Let's Tell Dole: Stop The Religious Hate
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| Sun, 11-02-2008 - 9:02pm |
"CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- U.S. Senate candidate Kay Hagan said she came to talk about issues, but it wasn't long after arriving at an early voting site in Charlotte that a few voters brought up what's become the focal point of the race - the "godless" ad that Sen. Elizabeth Dole is running against her.
"What a nasty campaign this has turned into at the last moment," Doug Gubbins, a retired computer programmer from Charlotte, said to Hagan as she worked the voting line at Marion Diehl Recreation Center.
As Carolina voters make their final decisions about who to vote for, the contest between Dole, the Republican incumbent, and Hagan, a Democratic state senator from Greensboro, brewed both on the airwaves and on the ground.
Dole began airing a second ad featuring a fundraiser for Hagan in Boston. The event, which was hosted by Democratic supporters, was held at the home of a man associated with the Godless Americans PAC, a group opposed to references to God in government.
In Dole's new ad, the announcer asks, "If Godless Americans threw a party in your honor, would you go?"
Hagan declined to talk about the ad war with reporters in Charlotte, except to say she would continue to pursue legal action. On Thursday, she initiated a lawsuit that claimed Dole's ad was false and defamatory.
On Friday, Dole responded by filing a motion to dismiss Hagan's "frivolous" suit. The motion said the lawsuit is "essentially a political press release that attempts to manufacture causes of action where none clearly exist."
The backlash against Dole continued with a church leader sending the senator a sharply-worded letter.
"We are writing to deplore as strongly as possible your recent 30-second television advertisement," wrote the Rev. Sekinah Hamlin, president of the N.C. Council of Churches, a coalition of 15 Christian denominations that work on racial, gender and economic issues. One of the churches that support the council's work is First Presbyterian of Greensboro, where Hagan serves as a Sunday school teacher and elder.
"We cannot remain silent when you challenge the beliefs of faithful fellow Christians and suggest that a leader in one of the state's oldest and largest denominations doesn't believe in God," wrote Hamlin, an ordained Disciples of Christ minister.
Mixing religion with politics didn't sit well with some voters either.
"I'm glad you're out here because I did not appreciate that," Charlotte nurse Barbara Sherman said to Hagan about Dole's ad.
Charlotte homemaker Leslie Hand said she was tuning out campaign ads because she knew the Republican Party shared her pro-life stance and other values.
"It's important to have people who will speak up for the values I believe in," said Hand, a Dole supporter.
Sharon Seward of Charlotte, a children's ministry director, said she doesn't like negative campaigning on either side and the candidates ought to stick to the issues. But she said Dole's ad did raise questions for her about Hagan.
"We need to know where people stand, but I want it always to be the truth," she said. "I would like to know where she stands but I don't know."
For one previously undecided voter, the Dole ad made the difference. Tom Carlin, a registered Republican and stay-at-home dad from Charlotte, said he'd decided to vote for Hagan after seeing it.
"The ad I saw showed a lot of desperation on her (Dole's) part," said Carlin, who has grown disenchanted with the direction that Republicans have brought the country in over the last eight years. "The separation of church and state is important to me. That was sort of a last-ditch effort to bring religion into it to try to galvanize that part of the electorate.""
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/750819.html

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Well, having spent a heck of a lot of time in North Carolina over the past years, I can tell you that you alone don't speak for North Carolina. There are many voices.
Many people are religious. And many are tired of getting used by the right-wingers. They are not stupid. They know what Bush was about. And I am sure that many of them therefore know what Dole is doing . . . again. You see, or maybe you don't or don't want to, what Dole is doing is attacking her opponent Hagan's faith - plus she is lying about her opponent's faith which makes it even worse.
Dole got desperate. People are fed up with her and the Republicans. Americans know Dole did a bad job. North Carolinians know Dole spent an outrageously small amount of time even in her supposed state over the past six years. Instead of listening to North Carolinians, Dole spent all her time in Washington contributing to the problems there.
So even as the incumbent Dole was down a point or two in a neck and neck race. What did she do? Make up a bunch of hooey about Hagan's faith. That's what. Dole lied that Hagan is not Christian because Hagan once attended an event of people who don't believe in Christianity.
By Dole's standard, and I assume yours melanie230 because you are defending Dole like you always do any ultra right-wing politician, any politician who attends any event of a group must somehow be affiliated with that group.
Let's recall a few examples. Palin attended the Alaska Independence Party's events - was a featured speaker in fact. Indeed, Palin's husband used to be a member of the separatist AIP that wants to break off of the United States and take all their oil with them thank you very much. And McCain attended an ACORN event recently too.
So by your standard and Dole's, Palin believes her state should break off from America and McCain supports the ACORN group he spent so much time attacking.
There's not so much common sense here is there? Just a lot of hateful religion-based bashing by Dole. This is from the party that brought us the self-proclaimed family man Senator Vitter who it turns out had a thing for prostitution, and clean cut Senator Craig, who got flat out busted soliciting gay sex in a bathroom stall, and honest Abe Alaska Senator Stevens, who just got convicted of a felony for all his corruption. And now Senator Dole comes along with this stunt. What is up with Republican Senators??
And here's more on what the right-winger politicians really feel about religion. Karl Rove, the king of pandering to the religious right, used to go around the White House telling everyone that the religious right are "nuts." Yes, we know that from David Kuo, the first White House faith based advisor who quit sick to his stomach at what he saw and wrote a book about it:
"Efforts by the Republican Party to rally grassroots support for next month's mid-term elections were knocked yesterday by a new book suggesting that right-wing evangelical Christians are regarded with contempt by the White House's top strategists and courted strictly for their votes.
The book, by former White House insider David Kuo, suggested that Karl Rove, President Bush's top political advisor, and his staff, routinely refer to fundamentalist Christians as "the nuts". That is unlikely to be taken kindly by the evangelicals who voted in 2004 and made the crucial difference in securing President Bush's re-election.
Mr Kuo writes: "National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous' and 'out of control'."
Mr Kuo also suggested the White House's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, where he was deputy director, was a get-out-the-vote machine more than an instrument of policy."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rove-described-fundamentalist-christians-as-nuts-419991.html
"Editorial Reviews
Review
Read Tempting Faith, written by a real compassionate conservative, and weep for the loss of what could have been. Then beware of those who would manipulate genuine faith for partisan political purposes."
-- Jim Wallis, bestselling author of God's Politics
"The best kind of sermon, the most revealing and meaningful kind of testimony. At call for action, you want to give a loud 'amen.'"
-- The Hartford Courant
"Though Tempting Faith is a story about the Bush presidency, it is even more a story about Mr. Kuo. As much as it is a story about politics, it is also a story about faith."
-- The New York Times
"Tempting Faith is one of those rare Washington books that is worth reading -- clearly written, disarmingly honest, thoughtfully introspective, and unusually substantive.... A refreshingly honest account of how politics can seduce the best intentioned and the most naïve."
-- The American Conservative
Product Description
David Kuo came to Washington wanting to use his Christian faith to end abortion, strengthen marriage, and help the poor. He reached the heights of political power, ultimately serving in the White House under George W. Bush. It was a dream come true: the chance to fuse his politics and his faith, and an opportunity for Christians not just to gain a seat at the proverbial table but also to plan the entire meal.
Yet his experience was deeply troubling. He had been seduced, just as so many evangelical conservatives had been seduced by politics. Tempting Faith is a wrenching personal journey and a heartfelt plea for a Christian reexamination of political and spiritual priorities."
http://www.amazon.com/Tempting-Faith-Inside-Political-Seduction/dp/0743287134/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1225680851&sr=8-1
So let's see if North Carolinians and Americans keep believing the religious sincerity of Dole and the Republicans.
>>It is hard to understand why a Sunday school teacher would have a fundraiser hosted by a man connected to Godless Americans.
ITA.
I hope at least a few will be concerned with the fact she demonized an entire segement of US society for having a different religious belief.
"She is pointing out that Hagan did indeed have a fundraiser in the home of a Godless American. "
McCain had a fundraiser in the home of G. Gordon Liddy, a convicted felon Nixon crony. By your standard you must vote against him. Will you? No way. Why? I'll let that speak for itself.
And what is a Godless American? What is it? Does that make a person a felon? A criminal. An evildoer? None of the above. Just someone who a right wing politician can use and twist around.
You see, people are on to the Republicans and what they are really about when it comes to religion. Like David Kuo said, it's getting out the vote. I have family and friends who are fundamentalists. They are like Kuo. They are good God fearing people. And they are done with the Republicans' bad mix of religion and politics.
I hope the people of North Carolina stand up for what is right, stand up against hate, and vote for a real change.
"she demonized an entire segement of US society for having a different religious belief"
Well put. I wish it weren't so accurate.
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