YIKES. sheesh. bush to mobilize the conservative church...

honestly. what the hell? i hope the church leaders tell him to take a hike and mind his business, because he has no business in the church as president. for heaven's sake!

http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/37773|top|07-01-2004::20:10|reuters.html

Bush Seeks to Mobilize Religious Conservatives


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday.

In a move sharply criticized both by religious leaders and civil libertarians, the Bush-Cheney campaign has issued a guide listing about two-dozen "duties" and a series of deadlines for organizing support among conservative church congregations.

A copy of the guide obtained by Reuters directs religious volunteers to send church directories to state campaign committees, identify new churches that can be organized by the Bush campaign and talk to clergy about holding voter registration drives.

The document, distributed to campaign coordinators across the country earlier this year, also recommends that volunteers distribute voter guides in church and use Sunday service programs for get-out-the-vote drives.

"We expect this election to be potentially as close as 2000, so every vote counts and it's important to reach out to every single supporter of President Bush," campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said.

But the Rev. Richard Land, who deals with ethics and religious liberty issues for the Southern Baptist Convention, a key Bush constituency, said he was "appalled."

"First of all, I would not want my church directories being used that way," he told Reuters in an interview, predicting failure for the Bush plan.

The conservative Protestant denomination, whose 16 million members strongly backed Bush in 2000, held regular drives that encouraged church-goers to "vote their values," said Land.

"But it's one thing for us to do that. It's a totally different thing for a partisan campaign to come in and try to organize a church. A lot of pastors are going to say: 'Wait a minute, bub'," he added.

The guide surfaced as a spate of opinion polls showed Bush's reelection campaign facing a tough battle.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showed Bush running neck-and-neck with Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry among registered voters, 47 percent of whom said they now believed the president had misled Americans about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The Bush campaign has also been spending heavily on television ads, only to see the president's approval ratings slump to new lows.

Stanzel said the campaign ended the month of June with $64 million on hand. He had no figures on how much Bush has raised in June. At the end of May, Bush had raised $213.4 million and spent all but $63 million.

The latest effort to marshal religious support also drew fire from civil liberties activists concerned about the constitutional separation of church and state. "Any coordination between the Bush campaign and church leaders would clearly be illegal," said a statement from the activist group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

 

bah. what the hell?

 

All i can say it...wtf is wrong with that man. He is not the brightest crayon in the box, thats for sure. He is alienating his own supporters now. Not a smart campaign move. I think that he has either lost his mind, or never had one in the first place.

 

What is ever more sickening is the rampant squandering of money which would go much farther assisting the increasing numbers of children in the US living below the poverty line rather than advancing the political longevity of a small group of clearly self interested crony capitalists over the welfare of the nation.

Modern political piracy at its finest. It's enough to drive one to despair.

 

I've been really troubled about this since I read it in the paper. It's hard to believe that the leader of our country would stoop so low as to try and mobilize churches. It just sickens me. I found this website yesterday, after many hours of steaming and shaking my head over Bush's actions (Americans United for the Separation of Church and State: http://www.au.org/site/PageServer ).

If you believe that there is a church in your community, that may be endorsing a political candidate, sponsoring partisan political events, raising money for a specific candidate, or if your instints tell you something "isn't quite right", you have the power to report them through this website. The church will be investigated by the IRS and could possibly lose their tax-exempt status.

And I'm talking about ANY candidate. I'm a liberal and will be voting for Kerry, but I do not believe a church should be endorsing anyone, even Kerry. I respect our political system too much to say it's o.k. for one party to be endorsed and not another. I may be a liberal but I am NOT a hypocrite.

 

it's just completely creepy and wrong to send them a freaking notice saying "send me your rosters!" what crap! if my church got one, i know my pastor would tell them to roll it up and smoke it. church is for god, not for political candidates. what the fuck?! i can't wait to tell some of my friends about this, the ones who were going to vote for bush, and ask them "do you want bush telling your church what to do?"

 

Sweatin,

Thank you for this information and the link. I went to a private Baptist school when I was younger they forced students to go door to door and hand out camaign flyers for a conservative candidate that attended that church. It was not optional, it was actually called a "field trip". Luckily, I had already gotten kicked out of that school for speaking my mind on abortion and questioning the censorship in our English class (we were NOT allowed to read classics such as the Scarlet Letter). But my sister was forced to do this when she was in high school. I never really thought much about it until now, even though I knew it was wrong. Quite frankly there are other reasons this church/school should be investigated as well they had already gotten into big discrimination troubles when they accused a secretary of being gay and firing her years ago.

 

I see this as political desperation for the bushit regime.I wonder how the religous leaders will deal with this.War and killing and political ambition.I'll bet the right will comply.

 

well, seing how bush is shoveling money in their pockets, i don't see why churches won't be less obliged to help...

Unless maybe bush and his policies are a direct antithesis of Jesus's teachings...

I'd call him the anti-christ, but he's supposed to be a good orater.