RK ARCHIVE - ANALYSIS: How to deal with the GOP on Religion, Values, and National Security!

One of the main reasons why Neocon Bush rubber stamp Republicans get so many votes even when they mess up as badly as they do on so many big things are over two main issues: religion (which includes values) and national security!

They basically tell religious voters and people who are afraid of terrorism that they are "for their values" and that they will "keep them safe." In doing this they basically ask for and will get a free pass on all of their other serious problems ranging from major problems in Iraq to economic problems by millions of people!

This can be dealt with IF Democrats and Democratic candidates can effectively and sincerely talk about religion, values, and national security issues to these people!

I really like what Bill Clinton is quoted as saying about how important that the issues of religion, values, and national security are for Democrats to be able to articulate:

MR. RUSSERT: You have in the book comments, reflections, observations by former President Bill Clinton on election night of 2004 that I had never seen anywhere else. Tell us what he said.

MR. BEGALA: Yeah, this is something I+óGé¼Gäóve never done before and James has never done before, but I thought it was so powerful. I called him up at 11:30 on election night, as returns were coming in, and I was sure John Kerry was going to win. And I was just dead wrong. So I called him and I said, +óGé¼+ôSir, what did I miss here? What did I get wrong?+óGé¼-¥ And right away before the exit polling had been digested or anything he said, +óGé¼+ôyou can+óGé¼Gäót ignore those social, cultural values voters. You don+óGé¼Gäót have to switch on their issues, but you have to talk to them.+óGé¼-¥ He said, +óGé¼+ôYou can+óGé¼Gäót go around and just ignore them. People are concerned about the moral direction of the country. We should be able to address that with equal credibility with the Republicans, but when you simply ignore it,+óGé¼-¥ he said, +óGé¼+ôyou+óGé¼Gäóre going to lose.+óGé¼-¥ And he used as a contrast on that night your first guest this morning.

He said, +óGé¼+ôLook at Barack Obama. He traveled around the state with his preacher and talked about a very progressive agenda but did it in terms of his faith and his family in a way that resonated with middle class voters in downstate Illinois who probably don+óGé¼Gäót have a lot of friends named Barack.+óGé¼-¥

DLC | Blueprint Magazine | March 16, 2005
What We Stand For
Americans don't know what Democrats believe in. It's time to tell them.
By Al From and Bruce Reed

After the last disappointing election, in 2002, President Clinton gave a speech to the DLC warning Democrats not to underestimate the potency of security as an issue. In uncertain times, he said famously, "strong and wrong beats weak and right." Ironically, many Democrats seem to have missed Clinton's point.

The bottom line to what I am saying here is that Democratic candidates can get many more votes in the 2006 elections and can stop GOP Bush rubber stamp candidates from getting a free pass on their big problems over religion, values, and national security issues from many disillusioned Republican voters IF they can effectively talk to the voters about these issues!

Bill Clinton rightly summed this up very well in my opinion when he said about religion and values: +óGé¼+ôyou can+óGé¼Gäót ignore those social, cultural values voters. You don+óGé¼Gäót have to switch on their issues, but you have to talk to them.+óGé¼-¥ He said, +óGé¼+ôYou can+óGé¼Gäót go around and just ignore them." and when he said about national security: "strong and wrong beats weak and right."

This is why the GOP leadership is playing the fear card again, this is why they are tying Iraq in to the overall war on terror, and this is why they have shoved a bunch of values oriented wedge issues through Congress recently. All of this is designed by the GOP leadership to convince voters to give them a free pass on their serious problems because of "values" and "national security" oriented issues!

This has worked for the GOP before in 2002 and in 2004 but people's patience with this is growing thin in 2006. However this tool just cannot be underestimated by Democrats because it has been and it still is a very effective tool for the GOP!

Democrats have got to be able to effectively deal with these issues in order to have the best possible chances of winning back power in at least one branch of Congress in 2006 to restore some form of real accountability back to government and to the extreme GOP leadership before 2008!

To help with that, I have included two Democratic campaign websites below that I like which effectively deal with these key issues. Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. in TN has an excellent piece on his website about how he sincerely deals with religion and values. Below that, Senate candidate Jim Webb in VA has an excellent piece on his website about how he credibly deals with Iraq and the war on terror!

These are model websites on these important issues and Democratic candidates following these excellent examples can win many more votes from disillusioned Republicans who are mainly concerned about these issues in my opinion!

Please forward this on so that Democrats can connect with the voters on these key issues and will have the best possible chances of stopping GOP Bush rubber stamp candidates from getting a free pass on their many serious problems over the issues of religion, values, and national security!

http://www.securinga...
Listen to Gen. Wes Clark fight for Dems on Sean Hannity's radio program:

An excellent example for all of us to follow and what we all need to be doing to help fight against extreme right wing Neocon smear propaganda which will help our local candidates to win their races!

From the time that I was a little boy in Memphis, church and faith have always been central to who I am as a person. So I am sometimes bewildered when parents tell me they cannot get their children to go to church or attend Sunday school. I confess that I did not realize children had those choices.

Growing up, we had a simple rule in my house: if you woke up on Sunday, you went to church. Even my friends who spent Saturday night with us would have to go to church. Christian, Jewish or Muslim, it did not matter; my parents took them all to Sunday service.

Like many children, my faith was a matter of obligation. I learned about God the old-fashioned way: I was forced to. But as I grew into a man, my faith evolved into something much more complicated and, at the same time, much more important. Now when I wake up in the morning, the question is no longer what I have to do; now, the questions are what do I believe, what do I stand for, and what will I do to put those beliefs into action?

In many ways, my faith and my belief in service are the enduring legacy of my grandmother. As much as anyone, she was the person who taught me right from wrong. Whether through a kind word or a flick of her switch, she taught me what to do and, just as important, what not to do. We also learned at an early age the importance of the call to serve. We took to heart the command in the letter of James that it is not enough to say you have faith. You must also put this faith into action, for James is correct when he warns us that +óGé¼+ôfaith without works is dead.+óGé¼-¥

This desire to serve and to put my faith and beliefs into action is why I ran for Congress and why I have been privileged to represent the people of Memphis in Washington for the last nine years. It is also why I am running for Senate to represent the state of Tennessee. I want to help make the lives of all Tennesseans better.

I believe that my faith mirrors the principles on which our nation was founded: equality, dignity, tolerance and freedom. These ideas formed the bedrock on which the founding fathers based their claim to independence, and these are the same lessons that Jesus preaches in the Gospel. The separation of church and state is not an order for lawmakers to ignore their faith or to banish their values. Instead, it is a command for tolerance, to recognize that not all of us share the same beliefs or worship the same god and to respect those differences.

And so, I will continue to be guided by my faith in the Senate. I will continue, as the Reverend Jim Wallis has eloquently stated, to follow my personal ethics to promote social justice:

+óGé¼-ó I will continue to work to improve the lot of the least among us because I believe that economic security, access to healthcare, and educational opportunity for all are moral imperatives.

+óGé¼-ó I will continue to promote personal responsibility and strong moral values, including the teaching of character education in all of our schools.

+óGé¼-ó I will continue to be pro-family, including supporting a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, without taking away the civil rights of gays and lesbians.

+óGé¼-ó I will continue to work to eliminate abortions in our country without criminalizing what is undoubtedly one of the most tormenting and difficult decisions a woman will ever have to make.

Faith inspires so many to do so much. That is why I am proud to serve as chair of the Community Solutions and Initiatives Caucus in Congress, which is a group of lawmakers dedicated to finding ways to help community and church groups who want to improve the lives of their members through solutions that work, not the polarization of ideology.

The challenges facing our state and our nation+óGé¼GÇ£domestic security, economic independence, health care and educational opportunity+óGé¼GÇ£demand leaders who can look past our differences and devise solutions.

We can all do better if we are willing to work together. We must confront the future not with fear or demagoguery, but with courage and unity. Our faith in our God+óGé¼GÇ£and in each other+óGé¼GÇ£requires nothing less.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thank you very much. I+óGé¼Gäóm grateful to be here today, and I want to thank the Kiwanis+óGé¼Gäó for the work it does for the community. These are the kinds of organizations that really make our society work. They get people together and they focus on issues that they care about and have sort of spontaneous bottom up assistance to people who need it. You probably noticed that one of the people who works with me came up and just whispered something in my ear. It+óGé¼Gäós probably the most important advice I+óGé¼Gäóve heard today. Is your cell phone off? Actually it wasn+óGé¼Gäót, so I+óGé¼Gäóm grateful for his visit.

What I would like to do today is to talk specifically about our national security - my views on where we need to go as a nation on this issue. I+óGé¼Gäód like to start off by saying that I+óGé¼Gäóve been doing this part of our governmental system all of my life. I was born in the military. My father was a career military officer. I served in the Marine Corp. Afterwards, when I went to law school, the first book that I wrote, when I was 28 years old, was on our strategic interest in the Pacific. I covered Beirut when the Marines were there in 1983 for the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour. Two years ago, I was just coming out of Afghanistan having covered our forces in Afghanistan in nine different places for a great magazine. As mentioned, I served in the Pentagon as Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy. I+óGé¼Gäóve been grateful to be one of the few people who has been able to write for the New York Times and the Wall street Journal editorial pages (because they basically hate each other) on these kinds of issues. And I must say to you that I+óGé¼Gäóm very very concerned about the state of our national security posture. It is in total disarray. The Bush Administration has failed to bring an end to the occupation of Iraq. The Middle East is in danger of spinning out of control. Iran and North Korea, both of whom were more serious threats to our national security than the invasion of Iraq, have become ever more defiant. Al Qaeda and other extremist terrorist organizations have seen their ranks grow, largely as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. For the longer term, we+óGé¼Gäóve neglected these other things that reflect and affect our national greatness. We are mortgaging our future, step-by-step, to China. We have failed to invest in the economic competitiveness that underlies military strength and national power. And by that I mean our educational systems, our infrastructure which can+óGé¼Gäót be paid for when we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the infrastructure of territories that we are occupying around the world.

These difficulties have come about in large part because those who are telling us where we need to go, those who are leading us, lack the kind of strategic vision that has served our country so well in other eras. The grand strategy, national strategy demands that we identify and articulate our nation+óGé¼Gäós goals and objectives in outlining clearly how we intend to achieve them. The founding fathers intended that the Senate served as a check on the presidency and also that it be a place for deep deliberation on vital national issues. I+óGé¼Gäóm mindful of something that Chuck Hagel, a Democrat, excuse me a Republican senator from Nebraska and a long-time friend of mine, has said many times over the past few years -- that when he took his oath of office, he took it to the Constitution and not to the presidency. I cannot say that about George Allen. And I cannot identify, quite frankly, one iota of George Allen+óGé¼Gäós strategic vision other than the talking points he has been receiving from the administration.

We need to start with the notion that our country has a unique place in the world. We all know that. We all feel it. It also has unique obligations in the conduct of its foreign policy. The overriding challenge of today for our country is international terrorism. And I would say that terrorism and Iraq were separate issues until George W. Bush incorrectly and unwisely linked them. We need to end the occupation of Iraq so that we can repair our relationships around the world and turn our focus back to the larger issue of terrorism.

Terrorism is intimately linked with the troubles in the Middle East, but what we+óGé¼Gäóve done in Iraq has been to make these problems worse. In my view, the conditions in Lebanon today are a direct result of the complete failure of our Iraq policy and indeed our entire Middle East policy. This administration planned from the beginning to make war in Iraq and it used the public fear and anger after September 11th to pursue that objective. I predicted at the time that invading and occupying Iraq would only strengthen Iran, therefore, benefiting virtually all of America+óGé¼Gäós enemies in that region, as well as affecting our relationships with other countries throughout the world. This administration and its supporters refuse to connect the actions in Iraq to the larger problems in the Middle East generally and to terrorism specifically nor do they appear to appreciate that their foreign policy has affected a wide range of issues across the globe which demand our strategic focus.

I+óGé¼Gäóve been saying for 20 years that China was pursuing a strategy with the Muslim world designed to destabilize the United States and to improve its access to oil. Among other efforts, it was China that enabled Pakistan+óGé¼Gäós move to become a nuclear power and it has been China that has been one of the closest allies of Iran. In fact, over the past three or four years, the largest on shore oil facility in Iran is now half-owned by the Chinese government. It+óGé¼Gäós a $200 billion facility. These are dangerous and neglected efforts that we need to address, both to improve the short terms problems in the Middle East and to safeguard our long term interest in China. The animosity resulting from our actions in Iraq has, in itself, strengthened China+óGé¼Gäós hand, just as the money we have spent in that war has weakened our infrastructure and threatened our economy. China, we have to face this, represents our greatest long term challenge, both militarily and economically. For too long, we have been mortgaging our future to the very nation that represents our greatest challenge.

Russia is a troubled country but still a world power. It is central to such Middle East issues as Iran and its evolution towards a nuclear capability and to the world oil market. If the Russian government goes the wrong way in the next decade, it has a potential, once again, to become a nuclear armed adversary or an extremely dangerous failed state. The current approach to Russia has swung from the President+óGé¼Gäós gazing into Putin+óGé¼Gäós eyes and supposedly seeing his soul to allowing Dick Cheney to scold him like a child This is not the way to engage a strange but vitally important world power.

In terms of the rest of the world, ultimately the entire global community must address the issues of failed states, world regimes, and underdevelopment, which are the breeding grounds of such issues as terrorism. In our own hemisphere, we need to improve our homeland security and to guard against the terrorist threat, at the same time coming up with a sensible, fair, and enforceable policy on immigration. And we need to think about that in the larger context of our relations with Latin America which has been backsliding toward authoritarianism and illiberal economies. We shouldn+óGé¼Gäót allow the rest of the Americans to become anti-Americans, even as we ourselves become more Latino in our makeup. A true vision for national security must also encompass non-military challenges. We need to wean ourselves off our dependence on foreign oil. It goes without saying that we are too dependant on Middle Eastern regimes today and if we are not careful we may be heading into a clash with China tomorrow over energy resources.

As regards our debt, we are mortgaging our future, failing to invest, and if this keeps up, we+óGé¼Gäóll be unable to afford the military we need and we will lack the economic power to rule the world. We should also mention here the environment. This is no longer an issue just for the +óGé¼+ôgreenies.+óGé¼-¥ One of the most serious efforts of this country should be to enforce world-wide industrial standards especially manufacturing emissions.

I can+óGé¼Gäót cover all these issues today, but it is essential to understand that they are interrelated and that addressing our most pressing challenges requires understanding the contexts in which they exist. To do so requires a coherent grand strategy with a clear understanding of where America comes from and where it is heading. We have not had this in the past several years, but our nation needs it.

What I want to do with the remainder of my time is to focus on the first element in that chain of logic that I just laid out and that is the crisis in Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was, as I wrote at the time, a double strategic blunder. First, it was a diversion from the problem, and not a response to, the war against international terrorism. Less than three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, I warned in a speech to the Naval Institute Forum in Virginia Beach that we needed to address international terrorism aggressively, but separately from any invasion or occupation. The second strategic blunder is that it has tied down our military in a costly occupation fighting a Sunni insurgency that has ironically ended up strengthening the military and political position of the Shiite population of Iraq and also of Iran itself.

This reality was, in my view, a major reason for the recent blow-up in Lebanon. America needs and deserves a debate on these issues, and about our strategy in Iraq itself. The administration suggests that it+óGé¼Gäós irresponsible for people to question the direction of its policies. Any attempt to bring forward-looking options to the table is met with blunt propagandistic phrases such as +óGé¼+ôcut and run,+óGé¼-¥ but in my view it would be irresponsible not to address those issues.

The key question facing us, and I think a dividing line in this campaign this year, is how long we should be expected to occupy Iraq. Someday, we+óGé¼Gäóre going to leave. Senator Allen seemed rather blas+â-¬ about this during our recent debate, stating that we+óGé¼Gäóve been in Cuba for more than hundred years. But most Americans want us to finish this mission. The administration has never shared a specific approach of its own, instead filling us with vague propagandistic phrases. Curiously, the president of Iraq recently said that he believes Iraqi forces will be able to control all the cities and provinces in Iraq by the turn of the new year. I say +óGé¼+ôcuriously+óGé¼-¥ because sectarian violence has been killing more than 100 Iraqis a day for months. Last month, 3,438 Iraqis were reported killed by violence, and that is thought to be a vast undercount as most of them were in the Baghdad area. 3,438 dead Iraqis on a ratio basis is about 40,000 dead Americans a month. One can only read the Iraqi president+óGé¼Gäós comments as pointing out that even he believes Iraq will be calmer once the Americans cease their occupation.

For more than two years, I+óGé¼Gäóve been proposing a formula that might lead to the end of our occupation of Iraq. The first step would be for this administration to say unequivocally that our country has no desire to occupy Iraq in the long term. It has not done so. And I am mindful of the many comments by those who pushed so hard for this war to the effect that we should set up a long term +óGé¼+ôMcCarthurian+óGé¼-¥ Regency in Baghdad. We should say clearly to the people of Iraq and the region that we have no plans for a long term presence in the country. This will take the moral high-ground away from the insurgency in the eyes of the Muslim World, and it will diffuse the concerns of some Iraqis that we plan to stay for good. This will also put the Iraqi government on notice that it must cooperate and bring order to its people. We should not build permanent bases in Iraq. Right now from all reports there are four permanent bases being built there without much discussion among the American public. We don+óGé¼Gäót need them. If we+óGé¼Gäóre leaving, it sends the wrong message if we+óGé¼Gäóre building them. In the short term, we could move the bulk of our troops home while positioning some units out of the country but within the region; strong possibilities from discussions that I have had with military leaders could be Jordan and Kuwait, until a fuller measure of stability takes hold in the region. And I believe that the Congress should make sure of this by banning any expenditures for permanent bases in Iraq.

The second step would be for us to begin immediate discussions with those countries that are culturally and historically invested in Iraq, and arguably aligned with us, to become overtly involved in the diplomatic solution. They could take responsibility at some level for future stability among Iraq+óGé¼Gäós competing factions. The countries that immediately come to mind are Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and those sorts of countries. I believe this is doable, but quite frankly it+óGé¼Gäós going to be more difficult in the wake of our failure to take similar steps during the early stages of the recent incidents in Lebanon. You might recall that during those first days of that action, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain all condemned Hezbollah, as did the Beirut government, initially, for inciting the Israeli attacks. By not taking advantage of these gestures we lost a great opportunity to bring some long term stability in both countries.

We should continue to pursue these sorts of solutions. We should also begin direct discussion with Syria, in order to break Syria apart from its unnatural alliance with Iran. And so we break the focus with Hezbollah. This administration, with the strong support of George Allen, has refused to engage Syria, and yet just today it was reported that the Israeli Defense Minister has expressed his support for doing so. Is this a realistic approach? If it isn+óGé¼Gäót, I would ask the administration or George Allen to offer a better one.

Our military has done a splendid job in Iraq, but it was neither designed nor intended as a force to referee sectarian violence indefinitely. Our presence in many cases has fueled a homegrown insurgency among Iraqis who do not want to be permanently occupied. There comes a time when we will have to leave the tasks of local security to the Iraqi people, and at the same time we now have to accept that our occupation has created conditions where international terrorism might flourish. Until the Iraqi people restore their own system of order, we will need the ability to take action against internationally directed terrorist activities there just as certainly as we need that ability in other places around the world. And I might point out that the American forces who took down al-Zarqawi came from outside Iraq to do it. This doesn+óGé¼Gäót require permanent bases or Americans manning police stations in Baghdad and Ramadi. It requires mobile forces, good intelligence, and the ability to leave an area once the job is done. The best place, for these forces, for many reasons is outside of Iraq.

In closing, I+óGé¼Gäóm reminded of another era, in which a recently retired general took strong issue with a war that had gone on too long and then resolved to do something about it. Few Americans called Dwight David Eisenhower unpatriotic in the summer of 1952 when he criticized the Truman administration for its conduct in the Korean War. It+óGé¼Gäós worthwhile in this era when generals who speak out are accused of betrayal to quote from the five-star general who would later become our president. +óGé¼+ôWhere do we go from here,+óGé¼-¥ asked Eisenhower, "when comes the end? These questions demand truthful answers. Any answer that dishonestly pledges to end a war in Korea by any imminent exact date, would brand its speaker as a deceiver. The second and equally false answer declares that nothing can be done to speed a secure peace. Who dares to tell us that we, the strongest nation in the history of freedom, can only wait and wait and wait? Such a statement brands its speaker as a defeatist.+óGé¼-¥ Eisenhower continued, +óGé¼+ôThe old administration cannot be expected to repair what it failed to prevent. Where will the new administration begin? It will begin with a president taking a simple firm resolution. The resolution will be to forgo the diversions of politics and to concentrate on the job of ending the Korean War until that job is honorably done.+óGé¼-¥ And just as General Eisenhower made that pledge 54 years ago, I will renew it today. We must forgo the slash-and-burn politics that have marked too much of our foreign policy in recent years, and reach for a true solution to the war in Iraq and the chaos in the Middle East. Thank You.

Paid for and authorized by Webb for Senate 2006.
Jim Webb for U.S. Senate, P.O. Box 17427, Arlington, VA 22216

Comments

GOP hones its core agenda; Flag burning, gay marriage, abortion (Mitch Dworkin - 9/5/2006 4:27:32 AM)

These issues are being used for political purposes by the GOP leadership which are to get a free pass on their many problems and to get free votes that they do not deserve from their disillusioned base:

http://www.cnn.com/2...

GOP hones its core agenda

Flag burning, gay marriage, abortion top Republicans' Senate plan

Saturday, April 15, 2006; Posted: 8:17 p.m. EDT (00:17 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Protection of marriage amendment? Check. Anti-flag burning legislation? Check. New abortion limits? Check.

Between now and the November elections, Republicans are penciling in plans to take action on social issues important to religious conservatives, the foundation of the GOP base, as they defend their congressional majority.

In a year where an unpopular war in Iraq has helped drive President Bush's approval ratings below 40 percent, core conservatives whose turnout in November is vital to the party want assurances that they are not being taken for granted.

"It seems like for only six months, every two years -- right around election time -- that we're even noticed," said Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council.

"Some of these better pass," he added. "You notice when it's just lip service being paid."

Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer agreed that the effort matters.

"If they get to these things this summer, which we expect that they will, that will go a long way toward energizing the values voters at the base of the Republican Party," said Bauer, head of Americans United to Preserve Marriage.

Pro-family promises 'not kept'

GOP leaders long have known that the war and merely riding the coattails of a second-term president could disillusion their base.

If there was any doubt, conservatives issued a concise warning last month. Four groups representing evangelical Christians said an internal survey found that 63 percent of "values voters" -- identified as evangelical Christians whose priorities include outlawing abortion and banning same-sex marriage -- "feel Congress has not kept its promises to act on a pro-family agenda."

The Family Research Council, which headlined the survey, also announced it would hold a "Values Voter Summit" in September to "raise the bar of achievement for this Congress." At the top of the agenda could be a call for new leadership in Congress if those in power have not acted on social conservatives' issues.

Some leaders read the warning signs early.

The House has approved an amendment to the Constitution to outlaw flag burning and passed a bill to crack down on the practice of minors' crossing state lines for abortions to evade legal limits in their own states

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, and a possible presidential candidate in 2008, announced early this year that the Senate would consider those and the anti-gay marriage amendment that has failed in both chambers despite Bush's endorsement.

'A class by itself'

"When America's values are under attack, we need to act," Frist told the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.

Those were sweet words to Bauer's ears.

"The marriage amendment is in a class by itself because of what's at stake," Bauer said.

House Republican officials close to the scheduling process said the marriage amendment is headed for a House vote in July.

The measure, sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, also a possible presidential candidate, would have the Constitution define marriage as the union between a man and a woman -- in effect rescinding a 2004 Massachusetts law that made gay marriage legal.

Sending the proposed amendment to the states for ratification may not win the two-thirds majority required in the House and Senate. But committing to a vote in June is a gesture of good faith that would resonate with social conservatives, Bauer said.

The amendment banning flag desecration, a perennial vote and favorite of some conservatives, would need the same majority for ratification. Frist has promised to bring it up in June. The amendment was ratified by the House last year but was not brought to a vote in the Senate after 35 senators declared their opposition.

The bill to curb abortions among minors has long been on Frist's list of legislative priorities. Legislation imposing penalties on anyone who helps a minor cross state lines to obtain an abortion won easy passage in the House last year.

Frist has promised to bring a similar bill to the Senate floor before the year is out.

Not on the Senate's schedule, however, is a bill allowing taxpayers to underwrite human embryonic stem cell research, a science still in its infancy that could lead to cures for many diseases.

Social conservatives, including Bush, say that the process by which the cells are derived is morally akin to abortion because the fertilized egg is destroyed.

Frist, a surgeon who enraged many in the GOP base last year when he supported a House-passed bill to fund the process, had planned a Senate vote on the matter by Easter. Congress adjourned for the holiday this month without such a debate anywhere on the Senate's calendar.

'Faithful' Democrats Find Home Online: www.faithfuldemocrats.com (Mitch Dworkin - 9/5/2006 1:44:25 PM)

http://www.newsmax.c...

Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2006 11:37 a.m. EDT

'Faithful' Democrats Find Home Online

Thirteen years ago, David Wilhelm, then chairman of the Democratic Party, told the conservative Christian Coalition that good Christians could belong to either major political party.

He was hissed.

Today, Wilhelm wants to spread that message to a different audience - Democrats. He's hoping for a better response.

With a leading poll showing only one in four Americans viewing the Democratic Party as friendly to religion, Wilhelm and a broad-based group of Christian Democratic activists are starting an Internet effort to organize religious voters whose views might be compatible with Democrats.

The site, www.faithfuldemocrats.com, will go online Tuesday and showcase theologians, party strategists, political leaders and bloggers in hopes of conducting a national discussion on politics and faith.

"It struck me as strange that people whose political world is motivated by faith had to be Republican. Democrats need to be on the playing field," Wilhelm said.

He said the site will give religious Democrats "the moral support and some language they can use."

The nonprofit Web venture was conceived by Wilhelm and Chicago-based Democratic activist Jesse Lava. Tennessee state Sen. Roy Herron, a former minister, and Rev. Romal Tune, founder of the Washington D.C.-based Clergy Strategic Alliances, are co-chairmen.

By venturing into the unrestricted and freewheeling world of the Internet, however, FaithfulDemocrats are just as likely to find an full-throated blowback as an amen chorus.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., caused a furor in the liberal blogosphere this summer when he warned liberals and progressives in a speech that "we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse."

The Web site and its place as an alternative to Christian conservatism comes as churchgoing voters who consider themselves politically liberal have tried to link their religious values to causes such as social justice, opposition to the Iraq war and the environment.

Over the last 30 years, the GOP has found common ground among traditional pro-business, anti-tax Republicans, small government advocates and social conservatives. Democrats, on the other hand, have been influenced by a secular, liberal bloc that advocates separation of church and state. The party's disparate groups have had more trouble finding a single voice.

A poll by the Pew Research Center found that the proportion of Americans who considered the Republican Party friendly to religion dropped from 55 percent last year to 47 percent this year. But that is still significantly higher than the 26 percent who regard Democrats as friendly to religion.

An effort such as FaithfulDemocrats is an "example of the evolution of this debate," said John Green, an expert on religious voters and a senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. "It could be very well be that things like this could turn that image around."

FaithfulDemocrats' debut on the Internet features articles such as "What's wrong with the Religious Right" and "Religious values, the higher ground."