Heritage Foundation

NOM's 'Historic' Fail

For weeks, the National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown has been touting the “historic” March for Marriage, telling supporters “this is our time” to "change history." A month ago he wrote excitedly about a “game-changer,” a $500,000 matching gift from one of the major donors that keep NOM afloat. Brown had been inspired by a massive turnout for an anti-marriage-equality protest  in France, and hoped for something similar in Washington. But even with big donors and heavy-weight Religious Right co-sponsors, Brown and his allies couldn’t pull it off. Not even close.

In reality, NOM’s rally had a few, perhaps several, thousand attendees.  (NOM’s Thomas Peters claims 15,000, which seems, um, generous.) And every time one of the speakers tried to make the crowd feel like part of a larger movement by talking about the 200,000 people they said marched recently for one-man/one-woman marriage in Puerto Rico, or the hundreds of thousands or millions in France and Spain, or even the 585,000 who have signed the Manhattan Declaration or the half million who marched against legal abortion, it only served to highlight how few bothered to show up in Washington. According to various speakers, the Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia sent five busloads; anti-gay state senator Ruben Diaz claimed 32 buses from New York. Brian Brown gave a shout out to some Chinese Christians from Chicago.

The ethnically diverse speakers’ list was a mix of old and new, including some familiar faces on the anti-gay circuit, such as Harry Jackson, Gary Bauer, and Iowa’s Bob Vander Plaats. Harry Jackson led the crowd in a chant that he said was a prayer for the Supreme Court: “Let God arise and his enemies be scattered.” Bauer delivered a blustery message to the Republican Party that if they “bail” on marriage, he’ll lead as many people as he can out of the GOP (which may not be that much of a threat). Vander Plaats urged Supreme Court justices to look to the Founding Fathers, Billy Graham, and Pope Francis. Also speaking were Doug Mainwaring, now making the circuit as the anti-equality gay man the Religious Right loves to love; Frank Schubert, the mastermind of the dishonest Prop 8 campaign and every anti-equality campaign since then; and Jim Garlow, who made a name for himself among the Religious Right with his pro-Prop 8 organizing. Garlow insisted you cannot call yourself a Christian and support the Court’s “obliterating” what he called a “core aspect of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” (Garlow should have seen the packed crowd at the morning’s pro-equality interfaith service at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation.) Garlow warned Supreme Court justices that they will one day stand before “the Chief Justice of the Universe” and will be held accountable if they defy His ways.

A couple of groups sent under-30 speakers to say how wrong the media is to suggest that Millennials are a lost cause on this issue.  But facts are facts, and polls show that support for marriage equality is overwhelming among under-30 Americans: 72 percent of Millennials believe same-sex couples should be able to get legally married, including 58 percent of under-30 Republicans.

Many of the speakers were on-message to the point of being boringly redundant, repeating the message on marchers’ pre-printed signs: “Kids do best with a mom and a dad” and “Every child deserves a mom and a dad.” Sometimes this came with a strong shot of gender stereotypes: mothers provide tenderness and fathers provide protection.  Brian Brown even showed a video of the Religious Right’s newest heroine, the 11-year old who testified against marriage equality in Minnesota and asked which of her parents she did not need, her mother or father. Perhaps someone could explain that no same-sex couples seeking to get married have any desire to force her to get rid of either parent.

NOM’s backers for the marriage march included the far-far-right-wing Catholic group Tradition, Family & Property, with its scarlet banners, capes, and marching band (see Adele Stan’s reminder who TFP is), Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, a couple of Catholic dioceses, the Knights of Columbus and the Institute on Religion and Democracy.  Brown gave special thanks to the Mormon-run GFC Foundation for providing grants for buses.

 

Peter Montgomery's blog

DeMint: 'Secular Socialistic' Obama Orchestrating Crises for Political Gain

Former U.S. Senator and current Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint appeared on Today’s Issues with American Family Association head Tim Wildmon where he reiterated his “no compromise” mantra by arguing that President Obama and his allies are so extreme that there is no point in working with them.

When Wildmon asked if Obama even “has a conscience,” DeMint pointed to a 2008 quote by Rahm Emmanuel, whom DeMint mistakenly called “Raul Emmanuel,” about the financial crisis to suggest that Obama and his allies are deliberately creating crises in order to implement sweeping policy changes.

“What they understand on the liberal side is that the failures of their policies actually have empowered them to actually advance their policies,” DeMint told Wildmon, “A financial/economic crisis allows the president to reconfigure our whole economic and cultural system to redistribute the wealth the way he wants.”

After blaming the left for the 2008 financial crisis, DeMint argued that Obama has a “secular socialistic view” and that his “policies hurt people.” Consequently, people with a “faith and freedom view” shouldn’t even bother working with him.

Listen:

Brian Tashman's blog

Richard Land Explains How to Tell Your Gay Friends They Can't Join the Boy Scouts

Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission appeared yesterday on Istook Live, the Heritage Foundation radio show hosted by former Congressman Ernest Istook, to discuss why the Boy Scouts of America should maintain its ban on gay members.

Co-host C.J. Wheeler asked Land how to tell her gay peers and colleagues, “You’re my friend, but I don’t want you to be a Boy Scout leader. You’re my friend, but I’m tired of your agenda being forced down my throat.” She lamented that “it’s a hard world to really walk in out there” for “the average person out there who has friends in these communities,” because apparently life is really tough for straight people who support discrimination against their gay friends.

Land explained that gays and lesbians shouldn’t be treated any differently, except when it comes to their inclusion in the Boy Scouts, marriage and other social institutions. He told Wheeler to tell her gay friends that she respects them but thinks that if they are allowed to join the Boy Scouts they will jeopardize the ability of the organization to “protect children” and consequently “human tragedies will follow.”

Land also explained that “the homosexual activists have gone after [cultural] icons” such as the military, marriage and Disney in order to realize their “breathtaking” agenda.

Land: They do not believe in a live and let live philosophy. Let’s be very clear about what their agenda is, their agenda is to have the homosexual lifestyle affirmed by society as healthy and normal and as a perfectly acceptable to young people and to have those who disagree with that ostracized the level of being Ku Klux Klansmen.

Istook: I do want to expand on the Scouting part but you mentioned the overall agenda, Dr. Land, because it’s not just in Boy Scout’s, we see it in the policy toward same-sex marriage, we see it creeping into something’s such as the ‘anti-bullying agenda.’ What are the different fronts of this conflict?

Land: Well, every front, but the Boy Scouts are an icon and so the homosexual activists have gone after the icons, the cultural icons of our culture. They’ve gone after the military, the most admired institution in American society, the American military; they’ve gone after Disney, the family-friendly supposedly network and family-friendly entertainment venture; they’ve gone after marriage, what can be holier than marriage; now they’re going after the Boy Scouts, nothing is more American than Apple Pie than Boy Scouts. They are going to go after every front, they’ve gone after the cultural icons first but there is no place that they are not going to go and as I said there overall agenda is really quite breathtaking.
Brian Tashman's blog

Randy Thomasson: Gay Rights Ushering in Civil War

Save California’s Randy Thomason on Friday appeared on Istook Live, the Heritage Foundation radio program hosted by former Republican congressman Ernest Istook, to discuss the Supreme Court case on Proposition 8.

He accused the California state officials who refused to defend Prop 8 of “dissing God” and went on to warn that “usurpers of the United States Constitution” have methodically and stealthily “infiltrated” the government and the courts in order to launch another civil war.

This not the characteristic of a Republic when there are sworn public servants, they have raised their right hand and they have pledged to defend the state constitution, to do their duty, to implement the law, they have made a public pledge before God and now they are dissing God, they are dissing the United States and the state constitutions and the people who elected them. An uninformed public that allows this to happen is just as bad when they vote foolishly or they vote wickedly. We have evidence abounding that there is a civil war occurring in the United States of America, it’s not being done with guns or knives, but it’s being done by usurpers of the United States Constitution and they have positioned themselves in power, they have infiltrated the constitutional land of the United States, they have gotten there with the help of ignorant people or wicked people and then they have implemented their own will.

Thomasson later said that President Obama is using lies and deception to bring about gay rights laws.

He has finally in an election year, last year, decided that he needed money from wealthy homosexual businesspersons and their supporters and he came out with the truth. He really is a supporter of everything homosexual, bisexual, transsexual; he has imposed it on the military, he’s imposing it on marriage, he’s imposing it on our culture.

…

There are professional liars and there are professional double-talkers, and I’m not sure what you have here but you do have someone that is giving multiple messages. He already gave his message, he gave his message last year, in an interview he said that he supports homosexual marriages being legal, and that means everywhere. So it doesn’t matter what he says now. I guess he is working on a legacy; well the legacy is that America is really going down, down. Not simply because of foolish voters who don’t check out the real policies or real positions of the candidates or don’t even check out what’s best for children, but they listen to the lies and the myths and statements of candidates themselves and they just vote on image or they vote on feeling. That’s really self-idolatry.
Brian Tashman's blog

DeMint: Democrats Want Immigration Reform to Recruit 'New Voters and Union Members'

Former South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, the incoming president of the Heritage Foundation, spoke with Janet Mefferd yesterday about immigration reform and the future of the GOP.

DeMint was unhappy with President Obama’s immigration proposal and the bipartisan framework presented this week in the Senate, both of which include a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Democrats, he claimed, “are much more interested in new voters and union members than they are in fixing the system and honoring our heritage of immigration.”

Unfortunately, and I’ve worked with the folks who are advocating for this for a number of years and it appears the Democrats are much more interested in new voters and union members than they are in fixing the system and honoring our heritage of immigration. I don’t think we can help our naturalized American citizens by tearing down those things that create the opportunity in our country, and border sovereignty, rule of law, those things create the freedom and opportunity that immigrants come here for. And if we change the things that make us successful then we hurt the very people that we’re saying we want to help. So this is an irrational approach in my mind. I know there’s some people involved with this who want to do the right thing and solve the problem. But I’m afraid the people driving this, like the president, are just more interested in the citizenship track than they really are fixing our system.

DeMint, the architect of the 2010 Tea Party takeover, also denied that the GOP needs to moderate its positions to appeal to more voters after its drubbing among women, young people, African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans in 2012. “We’re just not telling our story well and we’re not doing a good job of showing the victims of progressive liberal policies,” DeMint said. “And there are a lot of them around the country and minorities are the biggest victims of these policies.”

We have ideas that we want people to embrace because those ideas make our country better and lives better for Americans. So it’s easier for Obama, who just finds out what people want to hear and he tells them that. He doesn’t have to deliver any particular policy or laws. We do. But we have success stories all over. We have fantastic job creation where energy is being developed in states. We have job creation where you have freedom in the workplace not to join a union, that’s why Boeing is in South Carolina. We’re just not telling our story well and we’re not doing a good job of showing the victims of progressive liberal policies. And there are a lot of them around the country and minorities are the biggest victims of these policies. I’d say Republicans have done a miserable job of communicating. And that’s why I left the Senate. We need to take our message directly to the American people and make those ideas so winsome that candidates have to embrace them.
 

Miranda Blue's blog

DeMint’s Bold Plan for Heritage: How to Lie More Effectively

Former Sen. Jim DeMint, hero to the overlapping Tea Party and Religious Right wings of the Republican Party, was kindly granted space by the Washington Post to tell us what he plans to do in his new job at the Heritage Foundation.

DeMint, a former ad man, promises to launch a “conservative revival” by figuring out how to do a better job selling conservative policies to the American public. That’s not exactly a big shift for the folks at Heritage, which is and always has been a giant marketing operation for right-wing “ideas.”

The most revealing thing in DeMint’s column is his use of a thoroughly debunked lie that Republicans tried to use against President Obama in last year’s campaign.  Says DeMint of President Obama, “He disabled welfare reform last year, when he took away the work requirements that were at the heart of that law’s success.”

That false claim earned politicians like Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum “Pants on Fire” ratings from Politifact and similar ratings from other fact checkers.  It’s a gross distortion of an Obama administration decision to give states more flexibility to come up with new ways to meet the law's work requirements – something sought by Republican governors.  Even some Republicans, including one architect of welfare reform, called the charge false when the Romney campaign made it.

As we know from his climate change denialism, DeMint isn’t as concerned about truth as about creating his own reality -- the way Fox News and the right-wing echo chamber have tried to do.  “One lesson I learned in marketing is that, for consumers and voters, perception is reality.”

Maybe reporters should start referring to Heritage as a “perception tank.”

Peter Montgomery's blog

Leaving the Senate, Jim DeMint is Looking Forward to Working with Glenn Beck

Sen. Jim DeMint called in to Glenn Beck's radio program today to discuss his decision to resign from the Senate to become the president of the Heritage Foundation.  DeMint explained that, with the re-election of President Obama, conservatives were not going to be able "to do anything positive at the federal level for the next four years" so he needed to be somewhere outside of government, working on solutions for when Obama's policies inevitably bring America "to its knees" ... and that will entail partnering with people like Beck to get the message out; a prospect that Beck was very eager to embrace:

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Right Wing Round-Up - 12/6/12

Kyle Mantyla's blog

Right Wing Leftovers - 12/6/12

  • Sen. Jim DeMint is resigning from the Senate to become the next president of the Heritage Foundation and FRC's Tony Perkins is thrilled: "We are proud to partner with Heritage on numerous projects, including our annual Values Voter Summit and our recently completed national bus tour. With a good friend like Jim DeMint joining this great organization, I look forward to that partnership deepening even further."

  • Speaking of the Values Voter Summit, regular VVS speaker Stephen Baldwin has been charged with tax evasion.

  • We'll see how the Religious Right feels about Sheldon Adelson spending hundreds of millions of dollars on elections when they learn that he considers himself to be "basically a social liberal."

  • The Barna Groups analyzes the role of faith in the 2012 election and finds that "Notional Christians — the large segment of voters who consider themselves to be Christian but are not born again — voted decisively in favor of Mr. Obama." Of course, this will not stop the Religious Right from insisting that all Christians share their views and must vote Republican.

  • Rick Green is not happy with Bob Costas' commentary on gun violence, telling him to "study up on this issue, learn the facts, and apply some common sense."  If only he'd give the same advice to David Barton.

  • Finally, FRC prays that the Supreme Court will protect "traditional marriage": "God, our nation is flooded with sin and debauchery. Move upon our Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution, the laws of Congress, the will of the people, and 'the laws of nature and of nature's God.' Cause us to return to you. Send revival to your Church and awakening to our nation and a turning of the cultural tide, including our laws, politics and policy. Make us, yet, a City on a Hill and a light for You to the nations. Help us fervently to pray until our courts preserve natural, historic, biblical marriage just as You intended it!"
Kyle Mantyla's blog

PFAW Statement on Heritage Foundation’s Choice of Sen. Jim DeMint as Next Leader

Washington, DC – People For the American Way President Michael Keegan released the following statement today in response to the news that Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) will become the next head of the Heritage Foundation:


Today’s announcement blows the cover on the longstanding myth that the Heritage Foundation is a serious think tank, as well as the common misconception that Heritage is focused on fiscal, not social, issues. In fact, like DeMint himself, Heritage has played an active role in pushing rigidly anti-gay, anti-choice dogma while attacking laws that protect the separation between church and state.

Long before he branded himself “Senator Tea Party,” Sen. DeMint was the go-to Senator for leaders of the Religious Right. He has said that he supports banning all openly gay teachers from his state’s public schools; he has consistently voted against women’s reproductive rights, including voting for a bill that would ban late-term abortions even if the woman’s health were at risk; and he’s repeatedly led anti-immigration and anti-gay efforts in Congress.

DeMint’s selection drives home the fact that the Heritage Foundation is less a conservative think tank than a right-wing marketing juggernaut—complete with its own political arm to attack Democrats at election time. When it comes to cheerleading for the GOP and pushing the same extreme right-wing agenda that Americans have rejected in election after election, DeMint and the Heritage Foundation are two peas in a pod.

###

'I Don't Want Everybody to Vote' – The Roots of GOP Voter Suppression

The lower the turnout tomorrow, the better Mitt Romney will do. It’s always been this way for Republicans. Anyone who doubts that needs to watch the video below. 

The media frequently reports on right-wing and GOP voter suppression efforts, but they rarely acknowledge the root cause – Republicans do better when fewer people vote. This is the driving force behind the GOP’s draconian voter ID laws and efforts to limit early voting, voter registration drives, and provisional voting.
 
The right wing and GOP have whipped up hysteria around voter fraud, which is virtually non-existent, in order to justify roadblocks to voting for millions of Americans. I’ll let Paul Weyrich explain why.
 
Weyrich is widely regarded as the “founding father of the conservative movement.” He founded ALEC and co-founded the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, Council for National Policy, and Free Congress Foundation, among others.
 
Speaking more than 30 years ago at a right-wing conference in Dallas, Weyrich set out the case for voter suppression. The right-wing and GOP are still acting on it to this day.
 
Watch:
"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country, and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

 

Josh Glasstetter's blog

Getting the inside scoop on voter suppression

Wed, 08/01/2012 - 10:09am — Amelia
The Right’s own words bear out a national trend toward disenfranchisement.
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PFAW Foundation
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Themes from the Right -- Day 2

The second day of right-wing attacks on Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor continued many of the themes of the first day’s attacks, mostly distortions of her judicial record and public remarks and distortions of President Obama’s desire for judges who exhibit empathy. National Review published a wave of anti-Sotomayor commentary on its website.
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The Right Re-Tools as a 'Resistance Movement'

Now that the Religious Right and the Republican Party are regrouping from significant electoral defeats, many progressives as well as pundits are tempted once again to dismiss the movement or the continued threat it poses to the constitutional principles of equality, privacy, and separation of church and state. But the legal, political, grassroots, and media infrastructure that has been built steadily over recent decades is still largely in place. It maintains a powerful ability to shape public debate and mobilize millions of Americans. And it is finding a renewed focus in opposing the Obama administration and obstructing progressive change.
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