Day: March 10, 2007

McCain: Listen to What I Say But Ignore What I Did

Trish

As each of the Republican front runners in the 2008 presidential campaign competes for the favor of evangelicals — and falls short of their harsh, parochial judgement — we hear the same sanctimonious defense: “But my private life doesn’t influence my public service.”

John McCain is the only the latest in a string of GOP hypocrites that includes Rudy Guiliani and Newt Gingrich.

John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who remarried one month after his 1980 divorce, said Friday that the personal lives of White House hopefuls shouldn’t become an issue in the 2008 campaign.

“I would like to see this campaign conducted on past record and ambition for the future,” McCain told reporters after a fundraising luncheon in Charlotte, N.C. “I would hope that gossip — or, quote, ‘family issues’ — would not enter into this campaign.”

Well golly, straight talkin’ John, that sounds good. Almost as good as you sounded when you voted to convict Pres. Clinton on impeachment charges for attempting to hide an extramarital affair back in 1999.

The President’s offenses were committed to cover up private not public misconduct. Therefore, if he thwarted justice he did so for the perfectly understandable and forgivable purpose of keeping hidden an embarrassing personal shortcoming that, were it discovered, would harm only his family and his reputation, but would not impair our system of government.

This, too, is an appealing rationalization for acquittal. But it is just that, a rationalization…

The President’s defenders want to know how can I be certain that the offenses, even if true, warrant removal from office. They are not expressly mentioned in the Constitution as impeachable offenses. Nor did the founders identify perjury or obstruction as high crimes or high misdemeanors. Were an ordinary citizen accused of perjury in a civil proceeding he or she would in all likelihood not be prosecuted or forced out of political necessity into a perjury trap.

No, an ordinary citizen would not be treated as the President has been treated. But ordinary citizens don’t enforce the laws for the rest of us…

Presidents are not ordinary citizens. They are extraordinary, in that they are vested with so much more authority and power than the rest of us…And accordingly, regretfully, I must vote to convict the President, and urge my colleagues to do the same.’

Gee Johnny, here you’ve been living all ordinary and stuff, and now you want us to elevate you to superhuman perfection with our votes. No wonder cousin Jon calls you — derisively — “St. McCain.”

Schism: Young Evangelicals Turn Away from Christian Nationalist Agenda

Jon Ponder

The number of liberal evangelicals appears to be growing and this has the Christianists who run the religous wing of the Republican Party ready to howl:

“Are the only really ‘great moral issues’ those concerning abortion, gay marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence?”

A new generation of pastors has expanded the definition of moral issues to include not only global warming, but an array of causes. Quoting Scripture and invoking Jesus, they’re calling for citizenship for illegal immigrants, universal healthcare and caps on carbon emissions.

The best-known champion of such causes, the Rev. Jim Wallis, this week challenged conservative crusader James C. Dobson, the chairman of Focus on the Family, to a debate on evangelical priorities.

“Are the only really ‘great moral issues’ those concerning abortion, gay marriage and the teaching of sexual abstinence?” Wallis asked in his challenge. “How about the reality of 3 billion of God’s children living on less than $2 per day? — What about pandemics like HIV/AIDS — [and] disastrous wars like Iraq?”

Not surprisingly, the liberal bent of this new movement has the talibangelists up in arms. Three leaders of the Christian right — professional homophobes Dobson of Focus on the Family, Don Wildmon of the American Family Assn. and Paul Weyrich of American Values — have written a letter that is highly critical of evangelicals who do not follow their strict rightwing political agenda.

The letter took particular aim at the Rev. Richard Cizik, a prominent evangelical lobbyist who has promoted environmental protection as a moral imperative. Citing the creation story in the Book of Genesis, he has called the fight against global warming a directive “straight from the word of God — no doubt about it.”

The letter accused Cizik of “dividing and demoralizing” Christians by pushing this agenda and called on his employer, the National Assn. of Evangelicals, to silence him or to demand his resignation.

Fighting gay civil rights has generated millions of dollars for these religious-political groups, so it is not surprising that they are up in arms.

Rev. Wallis says that his congegants aren’t ready to become Democrats but that younger members are put off by the old evangelical agenda.

He told the Times that during a recent visit to an evangelical college, students were “furious” at Rev. Jerry Falwell because he had recently described global warming as a satanic plot to divert Christians from more pressing moral issues, such as spreading the Gospel.

“James Dobson and the religious right are outside the evangelical mainstream. That’s just a fact,” Wallis told the paper. “That doesn’t mean they have no power. But their monologue is over. Their control of the agenda is over.”