1. Sarah Palin, Conservative Heir Apparent.
Charles Dunn, dean of the Robertson (as in Pat) School of Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, tells the American Family Association's news service that Sarah Palin is the "heir apparent" to lead the conservative movement and the Republican Party, even if Barack Obama wins the White House. Dunn predicts we'll be saying goodnight to Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee in 2012.
Catapulting the Barracuda to a leadership role is also the goal of the fawning campaign biography of Palin, Sarah Palin: A New Kind of Leader, just out from Zondervan, a Christian imprint owned by Rupert Murdoch. While other tentacles in Murdoch's media empire play the endless loop of smears and insinuations that Obama is subversive and un-American, the new Palin biography paints a vapid, unquestioning portrait of a salt-of-the-earth American gal whose supposed authenticity makes her the real embodiment of the change we've been waiting for.
The animating theme of the book is that Palin's political values and judgment are best understood through her personal life rather than her political resumé, and can best be summed up by Trig, Track, Bristol. Not drill, baby, drill, but baby, war, baby.
Palin's faith, writes author Joe Hilley, is to be implicitly trusted as right for America. "At the center of Sarah Palin's moral core lies a profound belief in God, the Judeo-Christian God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who is more fully revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ." She believes in the authority and truth of the Scripture, we are told, in the Ten Commandments, and in the authority granted in Genesis for humans "to exercise dominion and control over the earth."
This is all dog-whistle rhetoric for the religious right, of course -- its loyalists interpret phrases like "Judeo-Christian God" (emphasis on the Christian), the "truth" of the Scripture, and "dominion and control over the earth" as being right in line with their "Christian nation" worldview.
2. Who's Ken Blackwell to Talk About Unsavory Alliances?
Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state, failed gubernatorial candidate, and now Family Research Council fellow and head of Tom DeLay's Coalition for a Conservative Majority, has been at the forefront of pushing the right's smear that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is a voter-fraud front group for socialism and a fifth column for the radical terrorist Barack Hussein Obama.
I'm paraphrasing, but not by much. Blackwell has been all over the conservative tabloids and on the airways, accusing ACORN of election fraud, of causing the financial crisis, and of -- gasp! -- hewing to the community-organizing model of Saul Alinsky, thus making it and Obama part of the same socialist one-world order.
In the land of the religious right -- be it on the pages of Townhall.com, on talk radio, or on Fox News, these are not the rantings of a tinfoil hat-wearing outlier. Blackwell is one of the religious right's most revered non-pulpit figures, was the co-chair of the Republican Party's platform-writing committee this year, and was one of a handful of activists dispatched to vouch for Palin's credentials to reporters just moments after McCain's decision to tap her as his running mate became public in August.
But Blackwell has been at the center of election controversies himself. In 2004, Blackwell played dubious dual roles, overseeing his state's election process as secretary of state and serving as the Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair. Alleged voting irregularities in Ohio under Blackwell's watch are still the subject of litigation and a House Judiciary Committee investigation. At a recent hearing, where Blackwell denied there were any voting problems, Daniel Tokaji, a professor of election law at Ohio State University, criticized Blackwell's office for "sorely lacking" in transparency in the election process.
3. Family Research Council Action PAC's First Anti-Obama Ad: False.
This week Family Research Council Action PAC launched a $100,000 anti-Obama advertising campaign, in direct response to advertising by the Matthew 25 Network, a Christian PAC that is supporting Obama. Matthew 25 has been running radio advertising in battleground states vouching for Obama's Christian credentials, and recently launched a Web site, ProLifeProObama, featuring anti-choice Obama supporters vouching for his abortion-reduction strategy.
FRC Action PAC promises to air its ad on Christian radio stations targeted by Matthew 25 in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Michigan, as well on television in the Washington, D.C., market. The ad falsely states that Obama's first act as president would be to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would codify a woman's right to choose as outlined in Roe v. Wade.. In fact, Obama has said his first priority with regard to reproductive rights would be to enact FOCA, not that FOCA would be his highest priority above the economy and national security.
4. Proponents of the California Gay Marriage Ban are Winning.
Proponents of Proposition 8, which would ban same-sex marriage in California, are upbeat about a recent Survey USA poll that showed 47 percent of respondents supported the ban, while 42 percent were opposed, a 10-point shift in the ban's favor since late September. The shift came after Protect Marriage, the main advocacy group for the ban, launched a television ad showing San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome shouting to an enthusiastic crowd that same-sex marriage was going to happen "whether you like it or not." The ad continues with some standard religious-right tropes; that gay marriage would be "taught in public schools" and that churches "could lose their tax-exempt status." In other words, any gain for LGBT people is a loss for Christians.
Protect Marriage's latest ad shows a little girl coming home from school, clutching a copy of King and King, the religious right's favorite example of the alleged indoctrination of grade-school children with the "homosexual agenda," and telling her mother that she learned that two princes could get married and that she can marry a princess. Egads!
Last week, parents at a charter school in San Francisco organized a field trip so first graders could go see their teacher marry her partner at City Hall -- with Newsome officiating. Although parents could opt their children out of the field trip, which was organized by parents, not the teacher, the incident has only fueled the anti-gay activists' hysteria about school indoctrination. If Protect Marriage's new school ad is as successful as the Newsome ad, the religious right might just succeed in banning same-sex marriage in one of the country's most liberal states.
5. With Obama Ahead in the Polls, Right-Wing Smears Get More Outlandish.
A sampling of headlines from the past week:
Life As We Know It Will End If Obama Is Elected. (Strang Report).
Media Ignoring Obama's Socialist Past. (American Family Association News).
Exclusive: Forget Bill Ayers -- Here Are Over a Dozen More Virulently Anti-American Obama Friends. (Family Security Matters).
Israel Fears Potential Obama Presidency (American Family Association News).
Barrie Hussein: Congenital Liar? (Pharmacists for Life International press release).
Muslim Fingerprints in Obama's History (Christian Worldview Network).
