More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.
Entitled “Tempting Faith,” the book is not scheduled for release until Oct. 16, but MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” has obtained a copy.
“Tempting Faith’s” author is David Kuo, who served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003. A self-described conservative Christian, Kuo’s previous experience includes work for prominent conservatives including former Education Secretary and federal drug czar Bill Bennett and former Attorney General John Ashcroft.
He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.”
“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’” Kuo writes.
More seriously, 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.
According to Kuo, “Ken loved the idea and gave us our marching orders.”
Among those marching orders, Kuo says, was Mehlman’s mandate to conceal the true nature of the events.
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.”
Nineteen out of the 20 targeted races were won by Republicans, Kuo reports. The outreach was so extensive and so powerful in motivating not just conservative evangelicals, but also traditionally Democratic minorities, that Kuo attributes Bush’s 2004 Ohio victory “at least partially … to the conferences we had launched two years before.”
With the exception of one reporter from the Washington Post, Kuo says the media were oblivious to the political nature and impact of his office’s events, in part because so much of the debate centered on issues of separation of church and state.
Crooks and Liars has a video of Olbermann's story here.
This is just another devastating scandal coming out--four weeks before an election. What is even worst is that this book shows how the Bush administration played the Religious Right as fools who could be bought off for their votes--President Bush and the Republican Party even got away with it.
But now President Bush and the Republican Party need the Religious Right's vote if they are to maintain control of Congress. The Mark Foley sex scandal and the disastrous Republican Party cover-up may just have alienated the Evangelical vote that Karl Rove so painstakingly built up between 2000--2004. The Evangelicals may just stay home this November out of disgust for the hypocrisy coming out of the Bush White House and Republican congressional leadership these days. The details of this book show not just the hypocrisy the Republican Party had for the Religious Right, but also their contempt--it is certainly not good when Karl Rove calls the Evangelical Christian leaders "the nuts." But then again, we've seen this type of contempt and hypocrisy the Republican Party has for its Religious Right constituents before under the Reagan administration. Ronald Reagan was a master at courting the emerging Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christian political power in the 1980s. Reagan knew the right words and images to push the issue buttons of abortion and school prayer on the Fundamentalists and Evangelicals of those days. And yet, while Reagan would recite those words towards adoring religious fans, you knew that what Reagan was saying was all talk--he would never shift too far to the right in governing to anger the centrist Democrats. But now we have George W. Bush, an Evangelical Christian--one of their own in the White House! And yet instead of embracing the Religious Right's political views by using the federal government to adopt those views, the Bush political machine has snubbed them.
It is going to be interesting to see how this book plays out over the next four weeks.
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