Book: Bush Aides Called Evangelicals 'Nuts'

LATimes ^ | October 13, 2006 | Peter Wallsten

[CutePuppy]

Book: Bush Aides Called Evangelicals 'Nuts' White House advisors sought the support of conservative Christians but mocked them in private, writes a onetime administration official. By Peter Wallsten, Times Staff Writer October 13, 2006

WASHINGTON — A new book by a former White House official says that President Bush's top political advisors privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as "nuts" and "goofy" while embracing them in public and using their votes to help win elections.

The former official also writes that the White House office of faith-based initiatives, which Bush promoted as a nonpolitical effort to support religious social-service organizations, was told to host pre-election events designed to mobilize religious voters who would most likely favor Republican candidates.

The assertions by David Kuo, a top official in the faith-based initiatives program, have rattled Republican strategists already struggling to persuade evangelical voters to turn out this fall for the GOP.

Kuo is scheduled to appear Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes" as part of a rollout arranged by his publisher, Simon & Schuster, which shares a corporate parent with CBS.

Despite a publisher-enforced embargo, a copy of the book was purchased early at a Manhattan bookstore by a producer for MSNBC's "Countdown," a spokesman for the cable channel said. Program host Keith Olbermann began reading excerpts on his Wednesday show.

While many Democrats opposed the initiative as a violation of church-state separation, the White House used the program to build alliances with prominent African American ministers, some of whom switched political allegiances to back Bush. It was part of a larger minority outreach program designed by Rove and other conservative activists to slice off pieces of the traditional Democratic coalitions in order to build a lasting GOP majority.

peter.wallsten@latimes.com

[BigSkyFreeper]

The DBM hasn't learned that this sort of garbage only energizes the base.

[dawn53]

All these attempts to keep the Evangelicals away from the voting booth on election day makes me think that their influence on election results must be a pretty scary thing to the liberals.

[kittymyrib]

The LAT and NYT are going to run at least a story every other day to keep conservatives from voting on Nov. 7. I wouldn't be too surprised to see this headline in the Sunday editions on Nov 5: Bush Called Jesus "Hitler". They are utterly predictable and really do think conservatives are as stupid and easily led as Democrat voters.

[Shery]

Hmmmm! Note the timing of this one! It will gradually leak out that it was friends of WH aides, then it will be .....well, a non-issue, after the election. To be honest, there are some "nuts" among us, making the rest look pretty bad, at times. I'm pretty sure that anyone could've made a similar remark, not meaning all evangelicals, but when is anything ever reported in its context?

[GOPJ]

Democrats want this posted. Why work for them?

[Mia T]

Exactly! bump

'Simon & Schuster'???
Read 'clinton.'

The clintons have feared and reviled and have been trying to crush the Religious Right for a long time.

They think the Religious Right is what stands between them and their retaking of the White House in two years.

They think the Religious Right can be easily demagogued to throw away its vote in 2008.

They think the Religious Right can be easily demagogued by 'the Foley thing' to throw away its vote this November.

Recall what clinton said about the Religious Right....

WHY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT MUST MOBILIZE AGAINST HILLARY:
CLINTON CONFLATES EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS AND ISLAMO-FASCIST TERRORISTS


by Mia T, 03.16.06

It is wrong to demonize and cartoonize one another and ignore evidence and to make false charges and to bear false witness. Sometimes I think our friends on the other side have become the people of the Nine Commandments. It is wrong to bear false witness because we all see through [the] glass darkly....

We have a curious situation in American where the religious right has tried to turn all who disagree with them into two-dimensional cartoons. I read a very moving article in one of our newspapers a few days ago in which someone in the president's hometown said all the Democrats cared about was abortion, gay marriage, and being weak on defense....

[T]hese people really do believe they are in possession of absolute truths. You won't hear about it during this convention. They'll put up their other face. But the truth is that when it all comes down to it, a lot of the religious absolutists believe that all other issues are irrelevant, that all who disagree with them are somehow almost non human, certainly not deserving of basic consideration. Therefore it's nothing but right to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who share their values and to constantly assert that whatever position they decide to take is right regardless of the inconvenient evidence....

Our number one threat abroad is fundamentalism, absolutism. Terror is their tactic, but it is their ideas, their hatred, their absolute certainty that they are so right that they can kill people who disagree with them -- that is our enemy.

'All of Us See Through the Glass Darkly'
bill clinton
sermon at Riverside Church
before the start of the Republican convention, 2004

 

linton moral relativism meets an insidious balkanizing brand of clinton fundamentalism. The goal: to render the corrupt, treacherous, utter-failure clintons at once untouchable and empowered.

SERMON ON THE MAKE

Note that clinton made this despicable argument in a church. In a black church. So much for the separation of church and state. So much for racial equality and respect. Miss hillary's plantation prequel....

Calculating a black man's worth to be 5/3 of a vote is no less racist, and arguably more so, than calculating his worth to be 3/5 of a white man; the latter is demeaning, but the former is dehumanizing.

Mia T, 07.23.05
THE FIRST BLACK PRESIDENT?
clinton legacy of lynching update

As for fundamentalism, note that no one is more doctrinaire than the clintons. If the Religious Right eschews science for faith, the clintons corrupt science^* for dogma, treasure and power.

 

* More on that later....

AFTERWORD: A note to the Religious Right

I am not arguing that you change your deeply held convictions. To the contrary.

Your convictions--the evangelical ethos-- is precisely my premise, my starting point. It is precisely why I cannot envision how you would doing anything to help elect hillary clinton, someone who is anathema to all you believe.

But that is exactly what you would be doing if, in the next presidential election, you stay home or vote for a 'Perot.' You don't have to physically pull the lever or mark the box or touch the square next to the name 'hillary clinton' to help elect her. To think otherwise is to play with your mind.

It is tempting to rationalize this issue... even to ignore it. It's a difficult issue. It's a dilemma. But rationalizing the issue won't make your actions morally right... and ignoring the issue won't make it go away.

The clintons equate the Religious Right with the islamo-fascist terrorists, with the enemy. They are attempting to transfer onto the Religious Right the hate and fear and disgust Americans feel for the islamo-fascist terrorists. To disseminate their vile invective, the clintons chose a church for the venue and what the they believe to be a vulnerable, easily demagogued population for the audience. (A population they've exploited forever.)

The purpose of this article is to inform you of the clintons' contemptible and dangerous scheme. To let you hear clinton for yourself.

It is critical that you know fully what the clintons think of you and to what extremes they are willing to go to harm you, to defeat you, to crush you.

You must not ignore or rationalize away this threat to your existence. As a Jew, I tend to be vigilant about such threats. I implore you to do likewise. You must not make the same mistake my brethren made almost seven decades ago.

 

READ MORE

 

[kcvl]

Kimberly & David Kuo

Kuo, 36, served as a special assistant to the president for 2 1/2 years and was deputy head of the faith-based office from February 2002 to December 2003. Before joining the White House, he worked for several prominent conservatives, including John D. Ashcroft and William J. Bennett. But before that, he had been a campaign volunteer for former representative Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.) and an intern for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

[Miss Marple]

Does it not sound to you like the guy is a mole? I am not understanding how someone who volunteered for the Kennedys could suddenly wind up working for Ashcroft.

Sometimes I think Republicans are too naive. I honestly think there are moles in almost every Republican campaign, serving as spies or saboteurs. How to explain that guy working on the Istook campaign, or the way some seeminly slam dunk campaiigns (like George Allen) tend to go off the rails?

[GadareneDemoniac]

OK, they've convinced me! I'm definitely not going to vote for G. W. Bush in 2008.

Wait a minute....

[JCEccles]

A liberal publisher rolls out another book designed to create dissension in the Republican ranks from another "top official" on the eve of the election. What are the odds?

And the hits just keep on coming.

[txrangerette]

No one in their right mind would refer to ALL evangelicals as nuts. Are there nuts among evangelicals? Of course, just like there are in all walks of life. That's point one.

Point two: some of the fairly nutty sounding remarks made at times by Pat Robertson. He is high profile and whenever he decides to sound off about something that sticks in his craw he gets top billing. I can see someone taking potshots at Pat Robertson. They probably think he often hurts the conservative cause he intends to champion.

Finally, if they think evangelicals are going to jump off the train because the likes of CBS, Simon and Schuster, Keith Olbermann and this spy in the camp from Ted Kennedy WANT them to, THEY are the ones who are NUTS.

[OldFriend]

If the media can create mass hysteria over the spelling of the word potatoE, we must realize that they never give up making much ado about nothing.

Hopefully, by now, most voters are wising up to their insane agenda.

[Past Your Eyes]

Look in the book of James.

[RoadTest]

I can't accept an accusation against so vague an entity as "White House advisors".
That's like writing anonymous letters because you're too gutless to sign them.

[Matchett-PI]

"If we Evangelicals could get it through our collective heads that Christians are Spiritual Israel, and live like it, things would be better for our nation and for Christianity." ~ Gamecock

Exactly. In 1996, Ralph Reed made it a point to distance himself from those who want to "bastardize" biblical Christianity -- as noted in my post last night here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1718446/posts?page=37#37

[bray]

Of course the DNC never says anything like that. Who do they think their kidding?

Pray for W and Our Freedom Fighters

[A Citizen Reporter]

I think you are right that Republicans are too naive. And if you think 2006 is bad, I'm willing to bet that 2008 will be really bad for "sudden shark jumpers".

This guy has the strangest resume I've ever seen. This appears to be from a magazine article before he left the White House in 2003. He had also worked for the CIA???

David Kuo

Kimberly Kuo & Cal Thomas

Dot Bomb’s Night Boom. Bang. Bust. Before there was the war on terrorism, there was the demise of the dot.coms to sink our spirits. Sinking spirits weren’t in evidence, however, as friends came out to celebrate the release of J. David Kuo’s new book chronicling his tenure as a former senior vice president of communications at Value America.com, entitled “dot.bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath” on October 25. Kuo, whose resume also includes working for the CIA and a U.S. senator, and as a journalist and speechwriter, currently works in the faith-based initiatives office at the White House. An eclectic group of guests that included EJ Dionne, Bill Bennett, Joe Klein, Nina Easton, John Diiulio, Phil Merrill, Cal Thomas, Ronald Christie (assistant to Vice President Cheney), and Adam Walinsky (a former speech-writer for President Kennedy), gathered to celebrate the book’s launch at Smith and Wollensky.

[Tokra]

Divide and Conquer!

....at least a couple of feeble attempts by the MSM to do so.

It isn't working.

[Mr. Brightside]

Yawn.

The President has many, many "aids" each bringing their own perspective.