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December 12, 2008
Today, Media Matters Action Network and Cursor, Inc. jointly announced the sale of Cursor, Inc.'s website MediaTansparency.org to Media Matters Action Network. Together they released the following statements:
“This sale is a win-win for both parties,” said Rob Levine, president of Cursor, Inc. “We've been trying for some time to institutionalize our organization and websites but have unfortunately been unable to raise the funds necessary to carry on our labor-intensive tasks. As the primary tool for tracking the funding of conservative organizations and their representatives who appear in the media, MediaTansparency.org is an excellent fit for Media Matters as they continue to expand their efforts to hold the media accountable.”
“MediaTransparency.org is a tremendous resource for anyone seeking to hold the media to task. We are thrilled to have this important and dynamic tool in our belt,” said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters Action Network. “Cursor, Inc., has done an outstanding job developing MediaTransparency.org, the most robust database of its kind available today. The wealth of data they have assembled on the funding behind conservative organizations is unparalleled.”
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Bill Berkowitz
October 10, 2008
Head of anti-abortion group claims Obama 'supports infanticide'
Two weeks ago, BornAliveTruth.org, an anti-abortion group headed by Jill Stanek, launched a major attack on Sen. Barack Obama with a very personal and heart-wrenching television advertisement aimed at the voters in the toss-up states of New Mexico and Ohio. The ad, which according to Stanek cost the organization $338,000 to run -- in addition to what it is paying its public relations firm, CRC Public Relations -- was titled "The Gianna ad," and features Gianna Jesson, who is identified as an "Abortion Survivor."
"My name is Gianna Jesson, born 31 years ago after a failed abortion," Jesson states in the ad. "But if Barack Obama had his way, I wouldn't be here. Four times Barack Obama voted to oppose a law to protect babies left to die after failed abortions. Senator Obama, please support Born Alive Infant Protection. I'm living proof these babies have a right to live."
The ad, paid for by conservative philanthropist Raymond Ruddy, "singles out Obama's efforts while in the Illinois Senate to defeat the Born Alive Infants Protection Act," according to the Associated Press' Jim Kuhnhein. The AP story reported that "Obama and abortion rights forces in Illinois have said the bill would have undermined the landmark Supreme Court case on abortion, Roe v. Wade."
The BornAliveTruth spot has garnered a great deal of media attention for both Jesson and Stanek. In a late-September telephone interview, Stanek told Media Transparency that both she and Jesson have made a number of television and radio appearances. According to Stanek, in its first two weeks, the ad garnered more than 200,000 hits on YouTube and other websites that have made it available.
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Bill Berkowitz
September 26, 2008
Our Country Deserves Better PAC aims to 'define' Obama's 'weaknesses' and make him 'an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief'
He maintains that the newly-launched anti-Obama political action committee is not tied, nor related, to the campaign of Sen. John McCain and that it is not out to Swiftboat Sen. Barack Obama. The PAC intends to "define [his] weaknesses as a candidate, and thus make him an unacceptable choice to serve as our nation's next president and Commander in Chief." One of the group's earliest fundraising pitches, posted at the TownHall Spotlight, is titled "Barack Obama Sinks To A New Low." And among its ready-for-prime-time television advertisements are spots titled, "Obama Mocks America's Christian Heritage," "Obama's Patriotism Problems" and "Obama's Wrong Values."
He also pointed out that the PAC has clearly defined ethical lines that it will not cross when criticizing Obama.
Meet Joe Wierzbicki, the coordinator of Our Country Deserves Better PAC.
In the ever-expanding universe of Republican Party-sponsored/related groups attacking Sen. Barack Obama, add Our Country Deserves Better PAC to the list. Run by veteran California-based Republican Party conservative activists Sal Russo and Howard Kaloogian, Our Country Deserves Better PAC is a recently launched political action committee -- a committee organized to spend money for the election or defeat of a candidate -- that has several provocative pieces in the hopper.
In a series e-mail exchanges, PAC Coordinator Joe Wierzbicki told me that the Rancho Santa Marga, California-based entity hopes to "raise in excess of $1 million by Election Day," to run a series of anti-Obama television ads in as many as "ten states."
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Bill Berkowitz
September 3, 2008
'Shady soft money group' going after Senate and House seats
Early last month the Republican lobbying group Freedom's Watch (FW) launched a series of television and radio advertisements criticizing congressional Democrats for going on vacation instead of staying in Washington and dealing with energy legislation. One ad urged supporters to "Tell Mark Udall," the Colorado Democratic Congressman now running for a Senate seat, "to show up to work and start fixing Colorado's energy crisis."
Freedom's Watch, which made its first public appearance with a $15 million radio and television advertising campaign aimed at maintaining Congressional support for President Bush's Iraq troop "surge" [escalation] just prior to General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's Congressional appearances in late-August 2007, is now attacking Democrats in a number of House and Senate campaigns.
Tony Feather, a veteran of past GOP campaigns, recently signed on "to run" Freedom's Watch's "new Senate-focused wing," the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza recently reported. Feather, who will oversee the group's work in a number of Senate contests, was "intimately involved in the founding of Progress for America, a 527 group aligned with Republicans that spent millions on advertisements during the 2004 presidential election," the newspaper reported. Feather is a partner in Feather, Larson & Synhorst, "a do-it-all Republican consulting firm with strong ties to the Bush team."
In addition to its new focus on a handful of Senate seats, Freedom's Watch is commissioning misleading or false robo-calls in dozens of Congressional races. The House campaign is being led by Carl Forti, the former communications director at the National Republican Congressional Committee. In early July, PolitickerOH.com reported that FW was running advertisements / robo calls "against nine state lawmakers in eight different states." According to Kyle Kutuchief, writing for The Point, the organization "has been making robo-calls into the 16th Congressional District falsely attacking Democratic Candidate John Boccieri for voting for a gas tax in the State of Ohio in 2003."
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Bill Berkowitz
August 20, 2008
Conservative philanthropy funded Media Research Center astonishingly claims news networks held collective tongues on the Wright affair
In 1962, two years after losing the presidency to John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon ran and lost the governor's race in California. At a post-election press conference, Nixon famously told reporters that they wouldn't "have Richard Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." It wasn't. He won the presidency in 1968, escalated the Vietnam War, was re-elected in 1972, and two years later he was forced to resign in disgrace over the Watergate Affair.
These days, one can easily imagine that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright might wish -- in his heart of hearts -- that the press, the cable news networks, conservative pundits, the headline writers and Republican Party operatives didn't have Jeremiah Wright "to kick around any more."
Thanks to conservative philanthropy and the Republican echo machine, the story about the relationship between the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Senator Barack Obama will be with us through Election Day and beyond. Whether Obama wins or loses, there will be much post-election analysis about how much the Wright Affair hurt the campaign.
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Bill Berkowitz
August 14, 2008
It won't be a post-Labor Day blockbuster or win critical acclaim, but Bossie's Citizens United is rolling out 'Hype: The Obama Effect,' an anti-Obama documentary that aims to make waves
Regnery has published a major anti-Obama book -- David Freddoso's "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate" -- and 2004 Swiftboater Jerome Corsi has written his -- "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality." All sorts of folks are peddling anti-Obama t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers and more. Now it's David Bossie's turn for a big politico/merchandizing play.
Although still a relatively young man, Bossie, the president of Citizens United, has been a political mudslinger for a nearly two decades. He gained some national notoriety in the 1990s when he was relentless in his pursuit of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and later that decade was fired from his position as an investigator for a House committee. Earlier this year, Bossie "took out classified newspaper ads in Columbia University's newspaper and the Chicago Tribune ... searching for [Obama's] ... term paper," supposedly a thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament, Jim Popkin, NBC News Senior Investigative Producer, reported in late July. Although he couldn't find it, he wrote in an e-mail to NBC News that "A thesis entitled Nuclear Disarmament, written at the height of The Cold War in 1983, might shed some light upon what Barack Obama thought about our most pressing foreign policy issue for 40-plus years (U.S.-Soviet Relations)."
Bossie's biggest play this election season is the production of an anti-Obama film: On the eve of the Democratic Party convention in Denver, Citizens United Productions will premiere its full-length documentary, "Hype: The Obama Effect." The film is unlikely to be a blockbuster, it thus far hasn't generated the buzz Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" did before its release, and will surely not be hitting the festival circuit. In fact, thus far, there are no movie houses listed under the "Theater" section of the hypemovie.com website, scheduled to show the film.
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Bill Berkowitz
August 6, 2008
Conservatives try to make presidential race about Democratic nominee, painting him as unreliable
As Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama trekked toward the final Democratic primaries, and it looked inevitable that Obama would be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, conservative pundits and cable television talk-show hosts, a host of blogs, and a number of newly formed organizations began intensifying their attacks on Obama, embarking on the early stages of one of Karl Rove's most effective political strategies: Directly attack the opponent's strengths. In the case of Obama, this means turning his very popularity into a negative, defining him as effete and more interested in celebrity before the Democrat can introduce and define himself to the larger nation.
Two new anti-Obama books, "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality" (Threshold Editions, August 2008) by Jerome Corsi -- the co-author of "Unfit for Command," the 2004 book that contained false attacks on Senator John Kerry's military service -- and "The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate," by David Freddoso -- a former writer for the conservative weekly, Human Events and National Review Online staff reporter -- are aimed at taking the attacks to a mainstream audience.
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Bill Berkowitz
August 1, 2008
California's Proposition 8 draws big-buck supporters, while Wildmon declares that outcome of 'culture wars' depends on turning back gay marriage
Two different -- yet ultimately interlinked -- issues relating to the "homosexual agenda" are agitating the folks at the Tupelo, Mississippi-based headquarters of Donald Wildmon's American Family Association (AFA) these days. One is your basic AFA-sponsored boycott; the other, according to Wildmon, will determine the final outcome of America's "culture wars."
Wildmon is simultaneously leading an effort to boycott the fast food giant McDonald's, and marshaling the troops in support of Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that would reverse the state's Supreme Court recent decision in support of gay marriage.
Why McDonalds? A short time back, the home of the Hamburgler donated $20,000 to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) in exchange for membership in the NGLCC and a seat on the group's board of directors. That outraged Wildmon, the undisputed kingpin of calling boycotts against companies that might have a scent of gay-friendliness.
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Bill Berkowitz
July 11, 2008
George W. Bush goes back to touting 'compassionate conservatism' and the 'successes' of his faith-based initiative
In 2004, at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, President Bush's contribution to the evening's entertainment was his narration of a slide show that pictured him looking around the Oval Office for weapons of mass destruction. In one of the shots, Bush is looking under some furniture and remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."
Flash forward four years: At this year's dinner, Bush played highlights from a number of his previous appearances. In a wise decision, he left the WMD skit -- which was roundly criticized for making fun of the issue that was the driving force behind the invasion of Iraq, which has led to deaths of thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis -- out of the highlight package.
These days, Bush is no longer concerned about whether WMD existed in Iraq.
Instead, he is desperately seeking a legacy; anything that he can latch onto that might trump the fact that a majority of Americans believe that he will go down as one of the worst presidents in U.S. history. His search for a legacy could prove as futile as the search for WMD. At this point, it appears that it has landed him back he started a week after his inauguration in 2001; touting his faith-based initiative and "compassionate conservatism."
On January 29, 2001, a little over a week after the start of his first term, Bush, surrounded by Christian, Jewish, and Muslim clergy, unveiled his faith-based initiative by issuing an executive order creating the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). He followed that up with another executive order that eventually established Faith-Based and Community offices at 11 federal agencies.
While Bush's faith-based initiative has spread its tentacles to a host of federal, state and local government agencies -- 35 governors and more than 70 mayors, both Democratic and Republican, have established programs modeled after the federal faith-based and community initiatives program – Congress has never even come close to passing legislation legally enacting it.
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Bill Berkowitz
June 24, 2008
The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property leaps headlong into the showdown over same-sex marriage in California
They've been around for more than 30 years; trace their roots to a Brazilian anti-communist dissident Catholic; wear colorful outfits during their protests on college campuses; and apparently have enough spare change to fund three 4,000+ word simultaneously-placed advertisements in three national dailies.
Of all the conservative organizations that will be getting involved in the same-sex marriage showdown in California, one of the least known is a Catholic outfit called the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP). TPF isn't a fly-by-night letter-head-only group that suddenly formed to get in on what promises to be one heck of a battle.
On June 5, in response to the California Supreme Court's ruling in support of same-sex marriage, TPF issued a press release announcing the publication of two-page advertisements critical of the decision, appearing "simultaneously" in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times, costing the group perhaps as much as three-quarters of a million dollars.
The ads, which explicitly called for civil disobedience, were titled "Battling for America's Soul: How Homosexual 'Marriage' Threatens Our Nation and Faith -- the TFP Urges Lawful and Conscientious Resistance."
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Andrew J. Weaver, et. al.
June 19, 2008
To obtain the George W. Bush presidential library, Southern Methodist University has been required to accept an autonomous partisan institute on campus. Karl Rove is in the middle of the planning of and fund-raising for this Trojan horse project. The institute will give Rove the resources he needs to try to re-write the narrative of the Bush presidency, as well promoting his larger vision -- the domination of the right-wing of the Republican Party in American politics. In July the United Methodist Church, which owns SMU "lock stock and barrel," has one last chance to stop Rove.
On September. 2, 2007, U.S. News and World Report wrote that Bush's trickster, Karl Rove, "is planning to take charge...of the design, fundraising, and planning" of the Bush presidential complex at SMU. Benjamin Johnson, a history professor at SMU, attended the 2007 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Several colleagues there reported that Karl Rove had been traveling around the country examining research facilities and discussing how to select Bush institute fellows (Johnson, 2007a). One prominent library director said, "Rove seems to know exactly what the square footage is of the building that will be at SMU and where it will be located on campus" (Johnson, 2007a).
Mark Langdale, president of the Bush library foundation recently confirmed that Rove is advising the organization, stating that he is "a critical resource about what happened in the administration, and he has a lot of good ideas about programming and positioning" (Meyers, 2008). This hands-on involvement by Rove demonstrates the importance of the proposed think tank at SMU to Bush insiders.
Unless the UMC takes a stand, neither SMU nor the UMC will have any say over the actions, agenda, or direction of an autonomous $500 million partisan-driven complex at one of its major universities. Karl Rove, who has a long history of hard-ball partisanship, will be in charge and he will roll out a giant Trojan horse and push it right through the front gate. The 99 year lease for a single dollar with a 249 year option (that the Bush foundation has required) means that after July, 2008 the next chance for the church to address the issue is the year 2357 (Peck, 2008).
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Bill Berkowitz
June 6, 2008
Not in it for the money, Hawkins, a conservative columnist, blogger, YouTuber, and organizer, intends to make a lot of anti-Obama noise during Election 2008
Angry, pugnacious, sophomoric, bombastic, prolific, internet savvy, occasionally funny and under-funded, John Hawkins the founder of the blog, RightWingNews, is focused on bringing down Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee.
While Hawkins, who calls himself a "mainstream conservative," is no big fan of Republican John McCain, he is certain that the Arizona Senator, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee, would better serve America than Obama.
Who is John Hawkins, and why should we care about what he thinks or does? He's no Matt Drudge and some would call him just another bleater in the crowded blogosphere, churning out items faster than a Land O' Lakes butter factory. While he isn't in the top echelon of conservative activists, stories that appear on RightWingNews reach thousands of people and are geared toward consolidating conservative discontent behind McCain.
It is blogs like RightWingNews that float smarmy stories that the McCain campaign can benefit from, while at the same time distancing itself from them.
Lurking behind whatever issues grab center stage in this year's presidential election is the specter of "swiftboating." Political junkies and casual observers alike want to know: When will the swiftboaters launch their attacks, and will they be successful? While "swiftboating" became a new buzz-phrase doing the 2004 presidential election, the use of political smears is as old as the country itself. However, not every smear works, nor is every one an example of swiftboating.
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Bill Berkowitz
May 19, 2008
Former House Speaker appeared in an Al Gore-sponsored anti-global warming ad with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but later backtracked
He recently "counseled" Democrats and plugged his new novel about Pearl Harbor titled "Days of Infamy" on ABC's "The View" and "Good Morning America"; he appears regularly over at the Fox News Channel; he recently told the French Sunday newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that Obama "is a far left-wing politician, but with a beautiful smile"; he's got a website that's pretty cool; he co-authored another best selling book; he's listed at number 36 on the Daily Telegraph's list of the 50 most influential political pundits; and now that Sen. John McCain is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee, he no doubt regrets not having tossed his hat into the ring.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is also appearing in a television advertising spot -- alongside current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) -- as part of Al Gore's $300 million campaign aimed at combating global warming, sponsored by the Alliance for Climate Protection.
While the pairing of Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson surprised some and aggravated others, Gingrich's appearance with Pelosi has brought a string of critical commentaries from some of Gingrich's conservative colleagues.
The San Francisco Chronicle's conservative columnist Debra J. Saunders wrote recently that "Gingrich's role confirms the suspicion of many Republicans that the Newter will say anything to get his face in the limelight."
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Bill Berkowitz
May 5, 2008
Two longtime practitioners of negative campaigning are mainstreaming attacks on Clinton and Obama
Floyd Brown and David Bossie have spent a good part of their political careers making life miserable for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Unlike Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire financier who was unremitting in his efforts to take the Clintons down during the latter part of the twentieth century and whose newspaper endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton prior to the Pennsylvania primary, neither Brown nor Bossie have had a pro-Hillary conversion.
These days, however, Brown's new organization, The National Campaign Fund -- which launched a new website "ExposeObama.com" -- and Bossie's Citizens United have added Sen. Barack Obama to the mix.
Brown recently told Time magazine that "he had established several other front groups to fund a long-range effort to erode Obama's support, including a second PAC, called The Legacy Committee, a 527 organization called Citizens for a Safe and Prosperous America and a so-called "social welfare" 501(c)4 nonprofit called the Policy Issues Institute."
Bossie told Newsweek that he was "assembling material for TV spots about Obama's ties with [Bill] Ayers, a Chicago professor and unrepentant former member of the Weather Underground, a group that bombed several government buildings to protest the Vietnam War."
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Bill Berkowitz
April 28, 2008
'J Street,' a new liberal Jewish organization, hopes to challenge AIPAC's influence over U.S.-Israeli affairs
In its entry on the "The Little Engine That Could," Wikipedia notes that "the moralistic children's story ... is used to teach children the value of optimism." Like the little engine that could, "J Street," a new organization made up of prominent U.S. and Israeli Jews that hopes to shift the debate over the Middle East and U.S.-Israeli policy away from the conservative positions espoused by the mighty American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and towards a pro-peace position, must recognize that it has a huge hill to climb.
And one part of climbing that hill will be to redefine what it means to be "pro-Israel," a term that conservative Jewish and evangelical Christian organizations have claimed for their own.
"For too long, the loudest American voices on Israel have come from the far right," noted Jeremy Ben-Ami, a founder and director of both J Street, chartered as a 501(c)(4) organization, and its political-action affiliate, JStreetPac, a political action committee focusing on campaign funding.
"Those voices have claimed that the only way to be pro-Israel is to support military responses to political problems, to refuse to engage one's adversaries in dialogue and to put off the day of reckoning when hard compromises will be required to achieve a peaceful and secure future for Israel and the entire Middle East," he told reporters via teleconference in mid-April.
"These are not the kind of smart, tough views that serve the long-term interests of the state of Israel, of the United States -- or frankly, the American Jewish community," Ben-Ami, until recently, senior vice president in the Washington office of Fenton Communications, added.
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Bill Berkowitz
April 16, 2008
House resolution congratulates the TCC and its supporters for their key role in promoting and ensuring recognition of the Ten Commandments as the "cornerstone of Western law"
Did you know that for the past two years, Congress has designated the first weekend in May as "Ten Commandments Weekend (TCW)?" Most of us pay little attention to congressional resolutions. All sorts of resolutions are proposed; some pass, others are tabled, and still others are withdrawn.
These days, two resolutions relating to the Ten Commandments are being considered by Congress; one will again designate the first weekend in May as "Ten Commandments Weekend," while the other aims to celebrate the Ten Commandments Commission (TCC), an organization led by a former veteran of the Israeli Armed Forces, and made up of a host longtime conservative evangelical Christian leaders.
For months, Chris Rodda, a Senior Research Director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), has been following developments surrounding the two Ten Commandments resolutions -- Senate Resolution 483 and House Resolution 598.
The Senate Resolution, introduced by Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback -- with Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman as its co-sponsor -- aims to once again recognize the first weekend in May as "Ten Commandments Weekend."
According to Rodda, the author of "Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History -- Volume I," Brownback's resolution comes packed with 10 Whereas' starting of with: "Whereas the Ten Commandments are precepts foundational to the faith of millions of Americans," "Whereas the Ten Commandments are a declaration of fundamental principles for a fair and just society," and "Whereas, from the founding of the United States, the Ten Commandments have been part of America's basic cultural fabric," followed by quotes from Presidents George Washington, John Quincy Adams, and Harry Truman.
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Bill Berkowitz
April 3, 2008
Funded by wealthy Republican Party donors and former White House officials, the group may be accomplishing less than it claims
The hiring of Carl Forti, the former political director for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's failed presidential run and hardball flinging spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), appeared to signal that Freedom's Watch is getting ready to gear up for Election 2008. However, will recent defections from the group, and reported questions about the actual existence of the $250 million war chest that Freedom's Watch's leaders have boasted about, slow its operation down?
On top of these questions, two well-connected conservative insiders, commenting on the condition of anonymity, raised their own questions about whether Freedom's Watch's rhetoric might be outpacing its actual accomplishments.
In late March, Freedom's Watch, the group founded by former White House staffers and funded by a host of very wealthy longtime Republican donors, announced that Forti, one of the GOP's premier hatchet men, will serve as its Executive Vice President and head up "the group's issue advocacy campaign in the fall."
Earlier in the month, Bradley Blakeman, a co-founder of Freedom's Watch and a former deputy assistant to Bush, stepped down as president of the organization. Blakeman's departure came soon after he sent out an email fundraising appeal which in part claimed that Freedom's Watch was "the only group capable of going toe-to-toe with George Soros and this Left-Wing juggernaut."
Blakeman boasted of Freedom's Watch's victory over MoveOn.org, allegedly beating them "at their own game (taking down The New York Times in the process!). In fact, we've been so successful that former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville proclaimed Freedom's Watch a grave danger to the Left's radical agenda. We'll take that as a compliment."
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Bill Berkowitz
March 27, 2008
The old guard is wondering if 'the younger generation will heed the call' while the young Turks have other things on their minds besides abortion and same-sex marriage
During a recent appearance at the National Religious Broadcasters conference, Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, expressed deep concern about the future of the conservative Christian movement he helped build. "The question is," Dobson said, "will the younger generation heed the call? Who will defend the unborn child in the years to come? Who will plead for the Terri Schiavos of the world? Who's going to fight for the institution of marriage, which is on the ropes today?"
Dobson pointed out that the deaths of such revered evangelical leaders including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Dr. D. James Kennedy and Ruth Graham Bell "represent the end of an era." The radio talk show host "noted that others like Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson and Chuck Swindoll will also soon pass from the scene, and questioned the impact on the conservative Christian church," the Associated Press reported.
"Who in the next generation will be willing to take the heat, when it's so much safer and more comfortable to avoid controversial subjects?" Dobson said. "What will be the impact on the conservative Christian church when the patriarchs have passed?"
In New York City on a recent mid-March weekend, The Nation magazine's "Left Forum 2008," featured a panel moderated by Esther Kaplan titled "Is the Christian Right Dead?" Promotional materials read: "The coalition between economic and social conservatives seems kind of rocky coming out of the Bush Presidency that brought them together. Is the Christian Right dead?"
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Bill Berkowitz
March 14, 2008
After seven years both Democratic presidential candidates express support for and reservations about Republican religious patronage system
The seventh anniversary of President George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative passed quietly. Unlike the much ballyhooed launching of his faith-based initiative in January 2001, when a string of religious officials witnessed Bush sign executive orders bringing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) into existence, this year the president was apparently occupied by more pressing matters; convincing the public that a recession wasn't looming, trumpeting so-called successes of the surge in Iraq, and no doubt wondering what else he's going to be doing until its time to scurry back to Texas next January.
Interestingly enough, as Sarah Pulliam recently reported for Christianity Today, while none of the three major presidential candidates have "unveiled a specific plan for the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives," Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain, and Democratic Party hopefuls Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "have each voiced support for federal funding of faith-based social services."
Obama told Christianity Today that he wants to take a look at the program before deciding how to deal with it: "One of the things that I think churches have to be mindful of is that if the federal government starts paying the piper, then they get to call the tune," Obama said. "I want to see how monies have been allocated through that office before I make a firm commitment [to] sustaining practices that may not have worked as well as they should have."
Burns Strider, Clinton's director of faith-based outreach, "said that if she were elected, Clinton would continue funding faith-based organizations, but would seek to maintain an appropriate boundary between church and state," Christianity Today reported. "Clinton emphasizes a 'fair and level playing field' for faith-based and secular providers of social services, Strider said."
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Bill Berkowitz
March 5, 2008
Heartland Institute and dozens of other sponsors of conference funded by Coors, Bradley, Walton, Scaife and DeVos foundations
"Ignored, and often even censored and demonized" is how the promotional materials for the Heartland Institute's recent conference "The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change," described the way "distinguished scholars from the U.S. and around the world," that have had the courage to question global warming, have been treated by environmentalists and the mainstream media. In a "Background" piece, conference organizers claimed that "They [the scholars] have been labeled 'skeptics' and even 'global warming deniers,' a mean-spirited attempt to lump them together with Holocaust deniers.
Always on the lookout to defend the oppressed, both Glenn Beck, the right wing host of a CNN Headline News show, and the Fox News Channel rode in to rescue the "demonized" and beleaguered. On Monday morning, March 3, "Fox and Friends" homed in on the problem that the "skeptics" are facing. Fox's point: Goreistas, or advocates of devoting major resources to dealing with global warming, receive a disproportionate share of network and cable television face time, while those raising questions about global warming are shut out of the debate.
However, according to Think Progress, the conference was not ignored by the mainstream, media. "....The New York Times has published two separate articles on the conference, and the Times' John Tierney has written about it on his blog. Other mainstream press outlets that have covered the conference: the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, the New York Sun, and Reuters."
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Bill Berkowitz
March 3, 2008
Washington, D.C.-based tax-exempt "non-partisan" Republican think tank celebrating three-plus decades of saying no to government and yes to privatization, deregulation, wars, intervention and 'traditional family values'
President Bush opened a recent speech at the Heritage Foundation about the "War on Terror" by acknowledging that while he had only 14 months left in his presidency he was going to be "sprinting to the finish line." Bush complained about the Senate being slow to confirm Michael Mukasey for attorney general, urged Congress to make the Protect America Act permanent, and blasted "MoveOn.org bloggers" and "Code Pink protesters." He wrapped up his speech by saying he believed a president of the United States will come to the Heritage Foundation 50 years from now and say "Thank God that generation that wrote the first chapter in the 21st century understood the power of freedom to bring the peace we want."
Thirty-five years ago, when the Heritage Foundation first opened its doors, the War in Vietnam was finally winding its way toward a conclusion, Vice President Spiro Agnew had resigned in disgrace and President Richard Nixon, enmeshed in the Watergate scandal, would soon follow, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, was still not convinced that evangelicals should be deeply involved in the political process, the civil rights and the women's movements had won a number of transformative battles, having a social safety net was still a shared social value, privatization was a relatively little used term, and the "culture wars" had not yet punctured the national consciousness.
Historian Lee Edwards, in his book "The Power of Ideas," pointed out that "Conservative leaders and conservative ideas were out of public favor... In foreign [affairs], dètente was riding high ... [as Nixon] traveled to Communist China to kowtow to Mao Zedong."
Out of this conservative morass came -- among other things -- the Heritage Foundation, which helped lead the transformation from decades of liberalism to the past several decades of conservative hegemony. While Heritage wasn't the first conservative think tank -- the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute had been slogging along for years -- it was the first to be consciously embraced by a host of wealthy right-wing benefactors including beer magnate Joseph Coors and heir to the Mellon fortune, Richard Mellon Scaife, who had more on their minds than just churning out policy papers that few would read or heed. One of the ideological guides to the foundation's creation and early work was Paul Weyrich, now considered the "Godfather" of the New Right.
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Bill Berkowitz
February 21, 2008
Enmeshed in scandal, the university founded by, and named for televangelist Oral Roberts, is bailed out by Hobby Lobby's Mart Green
Before there was a Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Benny Hinn or Joel Osteen, Oral Roberts was televangelism. He, along with a few other pioneers brought the tent revival into the age of mass communications; Roberts was broadcast on numerous television stations across the country. He stalked the stage, raised his voice, and had the audience in the palm of his hands. He appeared to indicate that he had special powers; he could heal the sick, mend the wounded, comfort the afflicted.
Oral Roberts had wealth, power, prestige and an all-American family. He amassed a fortune and later established a university in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which he named Oral Roberts University (ORU).
Now, ORU needs some financial and spiritual healing.
That's where Mart Green, a young multi-millionaire, comes in.
Green, 46, recently gave ORU more than $60 million "of his family's fortune to rescue" the university, "the evangelical Christian school engulfed in a spending scandal [involving Oral Roberts' son Richard and his wife Lindsay] and burdened with tens of millions of dollars in debt," the Associated Press reported on February 5.
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Bill Berkowitz
February 6, 2008
Group founded to support Bush's surge in Iraq and encourage military action against Iran gearing up for November
In early December, Freedom's Watch, the well-funded conservative lobbying group founded by former White House staffers and extremely wealthy longtime Republican donors, fired its first shot in Election 2008. Founded last year, and making its public debut with a $15 million dollar advertising campaign in support of Bush's "surge" in mid-August, the group recently funded a series of ads in a northern Ohio special congressional election.
The advertisements, called "aggressively negative" by the Washington Post, branded the Democratic Party candidate as being soft on illegal immigration. According to the Post, "Behind a blood-red foreground, the group's ad showed Latinos hurrying under fences and being frisked by police as a narrator accused Democratic candidate Robin Weirauch and 'liberals in Congress' of supporting free health care for illegal immigrants."
Republican Robert Latta won the House seat representing the district around Bowling Green, Ohio.
"While initial reports suggested a budget of $200 million [for Freedom's Watch for the 2008 election cycle], people who have talked to the group in recent weeks say the figure is closer to $250 million, more than double the amount spent by the largest independent liberal groups in the 2004 election cycle," the Post reported.
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Bill Berkowitz
January 29, 2008
Christian Zionists organize to stymie any Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement that would divide Jerusalem while Netanyahu waits for Olmert's government to collapse
These are busy days for Christian Zionists. While President Bush recently returned from his trip to the Middle East "optimistic" that a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians could be reached by the end of the year, Pastor John Hagee's Christian United for Israel (CUFI) is setting forth plans to put the kibosh -- if not on the entire peace process -- on any agreement that would sanction the division of Jerusalem. And Dr. Mike Evans has launched a "Save Jerusalem Campaign” while Joel C. Rosenberg's Joshua Fund is planning a major celebration in Jerusalem in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary.
CUFI, the pro-Israel lobbying group launched in February 2006 to provide support for Israel, believes that "'Jerusalem must remain undivided as the eternal capital of the Jewish people' (meaning no portion of it should be turned over to the Palestinians)," Sarah Posner, writes in her new book "God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters" (PoliPointPress, 2008).
Hagee, who heads up an 18,000-member Pentecostal congregation in San Antonio, Texas, "inject[s] ... the charged rhetoric of biblical prophesy into contemporary foreign policy," Posner writes, "[which] has catapulted him to the forefront of an American Christian Zionist movement that has become the darling of conservative Israel hawks in Washington and neoconservatives yearning for regional war in the Middle East."
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Bill Berkowitz
January 9, 2008
A conservative insider's take on the GOP presidential contest and the state of the conservative movement
Over the past few months, various Religious Right leaders have endorsed an assortment of Republican Party presidential candidates. Arizona Senator John McCain received the endorsement of Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican who is the leading voice for Christian conservatives in the Senate while former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney was endorsed by longtime conservative activist Paul Weyrich and Bob Jones III, the president of the evangelical Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.
A host of religious right leaders including Janet Folger, president of Faith2Action, Rick Scarborough, founder and president of Vision America, the Rev. Don Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association and Tim and Beverly LaHaye, he the veteran activist and co-author of the wildly popular "Left Behind" series of apocalyptic novels, and the founder of Concerned Women for America are supporting former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
A while back, when Pat Robertson endorsed former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani -- the holder of pro-choice, pro-gay, and anti gun positions -- chaos broke out on the evangelical right. On conservative websites and blogs, charges and countercharges were hurled; Robertson, the once revered leader who had founded the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), was now being called irrelevant and characterized as a betrayer -- a hypocrite who would do anything to enhance his political power.
The Christian Right's inability to come together and back one presidential candidate underscores the reality that there are differences within the movement. The deaths in 2007 of longtime movement icons Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy, and the retirement of Robertson as CEO of CBN, is indicative of a movement in transition, and perhaps even turmoil.
Some in the media, and on the left, view these fault lines as symbolic of a major meltdown on the right. It has spurred the churning out of a series of pre-mature obituaries; stories gleefully detailing perceived -- and real -- rifts within the movement. Parts of the Traditional Media may conclude the Religious Right's days are numbered.
Rod Martin comes at it from a different perspective, that of a conservative insider. Relatively unknown outside conservative circles, Martin is a core movement insider.
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Bill Berkowitz
December 24, 2007
Christian men need to embrace their 'table-tipping' side, says Christian comedian and 'GodMen' founder Stine
Christian music brings in big-time money; the release, and subsequent box office successes of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ," and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," has made Hollywood sit up and take notice. There are Christian dating services, Christian investment companies, Christian real estate brokers, a Christian MySpace, Christian comic strips, Christian bloggers and even Christian comedians.
There are Christian men's groups -- remember the glory days of the Promise Keepers?
How about a Christian men's group headed by a conservative Christian comedian?
He's a raunchy, raw, Republican devoted to stamping out "political correctness," and he's got the chutzpah to claim on his website that he's "America's favorite conservative comedian" (there are a number of other conservative comedians out there). In 2004, he performed for "R: the Party," an event hosted by Jenna and Barbara Bush during the Republican National Convention in New York City.
Brad Stine is a Christian comedian who heads up a ministry that encourages men to let their manhood hang out. In 2004 Stine told the Fox News Channel that he was "a conservative comedian -- one of two known to exist in the Western hemisphere. I'm very pro-America, very patriotic. I use my time on stage to say how great the country is as opposed to saying how bad it is."
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Phil Wilayto
December 13, 2007
CNE Director and leading neocon Robert L. Woodson Sr. argues his $280,000-plus annual salary gives him credibility among inner-city youth.
This interview with Robert L. Woodson Sr., founder and national director of the Center for Neighborhood Enterprise (CNE), first appeared in the September/October edition of the Richmond Defender, a bimonthly community newspaper published in Richmond, Virginia.
Woodson's operations are funded almost entirely by the right-wing Bradley Foundation. He's a longtime proponent of school vouchers. He's made a career out of dissing the civil rights movement and helping the Republican Party build a political base in the African-American community. Now he's poised to start an anti-violence program in the Richmond Public Schools -- with the encouragement of the city's mayor, police chief and school superintendent.
The CNE has applied to the U.S. Department of Justice for a grant to bring its Violence-Free Zone program to two Richmond schools. If the funding comes through, and the pilot program is successful, the CNE plans to solicit funding from Richmond-area foundations and corporations to expand the program to other schools. Mr. Woodson agreed to an interview, which the Defender conducted by telephone on Sept. 10, 2007. While we disagree philosophically with his stands on many issues, we agree wholeheartedly that poor people in general -- and poor Black people in particular -- have been largely abandoned by both liberals and conservatives. And we applaud his refusal to write off poor people, poor communities and especially poor youth. Here is Mr. Woodson, in his own words. We think you are going to be hearing a lot more from him, and soon.
DEFENDER - If you receive the federal grant, how large would the Violence-Free Zone program be in Richmond?
WOODSON - I've talked with [Richmond Police Chief Rodney Monroe] and [Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Jewell-Sherman] and they were talking about maybe one middle school and one high school. That's how we've done it in other cities. We've been doing it successfully for nine years in other cities. In Milwaukee, we started with three schools, now we have six. In Prince George County, (Md.,) we were in two schools for three years, now we're expanding to six. The superintendent there joined me in a presentation before the Business Roundtable to solicit funds to continue and expand. We're also in Atlanta, Dallas, Washington and Baltimore.
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Bill Berkowitz
December 11, 2007
Despite rumblings in the traditional press about a religious right 'crackup,' key conservative Christian organizations are bringing in 'more money than ever' says Americans United for Separation of Church and State
Over the past two-plus decades it has become fashionable for the traditional press to periodically pen the Religious Right's obituary. Or, if not an outright death notice, articles will appear that detail real, or perceived, rifts within the Religious Right -- Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani for example -- plus periodic contentiousness between the Religious Right and other elements of the Republican Party. The traditional media often conclude that the Religious Right's days are numbered.
While there are certainly differences within the leadership of the Religious Right over which candidate to support, it would be foolhardy to consider these differences irreconcilable.
Commenting on the rift within the Religious Right, NewsMax's Tom Squitieri recently wrote that Robertson's endorsement "created a schism among evangelical Republicans -- one that may cost the GOP the White House next year." Squitieri pointed out that a major backlash has been under way in the evangelical community over the endorsement."
People for the America Way's RightWingWatch recently picked up on the in-fighting within the Party as a whole theme, pointing to a piece "suggesting that moderate Republicans are growing increasingly weary of the stranglehold the Religious Right has had on the Republican Party for the last several years and that efforts by presidential candidates to pander to the likes of James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Pat Robertson are only alienating them further."
Scott Reed, who managed Republican Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign, told the Wall Street Journal's John Harwood that there's "a sense that the leadership of the Republican Party is too beholden to a small group of self-appointed social conservative leaders."
As crunch time approaches for the GOP's presidential candidates, the jury is still out on which candidate the majority of so-called values voters will support. Some political observers have argued that since the leadership of the Religious Right had been at first reticent about supporting any of the candidates and more recently have been all over the map with their endorsements, the conservative evangelical vote will be divided and diluted, which could lead to a large number of disillusioned stay-at-homes come November of next year.
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Bill Berkowitz
December 6, 2007
Despite being forced to resign in disgrace as president of the World Bank and helping lead America into the biggest foreign policy disaster in history, Wolfie is still useful to the Bush administration
Last summer, when Paul Wolfowitz was forced to resign as president of the World Bank because he obtained a high-paying promotion for his female companion, Shaha Riza, a Middle East expert at the bank, he was welcomed back with open arms by his old comrades at the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute. Wolfowitz's retreat to the conservative philanthropy sponsored think tank that has placed dozens of its staffers within the Bush administration gave him the opportunity to await an opening to rejoin his comrades in government.
In early December, Wolfowitz's time for public service came round again. Now, the former deputy defense secretary who was one of the chief architects of the Iraq war, will apparently be serving under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
According to several media reports, Wolfowitz has been offered a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board -- formerly known as the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board -- a prestigious State Department panel. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters. Wolfowitz will replace former senator Fred Thompson, who quit over the summer to run for the Republican Party's presidential nomination.
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Bill Berkowitz
November 28, 2007
Two rejected Republican politicians form new "grassroots" organization aiming to challenge Democrats and regain control of Congress
When he was not out bashing the leadership of the Republican Party, expressing a desire to "bitch-slap" New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, attending David Horowitz's annual Restoration Weekend, promoting his book "No Retreat, No Surrender," or claiming he no longer is interested in holding public office, Tom DeLay made time to meet up with Ken Blackwell and found a new "grassroots" organization aimed at retaking congress in next year's elections.
The disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) who is waiting to stand trial on a number of charges, and former Ohio Secretary of State Kennneth Blackwell who is currently a Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., a contributing writer for Townhall.com and is the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow for Public Policy at Ohio's Buckeye Institute, have launched The Coalition for a Conservative Majority (CCM).
According to the Washington Times, the CCM "will establish chapters in all 50 states, which will be used to lobby lawmakers, coordinate political messages and influence members of the press."
"Right now, liberals are better organized, funded and active than I have ever witnessed," DeLay said. "Our goal is to work with the talented leaders of the conservative movement to complement their efforts, using an army of activists to push for the policies and leadership conservatives are begging for."
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