Posted on 09/16/2007 4:13:29 PM PDT by doug from upland
FReepers, this is the THIRD in a series of facsimile transmissions to the office of Senator Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. I am hoping she will take the opportunity to clear up some questions and give us her side of the story. Any response from her will be published here.
No. 1 - Lying Howard Wolfson
No. 2 - False Reporting about Stan Lee
This is sooooo not gonna get you invited to lunch with Hill! :-)
She already announced the winner for lunch, so what do I have to lose? Oh, yeah, there’s that Ft. Marcy Park thing.
Religious groups to whom she has tried to pander need to see this. Who can help with that?
ping
Here are some of the leftists who will be trying to fool Christians on behalf of Hillary — http://www.faithinpubliclife.org/about/staff.html
OF COURSE, KATIE BARGE WAS INVOLVED WITH MEDIA MATTERS -—
Katie Barge, Director of Communications Strategy
Katie Barge is Director of Communications Strategy at Faith in Public Life. Barge most recently served as Research Director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), following her tenure as the first Research Director of Media Matters for America. A veteran communications and research professional, Barge has worked on a several senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns, as well as John Edwards’s 2004 presidential bid.
Barge holds a Bachelor of Arts from Wesleyan University. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia, where her father is a Methodist minister, and grew up in Asheville, North Carolina. Barge attends St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, DC’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Leading The News
Clinton hires faith guru
By Alexander Bolton
December 13, 2006
Burns Strider, one of the Democratic Party’s leading strategists on winning over evangelicals and other values-driven voters, will join Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as she prepares to launch her 2008 presidential campaign.
Strider now heads religious outreach for the House Democratic Caucus, and is the lead staffer for the Democrats’ Faith Working Group, headed by incoming Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.).
Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) created the working group in 2005 when Democratic strategists recognized that the party lost ground in the previous election because of trouble appealing to centrist and conservative voters in rural areas, who tend to be church-goers driven by moral issues. Strider was an aide to Pelosi when the group formed and joined Clyburn’s staff as policy director of the Democratic Caucus in 2006.
Strider’s move to Clinton’s camp suggests that Democrats will woo so-called faith voters in the 2008 election. The plan is buoyed by the Democrats’ success in winning over religious voters in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania in the midterm elections.
Ann Lewis, Clinton’s spokeswoman said that her boss has talked to potential advisors about joining a possible presidential campaign, but declined to reveal names.
Lewis noted that Clinton has long discussed her religious faith, pointing to writings on the subject in her two books: “It Takes a Village,” and “Living History.”
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. Reporters anticipating Clinton’s ’08 presidential run wrongly discount her expressions of faith as cynical political maneuverings, the observers add.
In Michigan, Gov. Jennifer Granholm won 35 percent of the evangelical vote, according to exit polls, a 25 percent increase in white evangelical support compared to the national average for Democrats. In Ohio, Gov.-elect Ted Strickland won 48 percent of white evangelicals who voted. In Pennsylvania, Sen.-elect Bob Casey Jr. won over 29 percent of white evangelicals and 59 percent of Catholics, despite running against Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a candidate well-known for his Catholic beliefs.
In all three states, Democrats conducted well-organized outreach efforts to religious voters, efforts that began well in advance of Election Day.
But Clinton is not the only 2008 Democratic hopeful in position to appeal to religious voters. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) joined conservative Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) to speak about AIDS two weeks ago before the congregation of the evangelical Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. Last week Congress passed legislation sponsored by Obama that would allow people in bankruptcy to give to charitable and religious organizations.
Josh Dubois, an aide in his Senate office, is heading Obama’s religious outreach.
Sen. John Kerry (Mass.), who is also contemplating running for the 2008 Democratic nomination, has been active, too. In September, he gave a speech on “service and faith” at the conservative Pepperdine University. He has tapped Shaun Casey, an associate professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary, to advise him on religious outreach.
Kerry also recently held a dinner at his D.C. home with evangelical leaders and traveled out to California for a four-hour meeting with Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church, who wrote the bestseller, “The Purpose-Driven Life.”
That three of the top contenders for the Democratic nomination will have aides or advisers specializing in religious outreach is a dramatic change from 2004, when Democratic presidential candidates viewed reaching out to values-voters as a low priority.
“In 2004 only one of the primary candidates had any staff member who was reaching out to religious constituencies and to voters,” said Amy Sullivan, one of the first liberal journalists to identify the importance of faith-driven voters to the future success of the Democratic Party, referring to one-time Democratic front-runner Howard Dean. “At this point it looks like perhaps not all but at least a majority of candidates in 2008 primary will have somebody on staff focused on religious outreach and religious strategy, and that’s a sea change in the space of four years.”
Sullivan, who’s writing a book, entitled “Resurrection,” about the intersection of faith and left-wing politics, said that the key to success for Democrats hoping to appeal to religious voters is starting early. She said that Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), who spoke often about his faith during a recent unsuccessful Senate run, did not meet with religious-minded voters early enough in the campaign.
Mara Vanderslice, who handled community and religious outreach for Dean during the 2004 Iowa caucuses, and who went on later that year to head Kerry’s religious outreach, said that even on Dean’s campaign, religious voters were given a relatively low priority.
“Even the senior staffers were ambivalent to faith-targeted outreach,” said Vanderslice. “It had not yet been adopted as a priority among senior staff. In the last couple of years, there’s been a huge culture change in the party since I was working on the Kerry campaign.”
Vanderslice, who along with Eric Sapp is the senior partner and co-founder of Common Good Strategies, a consulting firm that specializes in religious outreach for candidates, helped Democrats capture faith-motivated votes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Kansas.
Clyburn, the son of a fundamentalist minister who almost went to seminary himself, has also pioneered the Democrats’ religious outreach.
The left-wing think tank Center for American Progress has also been important in the effort to convince voters of faith that issues such as health care and education, are Democratic strong suits, are just as much moral issues as abortion and stem-cell research.
Melody Barnes, the group’s executive vice president for policy, has taken the lead on religious outreach there.
Last week, Center for American Progress convened a meeting of “center-left” religious leaders to discuss ways to improve the collaboration of progressive faith groups.
Wish we could put that on a billboard at every major intersection in every significant city in the nation.
You outdo yourself over and over.
THANKS TONS.
“Religious groups to whom she has tried to pander need to see this. Who can help with that?”
We wrestle not against flesh and blood. Yet—
Faith without works is...another Clinton stain on the White House.
Be strong and very courageous! — Joshua, chapter I.
“If God be for us, who can be against us?”
BTTT
“This guy, Burns Strider, is being counted on heavily by Hillary to fool voters of faith.”
I doubt if Hillary’s religion advocates abortion, including partial-birth infanticide.
It’s noon on Monday on the West Coast. No answer from Hillary yet.
Hope you hear soon, but I’m not holding my breath bump!
You forgot cut and run.
You forgot cut and run, but then it would not be a trinity.
Thanks
BTTT
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.