Obama’s Evolution, Romney’s Devolution

The Boston Globe

May 11, 2012|Joshua Green

Opinion | Joshua Green

On Wednesday, after years of claiming that his view was “evolving,” President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage. Oddly, the catalyst for that decision was probably his opponent for the presidency, Mitt Romney. Social issues weren’t expected to intrude on a campaign supposed to be all about the economy. But last week, Romney’s openly gay foreign policy spokesman, Richard Grenell, resigned, implying that social conservatives had driven him out of the job, which thrust the issue into the campaign and led to Vice President Joe Biden’s saying on “Meet the Press” that he supported same-sex marriage.

At that point, Obama’s fate was sealed. Maintaining his opposition to marriage equality would only have exacerbated an awkward divide on an issue of mounting importance to his party.

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Obama Invokes His Christian Faith In His Call To Raise Taxes On The Very Wealthy (VIDEO)

Addicting Info- February 3, 2012

By Michael Hayne

A day after Mitt “Moneybags” Romney stated his lack of concern for the economically disadvantaged (an old school Republican touchstone), President Obama shot back by finally using the right-wing’s bullets against them.  Despite constantly being smeared as a secret Muslim, Barack Obama in fact subscribes to Christianity.  Today’s perverse version of Christianity typically refers to super rich, white proselytizers who flagrantly manipulate the pure teachings of Jesus and spew bilious hatred towards gays, women, single moms, blacks, and the poor and middle-class. It also tends to refer to making a bunch of bombs to kill a bunch of Middle Easterners so that some  defense contactor can continue to eat caviar.  So it’s only natural for thinking people to stay within 100 yards of it. But, much like everything else under the sun, the Republicans love co-opting it blatantly injecting it into politics in order to claim higher ground.

Former president Bush, a simple-minded lummox with virtually nothing to offer other than his ability to relate to even dumber people, understood that invoking Jesus’ name would guarantee universal support of his hawkish foreign policy no matter how severely flawed and unreasonable it may have been.  For that reason, I have been constantly saying that President Obama should put on his best decider face, hold a press conference on the white house lawn, and state that his good homeboy JC told him that he should return taxes on the highest earners to the levels during the Clinton era. But that’s not the style of the guy of the president who sings Al Green.

During the National Prayer Breakfast in D.C. that took place yesterday, the president revealed that his Christian (or Christ-like) faith heavily influenced his economic policies– including calling for the wealthy to pay more taxes and overhauling the healthcare system. He explained to the attendees that the nation’s challenges require smart policies coupled with a strong values system, and not of the philandering on your dying wife, or subscribing to anti-gay policies and making anti-gay rhetoric only to have secret gay sex variety.

‘It’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone,’President Obama said.

“For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,’ he added, referencing verse 48 of chapter 12 in the Gospel of Luke. “To answer the responsibility we’re given in Proverbs to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute,” added Obama.

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Ken Cuccinelli Drops Law Firm King & Spalding For Its ‘Obsequious Act Of Weakness’ On DOMA

Ken Cuccinelli Drops Law Firm King & Spalding For Its ‘Obsequious Act Of Weakness’ On DOMA

Amanda Terkel- HuffPost

Posted: 04/29/11 10:39 AM ET

WASHINGTON — Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) is terminating his office’s relationship with law firm King & Spalding after the firm decided to drop its defense of the controversial Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) last week.

“King & Spalding’s willingness to drop a client, the U.S. House of Representatives, in connection with the lawsuit challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was such an obsequious act of weakness that I feel compelled to end your legal association with Virginia so that there is no chance that one of my legal clients will be put in the embarrassing and difficult situation like the client you walked away from, the House of Representatives,” Cuccinelli wrote to firm partner Joseph Lynch in a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner.

King & Spalding Communications Director Les Zuke told The Huffington Post that the firm does not comment on client representations. An inquiry to Cuccinelli’s office was not immediately returned.

On Monday, King & Spalding announced that it was filing a motion to withdraw its representation of DOMA, saying that “the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate.”

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Religious Right Finished With Politics??

Washington Monthly

Political Animal

By- Steve Benen Featuring Hilzoy

April 5, 2009

A RELIGIOUS RIGHT CRACK-UP?…. In general, the most noticeable fissure among politically conservative evangelical Christians is generational. In this dynamic, older evangelicals see themselves as an appendage of the Republican Party, and consider abortion and gay rights as the only “moral” issues that matter. Younger evangelicals are less partisan, and consider poverty and global warming important, too.

But there’s another fissure, which in the short term, may be even more consequential. It’s between leaders of the religious movement vs. those more inclined to take John 18:36 to heart (Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world”).

The split first emerged, on a conceptual level, about a decade ago, when Cal Thomas, a far-right columnist and founding member of the Moral Majority, write a book called “Blinded by Might,” arguing that conservative evangelical Christians have been going about their efforts all wrong. Religious right activists, Thomas said, should focus less on political power and influence — having a seat at the proverbial GOP table — and more on religion and family.

In her Washington Post column today, Kathleen Parker reports on how this kind of thinking as grown considerably more common, to the point that many “principled Christians” are now “finished with politics.” Parker highlights a recent argument between Tom Minnery, head of the political arm of Focus on the Family, and Steve Deace of WHO Radio in Iowa.

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