on economic issues he is arguably the most conservative candidate now running for president in either major party, Republican Ron Paul is scoring surprisingly well across political boundaries these days, using campaigning techniques that his local Memphis organizer, Chris Holley, frankly attributes to Democratic populist Howard Dean.

“He’s the father of the method,” acknowledges Holley of Dean, the former Vermont governor and current chairman of the Democratic National Committee, whose dramatic run for president was based on innovative grass-roots methods and extensive use of the Internet.
“We’ve taken Howard Dean’s idea and put it on steroids,” says Holley, citing as one example a massive effort this past weekend, in which local Paul enthusiasts, working from late Saturday into the wee hours of Sunday, put up “over 150 banners and 500 signs” touting the maverick Texas congressman’s suddenly nascent presidential campaign.

The small signs, which are posted on utility poles and in other right-of-way areas, appear to be stenciled. The banners advertise in large block letters “The Ron Paul Revolution,” and a curiosity of them is that the four letters e-v-o-l appear in a bright, superimposed red as the word “love” spelled backward.
If that smacks of the 1960s’ flower children, that’s at least partly because the Paul movement contains several youthful activists of that sort — like a 20-ish girl calling herself “Sky” (a drummer in a rock band, it turns out) who, one night last week, brandished a poster touting Paul to Germantown Parkway traffic.

And, to look at the group’s locally produced YouTube offering, “The Ron Paul Revolution, Memphis Style,” it would seem that the similarities persist. The five-minute video offers a dose of politics flavored with “BBQ, iced tea, and Elvis” and, to a background of the remastered Presley song “A Little Less Conversation,” features a montage of Paul’s local supporters preparing and executing the sign-and-banner operation, called “Painting the Town Ron.” A climactic scene has a group of Paulites holding banners at the gates of Graceland itself.

“It’s the most popular Ron Paul video on YouTube right now,” boasts Holley proudly.

Holley himself grew up on Rush Limbaugh broadcasts and considers himself a movement conservative, but he acknowledges that Paul supporters, who come together via Internet-arranged “meet-ups,” come in all shapes, sizes, and varieties. “We’ve got liberals, conservatives, libertarians, old, young, all kinds,” Holley says.

One of the givens would seem to be a disaffection with the Bush administration on civil-liberties grounds and a common opposition to the Iraq war.

It was libertarian Paul’s fervid denunciation of the war and of other “unconstitutional” interventions in foreign countries in a South Carolina debate of Republican candidates three months ago that largely fueled the candidate’s current popularity.

Ever since, Paul seems to have downplayed less well-known parts of his platform — like opposition to the Federal Reserve System — and has mainly been asked about his anti-war position on venues like HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, whose notably acerbic and left-leaning host recently called the wizened 71-year-old Paul “my new hero.”

Paul is also something of a hero to Angelo Cobrasci, the founder of the Shelby County Conservative Republican Club and editor/publisher of The Mid-South Patriot.

“I’d celebrate big-time if he got elected president,” says Cobrasci, whose support for Paul is based on the Texan’s defense of various constitutional guarantees which Cobrasci sees as being in danger right now. “But none of us really expect that he’ll get that far. If he finished second or third in a key state, or if he did well enough to become somebody’s cabinet possibility, that’d be great.”

Cobrasci had hoped to attract Paul as a speaker for the SCCRC, but says ruefully, “We found out he was overbooked!”

Like Holley, Cobrasci sees the Paul movement as being broadly based, consisting of “a large variety of people that usually would not be seen with each other: Republicans, Democrats, people from 18 to 60.”

Conventional wisdom says that the Paul boom will blow over long before next year’s election, but Holley isn’t so sure. “We’re right up there with anybody nationally,” he says and wants to assure Memphians that there’s much more to come.

  • Mayoral candidate John Willingham finally got the support he’s been seeking for years — an official endorsement from the local Republican Party, whose steering committee had spurned the maverick politician in various races over the years.

    Willingham got a 19-17 majority vote last Thursday night from the party’s steering committee. The vote thereby overruled both a candidate recruitment subcommittee (which had formally recommended no endorsement) and party chairman Bill Giannini, who had made no secret of his wish that Republicans avoid endorsing a candidate in the mayor’s race.

    “John’s been there for us all these years, and he’s the only Republican running. He deserved our support,” said steering committee member Jean Drumwright, a longtime GOP activist whose vigilance on Willingham’s behalf had her at one point literally standing over recruitment committee chairman Wayne West, overseeing his count of members’ ballots.

    “Bill Giannini threatened to have me thrown out,” said Drumwright. His statement was corroborated by Willingham supporter Bob Pittman, who complained of a “self-serving element in the party” that, in recent years, had been insufficiently supportive of Republican candidates in favor of nominal Democrats.

    He included in that characterization longtime GOP eminence John Ryder, who is co-chairman for the mayoral race of rival candidate Herman Morris and backed up Giannini and the recruitment committee in calling for no official endorsement in a race that, Ryder argued, was strictly nonpartisan.

    Other Republicans, like Shelby County commissioner Mike Ritz, were vehement supporters of a nonendorsement policy. “Please quote me,” Ritz insisted. “This endorsement of Willingham is potentially disastrous. It could doom Republican endorsees further down the ballot.”

    Though Willingham, who has been polling in the lower single digits, clearly has huge obstacles to surmount in his effort to achieve viability, there is no doubt that the former county commissioner will draw significant benefit from the party endorsement, which carries with it ample support in the form of mail-outs, fund-raising benefits, and other official activity.

    By the same token, the campaigns of Carol Chumney and Morris, both of whom have harbored hopes of support from rank-and-file Republicans, may be blunted somewhat.

    Jackson Baker

    Paul Supporter ‘Sky’ on Germantown Parkway

  • Longtime GOP eminence and party pathfinder Lewis Donelson was the honoree at last week’s “Tennessee Homecoming” celebration of the Shelby County Republican Party. Here Donelson is greeted by two of his political legatees, first-term legislators Steve McManus (left) and Jim Coley. Among those joining in the salute to Donelson were former Governor Winfield Dunn, former city councilman Fred Davis, state Supreme Court Justice William C. Koch, District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, and Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey.
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    Letter From The Editor Opinion

    Letter from the Editor: The Presidential Disconnect

    I was watching Scarborough Country Monday night and it felt like I’d fallen into an alternate universe. Joe Scarborough, you’ll remember, went to Congress in 1994 and served as a first lieutenant in Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolution. When he first came on the air a few years back, he was promoted by MSNBC as its version of Bill O’Reilly. I found him an insufferable flag-waving nit.

    So imagine my surprise when I tuned in to see Scarborough leading a restrained discussion about impeaching the president. The day before, I watched Republican senator Chuck Hagel’s appearance on ABC’s This Week. On that program, Hagel said: “Any president who says ‘I don’t care’ or ‘I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else’ or ‘I don’t care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed’ — if a president really believes that, then there are ways to deal with that.”

    The I-word is being brought out of the closet and into the public square. And it’s little wonder, given the parade of incompetence and cronyism that has been unearthed of late. Seemingly every day, there is a new and more damning revelation about Attorney General Gonzalez’ inability to get his story straight. Now, the recently fired attorneys are on the warpath, angrily hitting the news shows and demanding that the Justice Department clean up its act.

    Again, I remind you, these are Republicans who are making these accusations.

    The president’s truculent unwillingness to accept the reality of a Democratic Congress intent on limiting his royal powers is one thing, but refusing to acknowledge the reality of his disconnect with the American public is quite another. Republicans are starting to get it. They realize their vulnerability in the forthcoming elections and they’re jumping ship. They understand that Bush, as a lame duck, has nothing to lose by “staying the course” — acting tough, holding his breath, and hoping the scandal goes away, and wishing with all his li’l Texas heart that Iraq will get fixed if we only just believe.

    Bush’s believers are a dying breed. And it’s about time.
    Bruce VanWyngarden

    brucev@memphisflyer.com