Reaching out to religious voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith....
"The challenges we face today ... are simply too big for government to solve alone," Obama was to say, according to a prepared text of his remarks obtained by The Associated Press. "We need all hands on deck."
...But Obama's support for letting religious charities that receive federal funding consider religion in employment decisions could invite a protest from those in his own party who view such faith requirements as discrimination.
...Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, criticized Obama's proposed expansion of a program he said has undermined civil rights and civil liberties.
"I am disappointed that any presidential candidate would want to continue a failed policy of the Bush administration," he said. "It ought to be shut down, not continued." [Jennifer Loven," Obama to Expand Bush's Faith Based Programs," AP via Yahoo, 2008.07.01]
No response yet from Jim Dobson or other theocrats who generally smile on such precarious mingling of church and state.
The Dems chanting the "McSame" meme against Senator McCain seem to have forgotten one key lesson from 2004: you can't win just by running against George W. Bush. You need to focus on the strengths of your own candidate. And by embracing the faith-based plank of the Bush platform, our man Barack just made wringing mileage out of the "McSame" label a little harder.
Politico's Mike Allen says Obama is actually planning to scrap the Bush program and create a new office to do the same thing, only better. Obama says he would change the faith-based programs office from a "photo-op" to a "critical" part of the White House.
So Barack Obama, the Democratic Presidential nominee, is the one talking about making God-talk more than just a photo op? Secular humanists and Bush-agelicals alike have much to chew on there.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave." Obama is an opportunist, a cunning panderer, and is now showing these true colors as a true politician of the same political stripe or even more stripes than the norm. He is rapidly promising everything to every different group he targets for votes. I just hope people see through the empty suit and oratory.
ReplyDeleteAnd I watched part of one of his last speeches on TV. Would be nice if he would look the audience in the eye instead of getting whiplash from going back and forth from one teleprompter to the other.
McCain is not exactly an evangelical, so it makes political sense for Obama to woo the evangelicals.
ReplyDeleteJimmy Carter redux?
I doubt that very many evangelicals will switch from McCain to Obama, given the candidates' views on abortion. I suspect that a lot of evangelicals will stay home on election day.
I don't want anyone to stay home—the more people who vote, the better. But even if the conservative evangelicals can find the motivation to stop whining about their fading power and come to the polls in November, they may find themselves outnumbered by more broadly thinking evangelicals who realize taking care of God's creation means voting on a lot more than the Dobson-Bauer-Keyes wedge issues. "Prayer never brought in no sidemeat," said Tom Joad, and bans on abortion and gay marriage never balanced the budget or punished corporate polluters.
ReplyDeleteYou could have said the same thing about civil rights, giving women the vote, etc not balancing the budget etc etc. What it comes down to is what we as individuals believe. And for those of us who believe that life begins at conception, abortion is the antithesis of Christian belief and is an important issue, maybe more important than balancing the budget.
ReplyDeleteAs I've said before, I spent some time in and out of NICU last year, and there were babies in there struggling to live, born at the same stage of development as many babies are aborted. You can't tell me that these babies don't have a right to keep on living, in or out of the womb.
Didn't Obama also vote against a law to try to save babies who were born alive after failed abortion attempts? How in the world can he justify that stance and reconcile it with being a Christian?