David Kuo
Posted on 10/16/2006 2:09:32 PM PDT by Conservative Coulter Fan
David Kuo |
WASHINGTON – Top White House political advisers embraced evangelical supporters publicly to get their votes while mocking them privately as "nuts" and "goofy," according to a new book by David Kuo, the former No. 2 man in President Bush's so-called "faith-based" initiatives program.
In "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," Kuo also says it's time for conservative Christians to take a time out from politics and to re-evaluate their priorities. The book hits stores today.
Kuo quit the White House in 2003. Now he accuses Karl Rove's political staff of cynically hijacking the faith-based initiatives idea for electoral gain.
White House strategists "knew 'the nuts' were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness," Kuo writes.
Kuo appeared last night on CBS's "60 Minutes," where he called on evangelicals to back off of politics – to fast and consider what they are doing to help the poor rather than focusing on issues like abortion and homosexuality.
Asked if White House officials really mocked conservative Christians, Kuo told Lesley Stahl, "Oh, absolutely. You name the important Christian leader and I have heard them mocked by serious people in serious places."
Specifically, Kuo says people in the White House political affairs office referred to Pat Robertson as "insane," Jerry Falwell as "ridiculous" and that James Dobson "had to be controlled." President Bush, he wrote, talked about his compassion agenda, but never really fought for it.
"The president of the United States promised he would be the leading lobbying on behalf of the poor. What better lobbyist could anybody get?" Kuo wonders.
What happened?
"The lobbyist didn't follow through," he claims.
"What about 9/11?" Stahl asks. "All the priorities got turned about."
"I was there before 9/11. I know what happened before 9/11. … The trend before 9/11 was … president makes a big announcement and nothing happens," Kuo replies.
At the time, Bush proposed for the first time that he would spend $8 billion dollars on programs for the poor.
"I think it's one of the most important political speeches given in the last generation. I really do," says Kuo. "It laid out a whole new philosophy for Republicans."
After the election, to much fanfare, President Bush created the office of faith-based initiatives to increase funds to religious charities.
But Kuo says there were problems right off the bat. For one, he says the office dropped very quickly down the list of priorities.
Kuo was motivated to join the White House team because of the promise of spending $8 billion on programs for the poor. He was disappointed at how little was actually allocated.
He blames evangelicals themselves for the indifference on that issue. He took Stahl to a convention of evangelical groups and walked around the display booths, looking for any reference to the poor.
"You've got homosexuality in your kid's school, and you've got human cloning, and partial birth abortion and divorce and stem cell," Kuo remarked. "Not a mention of the poor."
"This message that has been sent out to Christians for a long time now: that Jesus came primarily for a political agenda, and recently primarily a right-wing political agenda – as if this culture war is a war for God. And it's not a war for God, it's a war for politics. And that's a huge difference," says Kuo.
He said: "God and politics had become very much fused together into a sort of a single entity. Where, in a way, politics was the fourth part of the trinity. God the father, God the son, God the holy spirit, God the politician."
The White House calls Kuo's book "ridiculous," and Kuo's old boss, Jim Towey, who ran the faith based office until this past June, says Kuo is "naïve and simplistic."
"I think it's dangerous to take a snapshot of a few months or even a year and draw conclusions," Towey says. "Ya know, I can look you in the eye and say the president did what he could do."
Kuo says he went to the White House political affairs office, then run by Ken Mehlman, and offered to hold events at taxpayer expense for Republicans in tight races as a way of energizing religious voters.
Kuo says Mehlman, now head of the Republican National Committee, was "thrilled."
Asked if in retrospect this was morally wrong, Kuo says, "I feel like it was more spiritually wrong. You're taking the sacred and you're making it profane. You're taking Jesus and reducing him to some precinct captain, to some get-out-the-vote guy."
"I have this burden on my heart that the name of God is just being destroyed in the name of politics," Kuo says. "I felt like I had to write this."
Kuo says it's time for evangelical Christians to take a step back – "to have a fast from politics. People are being manipulated. Good well-meaning people are being told, 'Send your money to this Christian advocacy group or that.' And that's the answer. It's just not the answer. It's not the answer."
Who do you work for?
". David Kuo was senior vice president of communications at Value America.com. He worked for the CIA and for a US senator, and has been a journalist and speechwriter. He lives in Virginia with his wife, Kim."
http://www.twbookmark.com/authors/52/2230/index.html
snipped from link at bottom:
Ralph Reed and David Kuo: The former chief strategist for Robertson's Christian Coalition, who subsequently left to form a political consultancy operation, Century Strategies, Ralph Reed has played a vital role in building up John Ashcroft as the leading choice of the extreme right for president, and in defending his nomination to be attorney general.[10]
Reed's relationship with Ashcroft is close, as is illustrated by the case of J. David Kuo, one of Ashcroft's top former aides. Kuo, whose resume sports a one-year stint as intelligence officer at the CIA, went from working as Ashcroft's policy director -- a key strategic post -- to become managing director of strategic communications for Reed's Century Strategies,[11] from where he supported the Ashcroft for president campaign.[12] According to the Heritage Foundation, Kuo co-authored Ralph Reed's most recent book, Active Faith.[13] Kuo also served on the start-up team,[14] and as deputy policy director at Empower America, William Bennett's think tank, whose founding chairman was New York financier Ted Forstmann,[15] and whose directors include Trent Lott and Bush Defense Secretary-designate Donald Rumsfeld.[16]
It will be interesting to see where Kuo ends up should Ashcroft be confirmed. Kuo is a longtime promoter of "charitable choice" -- a code word for the right wing for giving religious institutions access to government social services budgets -- also a major passion of Ashcroft. In January 1996, Kuo became executive director of the Center for Effective Compassion, which was founded by Arianna Huffington and Marvin Olasky -- G.W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" guru who is currently tipped to be head of a proposed White House Office of Faith-Based Programs.
In 1996, Kuo founded the American Compass,[17] a Virginia-based operation partly funded by right wing financier Richard Mellon Scaife's Scaife Family Foundation.[18] American Compass, whose directors included Ashcroft and Olasky,[19] was designed to promote religious involvement in social service provision, which it did in part by sponsoring (along with Foster Friess, a Greenville, Delaware-based fund manager and member of the far right Council for National Policy) a tour of key right wing politicians supporting such measures, including John Ashcroft and J.C. Watts. The tour "was timed," according an article posted on J.C. Watts' website, "to coincide with the beginning of welfare reform."[20]
American Compass received $100,000 from the Scaife Family Foundation from 1988-1999 for the Samaritan Awards, which were designed to promote small religious charities that perform their activities without any government dollars. The Samaritan Award judges in 1997 included David Kuo of The American Compass, Jeb Bush of the Foundation for Florida's Future, Whitney Ball of the Philanthropy Roundtable, Kay Coles James of Regent University, Marvin Olasky, and Rev. Robert A. Sirico the president of the Acton Institute.[21]
There is a longstanding relationship between Kuo, Reed and Ashcroft, important enough for Ralph Reed to mention in his announcement that he was leaving the Christian Coalition:[22]
"I'm going to be working closely with the American Compass and with my good friend Senator John Ashcroft and Steve Largent at that organization. (...) Secondly, I'm going to be forming a new company called Century Strategies, that will offer and provide, at affordable prices, quality consulting services for campaigns and for pro-life, pro-family and pro-free enterprise candidates at every level of government. I expect this new company to be very active in the 1998 elections, first on dozens of campaigns, and eventually on hundreds of campaigns across the country. Our main focus will be on building a "farm team" of state legislators, school board members and other local officeholders who I believe hold the key to the future of our country."
http://www.idsonline.org/ashcroft.html
Looking for a job with the Administration?
He said: "God and politics had become very much fused together into a sort of a single entity. Where, in a way, politics was the fourth part of the trinity. God the father, God the son, God the holy spirit, God the politician."
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God warns us about a lot of things in the Bible, one of them being wolves in sheep's clothing. This guy claims to be a Christian, and maybe a conservative (though I can't find reference to that, other than by association to the Bush Administration). That entitles him to speak for all Christians? That entitles him to redefine Christianity as a theological "Red Cross", helping the poor and such, but staying out of the moral issues??
That's one more reason why I despise the "big tent" theory of GOP politics. Some of those in the tent will be quite willing to speak in my name, and promote all sorts of evil. In fact, if the Republican "base" deserts the GOP this fall, this will be the reason for conservatives. There's too many folks in the GOP claiming the "conservative Christian" label who rarely step foot in a church, and who've never picked up a Bible. The GOP Congress has been accepting money and votes from conservative Christians for at least 30 years, and then turns around and gives control of most Congressional and Senate committees to liberal Republicans, or to "reliable" conservatives. The GOP congress has squandered so much in the last 10 years, and we'll all pay for it in November.
My God is consistent and unchanging. He expressed his will through the Bible. The Bible addresses both the poor and morality issues. Primarily, it addresses the personal relationship to God through Jesus Christ and forgiveness for sin that each Christian has, and that is freely available to all men. Saying that "Jesus was just a teacher", or that "Christians should help the poor, but stay out of politics", or that "Christians should oppose Bush because he started a war", are all half-truths or outright lies. A Christian cannot arrive at those positions from reading God's Word. Those folks are speaking as a god, claiming to speak for G-O-D. Good luck to them at the judgment.
SFS
I'm amazed at the power of evil. What a poor entrapped soul this Kuo is.
And you seem to be as hoodwinked as Kuo is.
And he felt he needed it published right before the election, and you felt you had to do your bit to depress the Republican vote.
Aside from a ban on partical birth abortion, Bush has only rhetorically done what a lot of republicans do...they talk a lot about how pro-life they are, but this never translates into action...he said the country isn't ready to overturn Roe, gee, you've got my Vote, President Bush. He opposed the pro-life bill in South Dakota outlawing all abortions except if the mother's life is threatened...and money to planned parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider...has increased...so we all get to subsidize abortion too! I don't remember Bush or a whole lot of other Republicans making any effort to support the Sanctity of Life Act of 2005.
I'll tell ya what, Kuo, when liberals, left-wingers, enviromentalists, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, and all the rest "take a time out from politics," so will Christians. Not a moment before.
I guess not. The story definately has a trollish smell.
Have you ever considered that it might be you who is naive...or easily misled?
Faith based initiative money has been coming to our local homeless shelter. It is being used as temporary quarters for newly released convicts.
IMO some funding was welcome. We didn't need the massive outpouring of money to function, but the extra does help to pay the powerbill. Massive funding programs lead to massive waste.
"their intolerance from my beliefs"????? Vaquero, they don't agree with you. If they were intolerant they would be beheading you guys.
I swear I don't know how many times I have heard this line of thinking. People argue for their beliefs. If they didn't think they were the truth as they see it they would not make the argument. How does that effect anyone else other than you don't agree? Not everyone is a pantywaist saying "but you know I could be wrong" after every statement. That is assumed based on the fact that humans are fallible. Sheesh.
http://www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?kaid=110&subid=900025&contentid=1451
THIS GUY HAS BEEN WORKING WITH THE DLC SINCE THE LATE 90'S.
"David Kuo is co-founder of The American Compass, an organization that evaluates and funds the most effective social service organizations serving people in need."
If Pat Robertson really cares about the kingdom, he should remove himself from the limelight. He, and others have caused a lot of blaspheming of their own accord.
17 For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.
18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
20 Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.
As for Mr Kuo, whoever he is: He clearly violated 1 Corinthians 6 with his effort to sow dissension no matter how true his allegations are.
Do you believe everything to read? ;)
What a piece of shiite this guy is. I fully believe his release was timed with Woodward's novel, and the Foley disclosure. The media is accepting this fraud as if he really speaks for Evangelical Conservatives, when he is clearly a liberal plant.
to=YOU
Don't be gullible. That's what the Dems/libs want and you don't want to make them happy do you?
Well who can argue with that?
Here is Kuo, proving he is nothing but a left-wing shill.
BTTT
Kuo reminds me of David Brock. I wonder if it is because he is a syrupy self indulgent writer or that he looks like a twinky.
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