Posted on 12/26/2006 9:39:30 AM PST by jdm
Hillary Clinton has hired an "evangelical consultant” to help woo Christian conservatives in her likely 2008 presidential campaign.
The move comes after a similar political operative successfully aided Democratic candidates in several states in the midterm elections.
More than one-quarter of the nation’s voters identify themselves as evangelical — a voter bloc that has long been courted by Republicans.
Clinton’s new hire is Burns Strider, an evangelical Christian who directs religious outreach for House Democrats and is the lead staffer for the Democrats’ Faith Working Group, headed by incoming Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina.
Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the group last year when Democratic strategists observed that the party lost ground in the previous election in part because candidates failed to reach centrist and conservative voters in rural areas, who tend to be churchgoers concerned with moral issues, according to the Washington, D.C.-based publication The Hill.
Strider was an aide to Pelosi when the group was formed and joined Clyburn’s staff as policy director of the Democratic Caucus earlier this year, the paper reported.
"Observers of Clinton’s expressions of faith say religion has always been important to her, that she attended prayer group meetings while first lady, and that she joined a Senate prayer group shortly after winning election in 2000,” The Hill reports.
"Reporters anticipating Clinton’s ’08 presidential run wrongly discount her expressions of faith as cynical political maneuvering," the observers add.
Clinton is not the only potential Democratic candidate for the White House to launch efforts to appeal to religious voters.
Josh Dubois, an aide in Barack Obama’s Senate office, is heading his religious outreach. Sen. John Kerry gave a speech on "service and faith” in September at conservative Pepperdine University, and has brought in Shaun Casey, an associate professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary, as a consultant on religious outreach.
Kerry also traveled recently to California for a meeting with Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church and author of the best-seller "The Purpose-Driven Life.”
Clinton’s evangelical point man, Strider, will take his cue from Mara Vanderslice, whose consulting firm Common Good Strategies helped Democratic candidates make inroads among evangelical and churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Exit polls showed that Vanderslice’s candidates did about 10 percentage points better than Democrats nationally among those voters, The New York Times reports.
In Michigan, Democrat Gov. Jennifer Granholm cut significantly into the white evangelical vote that normally goes Republican. Similarly, in Ohio, Democrat Gov.-elect Ted Strickland took nearly half of the white evangelical vote. And in Pennsylvania, Sen.-elect Bob Casey won nearly a third of white evangelicals.
In all three states, Democrats began conducting well-organized outreach efforts to appeal to religious voters long before election day, according to The Hill.
Vanderslice and her business partner, Eric Sapp, urged Democrats to speak in detail about the religious basis of their policies and to buy commercials on Christian radio. In Ohio and Michigan, they even enlisted nuns to staff phone banks and call Catholic and pro-life voters to urge support for Democratic candidates.
Vanderslice has criticized Democrats’ usual reluctance to involve religion in their campaigns. She disclosed in an interview that she told candidates not to use the phrase "separation of church and state,” which does not appear in the Constitution’s language barring the establishment of religion.
Vanderslice herself didn’t become an evangelical Christian until she attended Earlham College, a Quaker school in Indiana known for its adherence to pacifism. She acknowledges that she still struggles with common evangelical ideas about abortion, homosexuality, and the literal reading of Scripture, according to the Times.
After college, Vanderslice spoke at rallies held by the AIDS activist group Act Up, which disrupted Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989 by spitting the Eucharist on the floor. In 2000, she practiced civil disobedience when she took to the streets of Seattle in a protest against the World Trade Organization.
During the 2004 presidential campaign, when Vanderslice directed religious outreach for John Kerry’s campaign, Catholic League President William Donahue denounced her as an "ultra-leftist who consorts with anti-Catholic bigots.”
Her advice was largely ignored by the Kerry campaign. But in the recent elections, the Times reports, she and partner Sapp were heeded when they "told Democratic candidates not to try to fake it, advising those of non-Christian faiths or no faith at all to talk about the origins of their sense of ethics.”
Satan's Daughter is playing this brilliantly. Are there still some of you out there who don't think she can win?
I want to get a comment from Burns Strider but can't find a number anywhere. I want to challenge him on Hillary's bearing false witness against Peter Paul. Your help will be appreciated.
Can a religious scholar on this thread cite the Commandments in which Hillary believes and practices?
BARF!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perhaps you can explain your comment about the GOP "ridding" itself of the "Christian-socialist" party. At initial glance, it appears you're lumping Christians and socialists into the same group. If I understood you correctly, you're pretty ignorant. I am a born-again Christian and most decidedly NOT a socialist--I spent twenty years on active duty in the US Air Force.
What exactly do you mean by suggesting that the GOP needs to "return to being friendly to civil liberties"? When have the Republicans NOT been friendly to civil liberties? What civil liberties are you referring to?
As for the GOP "ridding" itself of Christians (its core support group, whether you like it/agree with it or not), all they have to do is continue their present heading. Christians left the GOP in droves in 06 and unless the GOP returns to its roots, the same thing will happen in 08. If that's the way it turns out, the GOP leadership will have nobody to blame but themselves.
Get this: Christians support candidates whose policies line up with Christian beliefs. That would not describe any major Democrat that I know of, nor would it describe Rudy Giuliani or John McCain. It's not enough for a person to have done admirable things in the past. If candidates want Christian support, they must advocate godly policies. If they don't, Christians will stay home and the GOP will take another beating in 08.
You can't make this stuff up folks!
All the Republicans have to do to win is by nominating Rudy Giuliani or John McCain.
There...fixed it.
You totally misunderstood my post so you went off on a rant that was totally meaningless. Who would ever think that "christian" and "socialist" mean the same thing? What sort of egg nog have you been drinking?
The GOP has been running as the de-facto "Christian-Socialist" party for the last 10 years and especially the last 6. This means the main issues that the GOP focuses on are moral issues and social engineering through the redistribution of wealth.
The democrats, on the other hand, have been running as the secular-communist party for a pretty long time.
BTW, the GOP has been very hostile to civil liberties. The 4th amendment is a good example. The 2nd amendment is pretty much meaningless now as well due to the social conservatives' love affair of no-knock search warrants.
Well, Jeff, first of all, I don't drink alcohol of any kind.
You're the one who identifies the GOP as the "de-facto "Christian-Socialist" party." By placing that hyphen between "Christian" and "Socialist" you are implying an association between the two groups.
You're the one talking about the GOP running as the Christian-Socialist party. You're the one suggesting that the GOP is focusing on moral issues and social engineering through redistribution of wealth. You're the one suggesting that the GOP has been very hostile to civil liberties, stating that "The 4th Amendment is a good example" [???]. You're the one suggesting that the "The 2nd amendment is pretty much meaningless now as well due to the social conservatives' love affair of no-knock search warrants." You make all these claims without providing a single specific to support your rather wild statements. So, tell me again, who was it that "went off on a rant"?
Why don't you stop trying to hijack a thread that focuses on Hillary Clinton's blatant attempt to pander to Christian conservatives? SHE is the issue at hand. SHE is the enemy. SHE is the one who must be stopped. I think we can at least agree on that much, yes?
" She acknowledges that she still struggles with common evangelical ideas about abortion, homosexuality, and the literal reading of Scripture
Calling yourself an evangelical Christian and being one are obviously two different things."
The left redefined "conservative" to fit their agenda. Now they are doing the same with "evangelical."
You are the one that took the thread off on a tangent by misunderstanding what a hyphen between two words means. By your logic, if I wrote "Jade works for an Asian-American association", you would take that as meaning that all Asians are American. geesh
The reason that Hillary will has a high chance of success is because the GOP has focused almost exclusively on moral and social engineering issues for the last 6 years.
All she really has to do to win is to make herself appear a little more acceptable to some non-hardcore religious voters in Ohio and Florida.
The only way to stop a Hillary presidency is for the GOP to stop concentrating on moral and socialistic issues and focus on fiscal conservativeness, shrinking the government and protecting civil liberties. We do that and we win - we "stay the course" we lose.
Sure, continue to believe that if you want. The reality is that the conservatives will not back either of them, and the Democrats will take the White House and more seats in the House and Senate.
So long as judicial supremacy persists, I cannot understand how any evangelical or conservative Catholic could support Hillary specifically, or Democrats in general. I can understand not voting out of disgust or disappointment, but to actively and directly support those whose agenda includes having a judiciary that will destroy all vestiges of our traditions is just mind-boggling.
And anyone who thinks an unknown stiff like Brownback or Hunter running on God, guns and gays can take on the hillary hate machine needs to step away from the AM radio and put down the bottle.
And anyone who thinks Republicans will vote for gun-grabbing abortionists who want to give amnesty to illegal border invaders is playing with fire.
"If Kerry emerged from that meeting without either acknowledging Jesus as his Lord and Savior or shaking with rage at being called out as a sinner doomed to eternal hellfire unless he repents, than it is obvious that Warren continues his slide into outright apostasy..."
WE HAVE A WINNER!!
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