Posted on 09/19/2007 7:14:10 PM PDT by pissant
DENVER (AP) — James Dobson, one of the nation's most politically influential evangelical Christians, made it clear in a message to friends this week he will not support Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson.
In a private e-mail obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, Dobson accuses the former Tennessee senator and actor of being weak on the campaign trail and wrong on issues dear to social conservatives.
"Isn't Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won't talk at all about what he believes, and can't speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?" Dobson wrote.
"He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent 'want to.' And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!"
The founder and chairman of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, Dobson draws a radio audience in the millions, many of whom who first came to trust the child psychologist for his conservative Christian advice on child-rearing.
Gary Schneeberger, a Focus on the Family spokesman, confirmed that Dobson wrote the e-mail. Schneeberger declined to comment further, saying it would be inappropriate because Dobson's comments about presidential candidates are made as an individual and not as a representative of Focus on the Family, a nonprofit organization restricted from partisan politics.
Dobson's strong words about Thompson underscore the frustration and lack of unity among Christian conservatives about the GOP field. Some Christian right leaders have pinned their hopes on Thompson, describing him as a Southern-fried Ronald Reagan. But others have voiced doubts in recent weeks about some of the same issues Dobson highlighted: his position on gay marriage and support for the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.
Dobson and other Christian conservatives support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would bar gay marriage nationally. Thompson has said he would support a constitutional amendment that would prohibit states from imposing their gay marriage laws on other states, which falls well short of that.
Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the Thompson campaign, said Wednesday in response to the Dobson e-mail: "Fred Thompson has a 100 percent pro-life voting record. He believes strongly in returning authority to the levels of government closest to families and communities, protecting states from intrusion by the federal government and activist judges.
"We're confident as voters get to know Fred, they'll appreciate his conservative principles, and he is the one conservative in this race who can win the nomination and can go on to defeat the Democratic nominee."
In his e-mail addressed "Dear friends," Dobson includes the text of a recent news story highlighting Thompson's statement that while he was baptized in the Church of Christ, he does not attend church regularly and won't speak about his faith on the stump.
U.S. News and World Report quoted Dobson earlier this year as questioning Thompson's commitment to the Christian faith — comments Dobson contended were not put in proper context. Dobson in this week's e-mail writes that suppositions "about the former senator's never having professed to be a Christian are turning out to be accurate in substance."
Earlier this year, Dobson said he wouldn't back John McCain because of the Arizona senator's opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Later, Dobson wrote on a conservative news Web site that he wouldn't support former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani should he win the Republican nomination. Dobson called Giuliani an "unapologetic supporter of abortion on demand" and criticized him for signing a bill in 1997 creating domestic-partnership benefits in New York City.
Last week, Dobson announced on his radio show that the IRS had cleared him of accusations that he had endangered his organization's nonprofit status by endorsing Republican candidates in 2004. The IRS said Dobson, who endorsed President Bush's re-election bid, was acting as an individual and not on behalf of the nonprofit group.
Anyone trying to create heavenly perfection in the here and now.
Would this also kind of apply to those who want to bring on the Apocalypse to get it over with??
Golden or not, perhaps they are not yet at a terminal...
“I agree with this statement re: most issues.
However, I am not “in doubt” that protecting life and marriage are more important than the concept of “federalism.””
I’d already understood you’re not in doubt. However, don’t weep if the same methods you espouse are turned against us. Since you have Michigan as part of your handle, you ought to be intimately familiar with the process by which the corruption of Detroit gets to dictate how the whole state goes.
I find it more likely, given the current climate, that some group may push through a national agenda enshrining buggery as a right than one protecting marriage. Will you defend the amendment as an instrument of social policy then? Probably not.
Well, you’re welcome to keep your opinion, and I’m glad for you that you have the optimism that the means you support, being more important than ‘federalism,’ will only be used for worthy causes like pro-life and pro-marriage efforts, but I don’t share your confidence in government or politicians.
It was an 8 PM posting...
(OK if you don't know, I'm not sure if any other FREEPER will be able to clue you in).
Would this also kind of apply to those who want to bring on the Apocalypse to get it over with??
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I think so, yes.
I have no confidence in politicians except as their pressured by the people.
Please tell me what exactly stops the bad guys from using the mechanisms of govt to do bad things now.
It’s not as if they’ll only do so in response to the mechanisms of govt being used to do a good thing.
The founders, who thought the whole “federalism” thing up, authored the means by which the Constitution could be amendment; in fact, they amended it ten times themselves as a condition of its initial adoption (actually, the politicians proposed twelve amendments, but the states only adopted ten of them).
And it would be foolish for us to refrain from using the Constitutionally provided amendment process to protect the very foundation of Western civilization, or of life itself, out of fear that darker forces will then be prompted to use the process for evil.
Nothing stops them from doing that now.
Both the following are true:
I support federalism.
Some issues obviously transcend federalism — free speech, gun rights, worship. Protecting the institution of marriage is one of them, and FAR MORE IMPORTANT than federalism.
I’m a Congregant of the Universal Church of the Beach where I worship Sol and commune with Bikini Angels ...you got a problem with that?
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I do. You have not supplied a single verifiable fact in this thread. When I posted an OSS document prepared for the Nuremberg trials which sets out over 100 pages of information on the Nazi persecution of Christians in response to your statement that the Nazi party revived Christianity in Germany, you refused to look at it, much less read it, and did not have the intellectual integrity to retract your falsehood. Not responding to the meat of Colofornian’s arguments is the same sort of avoidance. Colofornian said to you that you attack members of one faith for saying that another faith is false, yet you don’t seem to have a problem being judgmental yourself and making the attack. In response you fall to blithering about a church of bikinis . . . : P
Ditto.
Except for the worshipping Sol thing, I got no problem with that.
In fact, I’m pretty impressed.
In earlier posts, you said you were old enough to remember the persecution of Jews and Gypsies in Germany in the 1930’s (and you said evangelical Christian Americans pose the same threat to America today).
And you refused someone’s suggestion to read the Nuremberg Trial documents, saying you didn’t need to read them to know the story because, you said, “I lived it.”
So some simple math here. My Dad was at Pearl Harbor at age 19, and died four years ago at age 80.
So if you personally remember pre-WWII Germany and the 1946 Nuremberg Trials, that’d put you now in your late 70’s or early 80’s now.
Depending on what you mean by the term, any serious “communing” you’re doing with Bikini Angels these days is physiologically and biologically impressive, but it testifies more to pharmaceutical research and development than to your faith in Sol.
Your ignorance of Pat Robertson is astounding. You throw out figures like $1.5 million without any evidence, and then when I mention is philanthropy, you scoff. You only get your news about him from MSM outlets that hate the man for his faith in Christ.
He gave nearly $140 million to WorldReach, an organization with the goal to evangelize internationally. He gave nearly $150 million to Regent University, the Christian grad school he founded. And he’s set up a trust for CBN that’s at over $100 million. He receives no salary for his work with The 700 Club. he’s not a “money grubbing huckster.” He’s a Christian businessman who’s made some great decisions and some dumb decisions — just like you and me. And he’s very generous with his money, investing it in organizations that share the good news of Jesus will millions of people and train Christian leaders to impact society.
“Smuggling” with an OB aircraft? He paid to rent some space on OB’s aircraft to import diamonds. He worked with the thug leader of that country — not the smartest thing, I admit, but not illegal. Your characterizing that as “smuggling” again betrays your bias.
So you were with “the Jesus show.” Not sure what that is. Doesn’t really mean much in the current conversation, though.
Whatever. You obviously have a beef against high-profile Christians. Sorry that some Christian has done you wrong and hurt you so deeply.
I don’t care what Dobson says. Dobson does not represent “ALL” Christians.
Who said he did?
But he obviously does speak for a whole lot of them, and influences even more. Anyone who disputes that, and its political effect, is delusional.
Well, I know a number of Californians fond of "beach ministry" who claim they're out to enjoy "God's beauty." (quotations there for a reason). :)
As for the "communing with Bikini angels" portion, are you "praying" for them or "preying" upon them? Are you interceding for them or... (well, you get the point)
You asked where I got, "your faith is one that likes to attack those faiths which critique other faiths."
Well, none of us operate in a vacuum with our mental-set of beliefs, our value system, our philosophies, our objects of worship. Some folks are more eclectic than others; but it doesn't mean they lack a primary or a combined primary-secondary basic "faith" upon which they operate. A humanist may have faith only in themselves or a partial faith in self combined with a faith in government or some other entity. It's still a "faith."
So the fact that you have a "faith" was assumed. And it was obvious that based upon your "faith" (whatever combo of beliefs, views, values, etc.) one primary point of yours emerging from your posts was: "Thou shalt not attack other folks' faith."
So would that be fair to describe as one of the tenets of what you subscribe to?
What a bunch of nonsense! The PDF link is to the actual scanned documents.
http://www.geocities.com/nazis_persecuted_churches/part-one.html
If you have a hard time reading it, get it to full size, you do this by right clicking to bring up a box with four arrows pointing outward, and then you click on that box.
The documents speak for themselves in terms of authentication. If the blogger scanned from a Rutgers link that is gone that doesn’t matter. Confirmation of the document is all over the place, for example:
http://org.law.rutgers.edu/publications/law-religion/articles/RJLR_3_1_2.pdf
etc. etc.
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