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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>No one is equating atheists to the klansmen.
"I'm an atheist. I'm a voter. And I'm appalled at ANY candidate who denigrates those like me."
That's what the Republican politicians don't care about anymore. You are a good scapegoat for them. Like Dole, they are happy to make up stuff about how religious they are. They don't care about religion. They just see religion as a way to use your vote.
We know from within the heart of the White House what went on. Please don't get distracted by all the phony talk by Republican politicians about religion. David Kuo, the former White House faith-based advisor, worked in the White House and quit in disgust. He wrong about how Karl Rove walked around the White House calling the religious right "the nuts."
""National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ridiculous, out of control, and just plain goofy," Mr Kuo wrote, according to MSNBC television, which obtained an early copy of the book. In particular, he quotes Karl Rove, the president's long-serving political adviser and mentor, as describing evangelical Christians as "nuts"."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/14/usa.midterms2006
"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=1225764929&sr=8-1
BOTH the KKK and the Godless Americans are controversial groups.
I've never heard of the Godless Americans.
The broad brush I was speaking of was the statement that: the Republican leaders are all phony about religion
I think that is ridiculous.
On a side note...cutting and pasting those long links no one reads those.
Again, no I didn't.
"The broad brush I was speaking of was the statement that: the Republican leaders are all phony about religion
I think that is ridiculous.
On a side note...cutting and pasting those long links no one reads those. This is a fast paced board. "
Maybe if you read some of those links you would see I am posting lots of facts to back up my statements while all you are doing is making unsupported declarations.
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