The fight over the Senate confirmation of President George W. Bush's most conservative judicial nominees is about to take an ugly turn, as the administration's supporters in the religious right prepare an organized campaign to accuse Democrats of being biased against Christians.
For several years now, in the right's rhetoric against Democrats who have threatened to filibuster judicial nominees, there has been an undercurrent that hinted at an anti-Christian bias. But at a conference on the judiciary last week, sponsored by the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration (JCCCR), the movement began to take a more menacing form.
In a speech laced with claims that the federal courts, and the Supreme Court in particular, have “systematically attacked Christianity,” Family Research Council president Tony Perkins announced the launch of a new campaign by the right to turn the confirmation battle into a religious war against the “anti-Christian left.”
Perkins's organization will spend the next 10 days in a planning and preparation phase that will culminate on April 24, which he has declared to be “Justice Sunday.”
In a live simulcast sent out to more than 1,000 churches across the country and broadcast on the Christian Television Network, Perkins and Dr. James Dobson (of Focus on the Family) will make the case that Senate Democrats have opposed a handful of the president's judicial nominees not out of honest concern about their extreme political views but, simply, because the nominees are Christians.
“We must communicate to people of faith across this country that this is a filibuster of people of faith,” he said last week. “That the courts are consistently taking away the religious liberties of Christians in particular, and people of faith in general, in this nation.”
The next day, the onslaught on Capitol Hill is set to begin. Perkins said, “We are going to hold our fire [until April 24 -- "Justice Sunday”], and then we begin to just pound the United States Senate with phone calls and faxes, telling them to stop filibustering people of faith and vote up or down on the president's judicial nominees. We have got to get the Christians of this country -- people of faith -- to understand that this is an issue; this is a battle they cannot miss.”
During the simulcast, listeners will undoubtedly be reminded of the religious credentials of some of the president's stalled federal court nominees: Priscilla Owen is a Sunday school teacher; Charles Pickering is former president of the Mississippi Baptist Convention; and Mark Pryor is a devout Catholic.
Perkins, Dobson, and other leaders of the religious right will also make it clear to their supporters that helping the Bush administration in its efforts to pack the courts with Antonin Scalia-type conservatives is the only way to save the republic from what Dobson has described as an impending “long night of paganism.”
As presently constituted, Perkins will point out, the federal judiciary presents a far greater danger to the United States than many other threats facing Americans today. “The court has become increasingly hostile to Christianity, and it poses a greater threat to representative government -- more than anything, more than budget deficits, more than terrorist groups,” he said last week.
Judging from some of the other speakers who joined him on the podium at the JCCCR conference last week, Perkins isn't the only one convinced that the U.S. judiciary is more dangerous than al-Qaeda.
Former U.S. Representative Bill Dannemeyer (R-CA) worked himself into a righteous rage over the state of the court system, declaiming: “I don't believe the principal problem facing America is the battle in Iraq, as important as that is, or federal spending that's out of control. The issue we are dealing with my friends, and let's face it, the current leadership of this nation, led by Congress, has to make a basic decision sooner or later: Will we as a people acknowledge that God exists?
“The Christian heritage on which this nation was founded,” he continued, “has been stolen from us by decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal courts over the last half century.”
Another speaker, Dr. Edwin Vieira -- who, when not railing against judges, spends considerable time advocating a return to the gold standard -- accused the Supreme Court of basing its rulings on “Marxist-Leninist Satanic principles.”
But overheated rhetoric won't be the only thing on tap as the religious right prepares its campaign to tar the Democrats who have opposed ultraconservative judicial nominees. As Perkins and Dobson take the relative high road, simply fulminating on the anti-Christian nature of congressional Democrats, others involved in the religious right's court-packing efforts are gleefully setting out on the low road of political smear campaigns.
Kay Daly, of the faux-grassroots Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, made it clear to JCCCR conference attendees that honest debate and respect for the truth won't be priorities when it comes to pressuring Congress to accept conservative judges. “Our role in this upcoming fight for filibuster reform and Supreme Court nominations will be akin to that of …” -- here she paused and then continued with a smirk -- “let's just say, the Swift Boat Vets.”
Rob Garver is a freelance journalist living in Springfield, VA. He is also studying at Georgetown Public Policy Institute.
