Democrats Turn to Leader of Religious Left

Democrats, reeling from the Republicans' success at courting churchgoers, are focusing new attention on a religious and political anomaly: Jim Wallis, one of the few prominent left-leaning leaders among evangelical Protestants.

At the start of the Congressional session, Senate Democrats invited Mr. Wallis to address their members at a private session to discuss issues. A group of about 15 House Democrats invited him to a breakfast discussion about dispelling their party's secular image. And NBC News has enlisted him to appear as a guest during its inauguration coverage opposite Dr. James C. Dobson, one of the most prominent evangelical conservatives.

Last week, Mr. Wallis's publisher, a religious imprint of HarperCollins, released his new book, "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It," moving it up from a publication date this spring to coincide with the inauguration. It immediately jumped to the top of the best-seller list at Amazon.com, where it hovered between No. 2 and No. 7 over the weekend.

Mr. Wallis, the founder and editor of the Christian magazine Sojourners, has written two previous books on similar themes, "Who Speaks for God?" and "The Soul of Politics," without making much of a splash, but since the November presidential election he has drawn a new level of attention, especially from Democrats and liberals.

"Failure makes you reassess," he said. "The Democratic Party has increasingly had a problem as being perceived as secular fundamentalists."

James P. Manley, a spokesman for the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said the reason Mr. Reid, a Mormon, had invited Mr. Wallis to speak was obvious. "It is clear from the results of the election that we Democrats need to be much more forceful and clear in communicating their faith and values to the electorate," Mr. Manley said.

"He can help us communicate with the rising number of evangelicals in the country, which is right now a Republican constituency," Mr. Manley said, "but which Wallis argues could easily become part of the Democratic constituency as well."

Mr. Wallis, a registered Democrat, told the senators that the Bible contains more than 3,000 references to alleviating poverty. He said Democrats needed to do a better job of explaining the moral and religious foundations of policies intended to help the poor, protect the environment and reduce violence.

He also urged the Democrats to look for middle ground on the social issues most troubling to religious traditionalists, like obscenity and abortion. Whatever their stance on abortion rights, he argued, Democrats need to treat its occurrence as a moral problem and propose ways to reduce it.

Several Roman Catholic senators, recalling that during the last election some conservative bishops condemned Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights, asked pointed questions on the subject, one person present said.

A few days later, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts echoed some of the same themes in a speech, calling for the party to "speak more directly to the issues of deep conscience" and emphasizing efforts to lower the abortion rate while preserving abortion rights.

Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy, said that he and Mr. Wallis had talked often over the years but that the part of the speech that most reflected his influence was a discussion of poverty, not the senator's thoughts about abortion.

Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, a Catholic who has led Democratic efforts to appeal to religious voters and who invited Mr. Wallis to talk with House Democrats, said many were frustrated at the public perception of the party as secular despite their personal devotion to their respective faiths. As a sympathetic evangelical Christian, Mr. Wallis could help "understand what the perceptions are," she said, applauding him for calling the federal budget "a moral issue."

But Dr. Richard Land, president of the ethics and religious liberty commission of the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, called Mr. Wallis "a left-wing evangelical" ill-qualified to instruct Democrats on conservative Christian values. "The Democrats are turning to the guy they can find that is least scary to them," Dr. Land said.

He argued that Mr. Wallis misunderstood conservative evangelical voters because he conflated the moral issue of alleviating poverty with the practical issue of whether Democratic policies are the way to do it.

"I don't know anybody who is in favor of poverty," Dr. Land said. "He doesn't seem to have adequately comprehended that the debate is over, based on the 30-year experiment, about whether big government or free markets work better at producing wealth for everybody."

The rats keep trying to hitch their broken wagons up to dead and dying donkeys.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1322238/posts

Democrat Implosion
Mens News Daily ^ | January 16, 2005 | Rudy Takala

Posted on 01/16/2005 9:29:28 PM PST by Nasty McPhilthy

As the day of President Bush’s inauguration draws near, liberal organizations seem to be on the brink of implosion; they don’t know what policies to pursue, they don’t know who their chairman should be, and they don’t know whether they should attack the presidential inauguration as a bourgeoisie-perpetrated fraud or as simply too expensive.

Just recently on C-Span, a group of anarchists could be observed planning a protest to the inaugural ceremony. Other liberals have accused Bush of stealing 118,000 votes in Ohio. But as of late, the primary argument that they’ve asserted for the pursuit of their policies is that Bush doesn’t really have a mandate because the majority of Americans don’t really like the Republicans.

For example, the pro-abortion group NARAL recently sent an e-mail to its members stating, "As he prepares to begin his second term, Bush and his allies are using their trumped up 'mandate' to justify their dangerous and divisive anti-choice agenda. But if winning a slim majority of votes is enough to convince the President of his 'mandate,' then we would like to remind President Bush of just one thing: A majority of Americans supports a woman's right to choose.”

Which, apparently, is why NARAL opposes allowing Americans to vote on abortion. Roe v. Wade made abortion legal and prohibited the individual states from contradicting its legality; Roe v. Wade’s abolition would do nothing but allow the people to vote on it. It’s ironic that the majority of Americans are precisely what NARAL fears.

With regard to the “mandate,” it appears to be a point that the Democrats will continue to stress until the next election. Greg Mitchell ofEditor and Publisher wrote on November fifth, “It’s true that President Bush got more votes than any winning candidate for president in history. He also had more people voting against him than any winning candidate for president in history.” And in a recent e-mail of his own, James Carville wrote, “Bush and the Republicans can only get their way in 2005 if we Democrats forget our own power. They only win if we choose to stop fighting. But if we stick together, we can transform American politics." He spoke of "bullying political tactics and [Bush’s] ‘dangerous’ second-term agenda." Unfortunately, he didn’t elaborate on what “bullying tactics” Republicans were intent on using; most likely, it was the threat of campaigning against the Democrats’ positions.

On an issue related to their future response to these malicious tactics, they will also have to choose a new national chairman for their party in early February. Candidates for the position include Howard Dean and a former representative from Indiana, the pro-life Tim Roemer. The candidates have been focusing profusely on their future strategy in relation to Southern states. According to Howard Dean, his Southern strategy is to “show up." Tim Roemer said it wasn’t about “steering the bus” left or right, but rather “about expanding the bus."

But of course, the chances that they’ll elect a nationally palatable candidate such as Roemer are poor; the chairman of the Massachusetts Democrats has already referred to it as “extremely foolish.”

If Democrats wish to win elections again, they really must “steer the bus right” on cultural issues. In every election they lose, they fault the result on their own inability to “get their message out.” They fault it on their failure to “show up” and scream emphatically at rallies. However, in a nation where two parties constitute the extent of the political system, it’s a weak excuse. America is a nation in which a candidate for president can scream at a rally in Iowa and become the subject of radio stations in all fifty states within hours. Their defeat had more to do with the unpopularity of their ideas than their inability to explain them.

They appear to have come to a dim realization of this, as they haven’t expressed much interest in “the issues” in recent days. Rather, they’ve attacked Republicans as “dangerous,” “unpopular,” and “anti-choice.” Unfortunately, getting the message out about how unpopular Republicans are is not and will not become a very convincing tactic.

Democrats will win again eventually, as politics will continue to undergo its inevitable cycles. However, it will be some time before NARAL, Carville, the anarchists, and numerous other Democrats make the adjustments necessary for this to occur.

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