Tea Party Jesus: Koch's Americans For Prosperity Sidles Up to Religious Right for 2012 Campaign

[Shallah Kali]

Tea Party Jesus: Koch's Americans For Prosperity Sidles Up to Religious Right for 2012 Campaign
David Koch's key operative, Tim Phillips, is moving to merge the religious right with the Tea Party movement -- just in time for the presidential race.
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/150622/tea_party_jesus%3A_koch%27s_americans_for_prosperity_sidles_up_to_religious_right_for_2012_campaign/

Now effectively in the employ of the libertarian David Koch, who founded Americans for Prosperity and chairs the board of its foundation, Phillips has deep ties to the evangelical Right, most notably with Ralph Reed, former executive director of the Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, who now heads a new entity, the Faith and Freedom Coalition. Reed and Phillips go way back; the two were partners in Century Strategies, the political consulting group through which Reed played a role in the Jack Abramoff bribery scandal. Now, it seems Phillips is partnered with Reed and other Religious Right leaders in a much greater conquest: a merger of the Religious Right and the ostensibly secular Tea Party movement to create an electoral juggernaut that will determine the outcome of the 2012 Republican presidential primary.

snip

Reed, who promises to mobilize a massive conservative evangelical vote in 2012, has been organizing in Iowa, whose party caucuses mark the opening of the presidential campaign season, for more than a year. According to David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Faith and Freedom Coalition has a database of 20 million evangelical voters. Last month, Reed's FFC hosted the first major Iowa gathering of a motley group of GOP presidential contenders, each eager to appeal to both religious and economic conservatives.

But there’s something more at work here than just good coalition politics. Movement strategists, such as Reed and Phillips, want to fully co-opt or merge the Religious Right, its organizing infrastructure, and its activists into the Tea Party wing of the GOP. So conservative Christian voters are being told that a radically limited federal government is God’s idea, and that right-wing economic policies are mandated by the Bible. That could be effective in places like Iowa, with its crucial early presidential caucus, where conservative voters are mobilized through evangelical churches and home-schooling groups. According to Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times, “There is no comparable network for fiscal-minded or moderate Republicans.” Not even the impressive organizing prowess of Americans for Prosperity can match it.

This political strategy – claiming a biblical foundation for the anti-government agenda of the Tea Party and its corporate backers – was on full display last weekend at the Lynchburg, Va., campus of Liberty University, founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, where the Freedom Federation’s Awakening conference took place. In a video message, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., a heroine in both movements and possible presidential candidate, hit all the Religious Right and Tea Party high points: abortion, gays, “anti-family” health care reform, and the “immoral” and “fundamentally evil” national debt. She praised Iowa voters for rejecting three state supreme court judges in a protest against the legalization of marriage for same-sex couples in the state.

[northoftheborder]

1. This news makes me sick, ill, nauseus.

[Initech]

2. Take away the tax exempt status of america's mega-churches. That'll shut 'em up in a microsecond.

[Frustratedlady]

3. So, the Koch's found religion! When will religion learn they are being conned.

The Kochs are only welcpming them into their fold for the numbers. What scum.

[Dawson Leery]

4. These "Christians" want to force "Christian Sharia" law onto us.

[Shallah Kali]

5. Reconstructionists want to stone sinners again

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/09/29/alan-graysons-fl-republican-opponent-tied-to-biblical-stoning-movement-aka-christian-reconstructionism/


not all go that far but some amongst them do. Also look at what they cheer on overseas like the religious right egging on Uganda's Kill the Gays bill and imagine what they would do over here if they were given the free rein they seek.