John DiIullio was the first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives early in the Bush administration. When he quit in frustration, he accused Karl Rove and crew of promising evangelicals every kind of cooperation in order to get their votes, but delivering nothing. He called them that wonderful insult, Mayberry Machiavellis.
David Kuo was deputy director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the second Bush administration. In 2003 he quit in frustration. In a new book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, Kuo says that Rove's staff promised evangelicals every kind of cooperation in order to get their votes, but delivered nothing. To make matters worse, the Rovers were privately condescending toward conservative Christians – like Kuo – who they described as "nuts," "ridiculous" and "goofy."
In a Christian Post story, White House spokesman Tony Snow denied everything.
I don't know what Karl Rove's staff said and says about the evangelicals who vote for them, but Kuo's and DiIullio's version sure would explain why President Bush's faith-based initiative has amounted to so little after six years.
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3 comments:
I agree that Christians should not put their trust in princes. Given that we will have a government, and that we have some choice in it, I think that moderate Democrats are actually the best hope for Christians who want positive government. The GOP can keep courting the religious right with fiery rhetoric because they never actually deliver on it. If, for example, the president really did try to pass an abortion bill -- the kind that could really be passed -- then he would have to make compromises that would be unacceptable to his pro-life allies. Worse, though, for the long-term power of the GOP, it would prove that the over-the-top denunciations by the secular left were partly right, thus scaring off centrists.
Just as only a cold warrior like Nixon could open China, I think only a Democrat could make serious accommodations between church and state. I take Hilary Clinton's move to reduce abortion as a hopeful step and emblematic example of what I am talking about.
Republicans have done an excellent job of exploiting religious symbolism. Many evangelicals hold social traditionalist views along with populist beliefs on economic issues. If Democrats could move to the middle on social issues and make a good faith effort to bridge the red-blue divide, we might just become a national party again.
Amen
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