The windbag has aligned himself with Christie Whitman's PAC. Nuff said.
About 12 years ago, I sat in St. Jack's office on Capitol Hill with a friend of mine who was a congressional candidate. Danforth is as Machiavellian as they come. The religious act is just that...dupe the yokels.
Danforth is a liberal ECUSA priest. He is going down with his ship. Any cachet he derives from the epithet"Episcopal Priest" is tarnished by the realtiy of the decay in that denomination.
Tell that to the Founding Fathers.
They're worried that the base won't turn out for rinos. Trouble is, so many have been paying attention to these bullying tactics as applied by the left, that they have no power anymore.
Danforth has allowed his old job as a congressman to go to his head - he can't think straight any more.
Danforth sold his soul to give the Clintons cover on the Waco Massacre.
Danforth was a RINO before RINO's were uncool.
Hey! It ain't righteous conservatives splittin up America! It's them leftist liberals and their MSM!!! I hope St. Peter whaps him up-side the head with this dumb book when he tries to lie his way into the pearly gates!!!
I'm a secularist conservative myself, and I WAS extremely upset with the religious right some twenty odd years ago. At that point -- while the "Moral Majority" org and movement was still active, and when Pat Robertson was running for president, and many fundamentalists and evangelicals were becoming newly politically active -- there was a period of time when conservative Christians thought, and acted like, they could take over the Republican party lock, stock and barrel and dictate it's policies. But, again, that was TWENTY YEARS AGO.
Rather quickly, and in the decades since, the "religious right" has demonstrated again and again their growth in political savvy and sophistication, and an understanding that they are part of a coalition and have to pick their issues, compromising here, agreeing to differ there, and so on, just like any other group with shared perspectives.
Danforth's claim that they are a key element in driving polarization is false and is an utterly gratuitous slap in the face to an important segment of the conservative coalition.
Whitman said the 2008 presidential election will be especially important for political moderates because neither the president nor the vice president will be running for another term.
A moderate Republican such as former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani or Arizona Sen. John McCain would be poised to capture attention from voters who are turned off by the strident edges of the major political parties, she said.
"We are a purple country, we're not a country of red states and blue states," she said.
http://tinyurl.com/g9lsd
I don't see any purple states on this map. Do you?!!!
http://tinyurl.com/7z87d
What a stupid schmuck
All those years the left was snipping away at the moral fabric of this country, there wasn't a problem. Christians who finally got tired of the meddling start trying to sew it back together and WE are the problem? I don't think so.
Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers
By JOHN C. DANFORTH
Published: June 17, 2005
St. Louis
IT would be an oversimplification to say that America's culture wars are now between people of faith and nonbelievers. People of faith are not of one mind, whether on specific issues like stem cell research and government intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, or the more general issue of how religion relates to politics. In recent years, conservative Christians have presented themselves as representing the one authentic Christian perspective on politics. With due respect for our conservative friends, equally devout Christians come to very different conclusions.
http://tinyurl.com/cab5u
Many conservative Christians approach politics with a certainty that they know God's truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through governmental action. So they have developed a political agenda that they believe advances God's kingdom, one that includes efforts to "put God back" into the public square and to pass a constitutional amendment intended to protect marriage from the perceived threat of homosexuality.
When we see an opportunity to save our neighbors' lives through stem cell research, we believe that it is our duty to pursue that research, and to oppose legislation that would impede us from doing so.
We think that efforts to haul references of God into the public square, into schools and courthouses, are far more apt to divide Americans than to advance faith.
Following a Lord who reached out in compassion to all human beings, we oppose amending the Constitution in a way that would humiliate homosexuals.
http://tinyurl.com/cab5u
"constitutional amendment to allow school prayer. He was against it."
Danforth, 67, is an ordained Episcopal priest and a three-term senator, Danforth has evolved into homilist to the mighty, shepherding Washington society over to the other side. He has officiated at funerals for former senators John Heinz and John Chafee, former secretary of commerce Malcolm Baldrige and, more recently, Katharine Graham.
Danforth has stepped into this role partly because he's a clergyman but also because he's not too overtly religious. In the late '80s, an era when the religious right was blooming, Danforth took great pains to keep his day job separate. One of his chief aides, Susan Schwab, recalls him mentioning faith only once on the Senate floor, during a debate over a constitutional amendment to allow school prayer. He was against it.
"He's not a holier-than-thou type," Schwab says. "He's always been called upon to do this sophisticated juxtaposition of faith and politics."
http://tinyurl.com/oc4lq
With his new book "Faith and Politics," in stores next week, Danforth—now 70 and retired—positions himself as an outsider. He takes his own beloved party to task for allowing itself to be hijacked by the Christian right.
snip
Most revelatory are his recollections of his role in the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991. A devoted friend and supporter of Thomas's, Danforth did everything he could to discredit Anita Hill. "I am a real admirer of Clarence Thomas," he says, "and ... I found myself in this fight and I felt really beleaguered. It was a fight without any rules. It was a brawl, and I'm sorry I was involved in it, but I was. Would I have done it differently? I don't know. It was.... It was the worst thing I've ever done in my life." He's not taking it back, but he is taking a hard look at his conscience, which is some-thing he wishes his peers would do as well.
http://tinyurl.com/ec22p
I see that Danforth has no problem using his 'faith' to put on the cover of his book!
http://tinyurl.com/ejhen
ONWARD MODERATE CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS. "It was as though, for the first time, someone had said there was a respectable alternative to the Christian Right. Of course, it was not the first time. Jim Wallis, for example, has been a very public voice for Christian liberalism. But on the whole, conservatives have drowned out their moderate brethren, so the column in the Times was widely heralded as unusual if not unique. We have not been effective in proclaiming our position."
snip
"Divided Christianity is a scandal, clearly contrary to Christ’s High Priestly Prayer “that they may be one,” and clearly contrary to Paul’s teaching that “we all attain to the unity of the faith.” It belies any effort of Christians to be ministers of reconciliation to a fractured world. In my own tiny Episcopal Church, people who are convinced that they possess God’s truth, especially with regard to the ordination of gays, have broken away and formed their own miniscule denominations."
******
"I do not fault religious people for political action. Since Moses confronted the pharaoh, faithful people have heard God's call to political involvement. Nor has political action been unique to conservative Christians. Religious liberals have been politically active in support of gay rights and against nuclear weapons and the death penalty. In America, everyone has the right to try to influence political issues, regardless of his religious motivations.
"The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement.
"When government becomes the means of carrying out a religious program, it raises obvious questions under the First Amendment. But even in the absence of constitutional issues, a political party should resist identification with a religious movement. While religions are free to advocate for their own sectarian causes, the work of government and those who engage in it is to hold together as one people a very diverse country. At its best, religion can be a uniting influence, but in practice, nothing is more divisive. For politicians to advance the cause of one religious group is often to oppose the cause of another."
"The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots."
******
Maybe I was obtuse. People like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have been involved in Republican politics for a long time. Of course, abortion has been a political issue since 1973. But in my own mind, it didn't have the urgency until the Schiavo case. In the past year or so, what was maybe a general interest of Robertson and others in politics and one particular issue, namely abortion, has been transformed into something much more detailed and much more a full-fledged political agenda.
You have Terri Schiavo, the stem-cell issue, the gay marriage issue, the Ten Commandments in courthouses - all occurring about the same time.
But, I thought, particularly with Schiavo, something different had happened: Namely, basic Republican principles had been tossed overboard at the bidding of Christian conservatives.
http://tinyurl.com/gws92
Isn't he the one who white-washed the Waco investigation?
Isn't Danforth a reverend of a Gay church - episcopal ?
He is worried about church attendees abandoning his chucrh to more traditional ones that believe in Christian values.
I am not sure why anyone should take this ranting of a RINO seriously or give it the attention it deserves.