Compassionate Conservatism Debunked?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Money, ReligionA new book, “Tempting Faithâ€Â? by David Kuo, is about to come out…and it’s bad news for Bush. Really bad news.
Why? Well, this has the potential to be the most damning of all political portraits about the administration to the bookstores this campaign season because it paints Bush and his staff as mere opportunists who use and discard the Religious Right simply for political gain.
More importantly, though, is a systematic campaign by Bush operatives to decieve the entire American public by using the faith-based intiatives to fund organizations who would get out the vote for their side.
Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan� events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races. [...]Kuo quotes Mehlman as saying, “… (I)t can’t come from the campaigns. That would make it look too political. It needs to come from the congressional offices. We’ll take care of that by having our guys call the office [of faith-based initiatives] to request the visit.�
And then…this:
In fact, when Bush asks Kuo how much money was being spent on “compassion� social programs, Kuo claims he discovered “we were actually spending about $20 million a year less on them than before he had taken office.� [...]“Many of the grant-winning organizations that rose to the top of the process were politically friendly to the administration,� he says.
More pointedly, Kuo quotes an unnamed member of the review panel charged with rating grant applications.
“But,� she said with a giggle, ‘When I saw one of those non-Christian groups in the set I was reviewing, I just stopped looking at them and gave them a zero … a lot of us did.’�
My question to all of you is how many more administration insiders are going to come out and systematically dismantle their image?
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October 12th, 2006 at 1:13 pm
A lot of us have known about this fraud for years, but now perhaps there will finally be an investigation. Using tax payer’s funds to create fradulent organizations with the sole aim of electing Republicans is a crime. Will the Bush administration be held accountable?
October 12th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
A lot of us have known about this fraud for years, but now perhaps there will be an investigation and the Bush administration will be held accountable.
October 12th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
That, more than anything else, will turn off the Christian Right. It’s shocking even to the jaded among us.
October 12th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Ron Suskind had written an article 1 JAN 03 about John DiIulio who used to head the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. It is a long article and it is a hatchet job on Karl Rove over a variety of subjects, but there are a few paragraphs covering religion. I have added one of those paragraphs below.
http://www.ronsuskind.com/newsite/articles/archives/000032.html
QUOTE – For instance, there was Karl’s desire to have John cozy up to the conservative evangelicals, with whom DiIulio was having problems. DiIulio recalls Karl telling him to bury the hatchet “and start fighting the guys who are against us.” DiIulio says he responded: “I’m not taking any shit off of Jerry Falwell. The souls of my dead Italian grandparents are crying out to me, ‘That guy’s not on the side of the angels.’ ” Rove backed off, DiIulio recalls, and said, “Look, those guys don’t really matter to this president.” – END QUOTE
October 12th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Let’s see now, the party in power will try to give funds to organizations that are friendly to them. This is new news? And only evil repubs would do such a thing? Of course the dems would never, ever do something like that. Did you just fall off a turnip truck??
And then of course there’s this “insider” that puts out a juicy new tell-all book that’s full of “claimed”and “alleged” statements made by other people. Certainly it can’t be about making money on juiced-up book sales.
And every commenter here is lock-step agreeing. Lets see – if it’s Christian it can’t be good, if it’s republican it must be bad. And this passes for a critical thinking thought process?
October 12th, 2006 at 8:28 pm
I’d be willing to believe that the Dems would engage in using public programs and their funds to advance party interests and thereby deprive their intended beneficiaries if Lewis would provide some concrete examples, or at least some references to such. But I’m a little tired of being called naive if I don’t jump to such a conclusion without the facts, a common defense of Republican outrages these days.
As for the verity of Kuo’s revelations, we need to check those of his assertions that can be verified. Any takers?
And finally, I’ll have to give the Administration credit for being more acute than I once thought if another of Kuo’s allegations is true: some biggies referred to Robertson, Falwell, and as the “nuts”. Behind their back, of course (I heard this from the MSNBC broadcast).
October 13th, 2006 at 3:41 am
Ummm….point to the ‘Christian = bad’ in the preceding passages….using _any kind of thinking. geeze…desperate.
March 31st, 2007 at 6:24 pm
[...] A majority of the American public has, but it’s not often that former high-level aides speak so candidly about their boss and his failings. David Kuo was one. Matthew Dowd is now another. [...]