An Unholy Alliance - Republican Voter Guides Target Churches for House Gains

[Freedom_from_Chains]

In spite of David Kuo's recent book "Tempting Faith" that exposes the Bush Administration's and RNC's disingenuous, contemptuous exploitation of evangelicals, the right-wing evangelicals seem once again ready to partake of the same befouled communion ahead of the 2006 elections. An overlooked story as America goes to the polls for a hard self-examination over the next week is the Rove-Mehlman strategy to target not only close battleground races with their theocratic believers but also to employ them to pick off vulnerable Democratic or gerrymandered districts in their own stomping ground, the Bible Belt. In Georgia and Alabama, for instance, where local polls run contrary to the rest of the country in support of Bush and the Iraq War, the focus is to balance House losses in other areas with gains against Democratic incumbents in rural districts. Indeed, while Bush is shunned by all but the most desperate Republicans running for office nationwide, he has made several stops on behalf of rural Republican candidates in the South. The target audience -- the evangelical flock.

Ahead of this background strategy there has been an interesting development with the RNC's favorite bed mate, the Christian Coalition. In a settlement reached with the IRS last year over the group's tax-exempt status, the Christian Coalition was required to allow all candidates to write up to 25 words to explain their views on issues in the comparative voter guides with which the Coalition floods churches the Sunday before elections. Frustrated that they would have to allow Democratic candidates equal space in their "guides", several state chapters have broken ties with the national Coalition to form renamed organizations as a way of explicitly thwarting the IRS ruling. What states? The battleground states of Iowa and Ohio and the Bible Belt Buckle states of Georgia and Alabama.

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This past Sunday, October 29th, one million or so "2006 Georgia General Election Voter Guides" from the "Georgia Christian Alliance" in association with the "Georgia Conservative Coalition Education Fund, Inc." began to infect churches across the state. I assume similar initiatives are under way in Alabama, Iowa, and Ohio. The flier lists the statewide races and the respective candidates under which are listed four or five issues presumably important to Christians. All Democratic candidates are listed as "no response," unless the authors of the guide have deemed it important to answer for them. All Republican candidates have stated responses in accordance with the particular wedge they are exploiting. Included is a judicial race for the Georgia Supreme Court in which Carol Hunstein is given an asterisk to her "no response" while Mike Wiggins heartily agrees with all their tailored views on Roe v. Wade, school vouchers, etc. Hunstein's asterisk is a response letter posted to their website in which she reserves her judicial responsibility of impartiality on issues that might come before her. But of course this is not what they want to hear -- that is, unless it suits their purposes for a favored Supreme Court nominee to use it in congressional hearings. Mike Wiggins is a handpicked Bush administration lawyer of five years with a questionable family history including a lawsuit against his sister who also accused him of threatening her life when she was eight months pregnant. He has no judicial experience and his sole known courtroom experience as a practicing attorney was as defense counsel for a meth dealer. This is the Georgia Christian Alliance's values choice for the Georgia Supreme Court.

(con't)http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/11/6/95051/9409