“Jeb And The Falwells: A Match Made In Heaven”: The Histories Of Liberty University And The Bush Dynasty Are Closely Intertwined
Jeb Bush left Protestantism in his 40’s to convert to Roman Catholicism, and he’s widely perceived as the most moderate potential 2016 presidential contender.
So, at first blush, it may seem a little odd that Liberty University—the largest Christian (mostly evangelical) university in the country—gave him the honor of delivering its commencement address.
Liberty is nothing if not conservative. And conservatives hate the establishment. Right?
Wrong.
In fact, the Bush family and the Falwell family are a match made in heaven. And their bond is likely to be a boon to Jeb’s White House dreams.
Jerry Falwell, the single most influential conservative Christian power broker of the 20th century, founded Liberty in 1971 to foster evangelicals’ political and cultural clout.
Since then, the school has had some dramatic ups and downs, with the downs reaching their lowest in 1990 when the school faced $110 million in debt.
But Falwell died and God provided: Thanks in part to the pastor’s hefty life insurance policy, the school paid its dues, got in the black, and catapulted to a higher place than ever in the conservative firmament.
And even when it was short on money, it never lost its political cachet.
The histories of the university and the Bush dynasty are closely intertwined.
In 1980, former congressman and U.N. ambassador George H. W. Bush ran for the Republican presidential nomination with a less-than-red-meat record, and he was pro-choice as Reagan’s vice president. His beliefs could have permanently soured his reputation with evangelicals.
That’s where Falwell comes in: The reverend endorsed Bush in the 1988 Republican presidential primary, even though Pat Robertson—an evangelical televangelist whose ideological resume had much more overlap with Falwell’s—was also a contender.
This has often been chalked up to rivalry between the two preachers. But it was more than that.
“Establishment recognizes establishment,” said one prominent evangelical leader who was close with the late Falwell.
As he explained, Southern evangelicals have been part of their region’s cultural establishment for decades, and in a way that their Northern counterparts couldn’t have dreamed.
When it comes to said cultural establishments, Northern evangelicals have been on the outside looking in, while those from the South have been on the inside looking out. So Southern evangelicals are much more comfortable with the possession and the exercise of cultural and political power than Northern evangelicals are. And nobody possessed and exercised political power quite like the Bushes, including Bush 41, a literal senator’s son.
So Falwell had an immediate commonality with the Bushes that helped solidify their relationship. They may have differed in policy, theology, rhetoric and a host of other details. But in one key area, they had everything in common: In their respective spheres, they were boss.
“These two families have each played an iconic role in modern, American politics, and their influence has intersected on not a few occasions,” said Johnnie Moore, a former senior vice president of Liberty University.
“When it did intersect, it was a force to be reckoned with. There will be two political dynasties represented on that stage at Liberty University this weekend whose influence is not only undeniable, it’s incalculable.”
In 1990, Bush found himself at Liberty, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the reverend and delivering the commencement address to a crowd of evangelical voters who had helped secure his predecessor’s legacy.
And Bush 43 wasn’t the only so-called establishment-type to win Falwell’s imprimatur.
A few years after Sen. John McCain put him on his list of “agents of intolerance,” the pastor invited him to deliver the university’s 2006 commencement address.
The two broke bread, a reconciliation that boosted McCain’s 2008 presidential efforts.
And Falwell’s son, Jerry Falwell Jr., invited Mitt Romney to give the school’s 2012 commencement address. His decision to give that platform to a Mormon enraged many conservative Christians. But Jerry Jr. and Mitt Romney had commonality where it counted: They were both the heirs of dynasts.
If George H. W. Bush had a good relationship with the evangelicals in Falwell’s orbit, George W. Bush had a magnificent one.
“In 41, they’d take our calls,” said the aforementioned evangelical leader. “In 43, they’d call us.”
And now it’s Jeb’s turn.
And Liberty’s protestants will likely make him feel right at home.
And even though he’s pledged allegiance to Rome, they still see him as one of their own: the kid brother of their favorite president ever and the unabashed social conservative icon who tried to keep Terri Schiavo alive.
And, per excerpts of his speech provided to reporters in advance, Jeb will speak their language.
“Whatever the need, the affliction, or the injustice,” he plans to say, “there is no more powerful or liberating influence on this earth than the Christian conscience in action.”
“Consider a whole alternative universe of power without restraint, conflict without reconciliation, oppression without deliverance, corruption without reformation, tragedy without renewal, achievement without grace,” he’ll add, “and it’s all just a glimpse of human experience without the Christian influence.”
Consider a country without Falwell’s influence, and you might be considering a country without the Bushes.
By: Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, May 8, 2015
“Sheldon Adelson Will Not Be Ignored”: He May Have Built A Lot Of Casinos, But He Doesn’t Understand Much About Politics
Sheldon Adelson has never struck me as a brilliant guy, but I admit I don’t have much to go on in making that judgment. Maybe it’s the spectacularly ridiculous dyed-red combover that makes him seem like such a comical figure, but who knows. What we do know is that all—or almost all—Republican presidential candidates desperately want his money.
But it seems that Sheldon is seriously ticked off at Jeb Bush. Eliana Johnson of the National Review reports:
The bad blood between Bush and Adelson is relatively recent, and it deepened with the news that former secretary of state James Baker, a member of Bush’s foreign-policy advisory team, was set to address J Street, a left-wing pro-Israel organization founded to serve as the antithesis to the hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
J Street has routinely staked out liberal views anathema to those held by Adelson and his allies. Adelson sent word to Bush’s camp in Miami: Bush, he said, should tell Baker to cancel the speech. When Bush refused, a source describes Adelson as “rips***”; another says Adelson sent word that the move cost the Florida governor “a lot of money.”
Let’s keep in mind that there’s no question that any of the the Republican candidates will be anything less than fully supportive of the Likud vision for Israel’s future, which is Adelson’s top priority. You’d think that Adelson would be able to live with the fact that former secretary of state and longtime Republican macher James Baker spoke to a liberal group and also is one of what I presume are a dozen or more informal foreign policy advisers to Jeb Bush. But apparently not.
Jeb can live without Adelson’s money; he’s not having any trouble raising funds, and if he becomes the GOP nominee, Adelson will come around. But what’s unusual about this story is the fact that Adelson thinks he can tell presidential candidates whom their advisors can and can’t give a speech to.
That brings things down to an unusually specific level that we don’t ordinarily see. In this relationship, both the billionaire and the politician tell themselves a story in which everyone has the noblest of motives. The donor tells himself that his contributions are motivated solely by his concern for the country, and he only wants to help those who share his philosophy (and defeat those who don’t.) He doesn’t tell the politician what to think and do; he’s just there to offer his wise counsel as a successful businessman and concerned American. The politician might listen to him, or he might not, and when he usually does, that’s just evidence of how wise the billionaire is. The politician tells himself that his integrity is unsullied by money, since he makes his own decisions and is not swayed by the billionaire, even if he just happens to support all the things the billionaire wants.
Had Jeb actually told Baker not to go to J Street solely to make Adelson happy, it would have been hard for him to stay convinced that he was still pure. It’s because the question is so trivial that it necessitated standing up to Adelson.
Adelson may have built a lot of casinos, but I don’t think he understands much about politics, not only what works but which fights are worth having (this is, after all, a man who thought putting $20 million behind Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign was a wise investment). Say what you will about Charles and David Koch, but I couldn’t see them making the same mistake.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, April 29, 2015
“Stealth Religion-Based Support”: Jeb’s Strategy With The Christian Right; Osmosis
If you are used to thinking of Jeb Bush as this Establishment Republican that hard-core conservatives–including the Christian Right–mistrust, this little nugget from a recent National Journal piece by Tim Alberta and Tiffany Stanley might be a jarring reminder of the long reach of Jeb’s family:
[P]owerful Christian conservatives are operating what amounts to a stealth campaign on Bush’s behalf. Some are old allies from the Florida days; others are holdovers from George W. Bush’s 2000 and 2004 campaigns. Some are both, including Ralph Reed, president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a longtime friend of Jeb’s who served as Southeast regional chairman of George W.’s 2004 reelection effort (and thus practically lived in Florida). Multiple GOP sources say that Reed has been urging Jeb Bush for several years to make a 2016 run and spoke with him recently to game out the campaign. Like many of the organizations that Bush’s supporters lead, Reed’s coalition demands impartiality from its leaders, so Reed can’t openly back his man—unless, as some suspect will happen, Reed ultimately decides to join the campaign officially.
This makes Jeb’s decision to blow off the big Iowa cattle-call of Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition this weekend a bit more interesting, eh? Seems Jeb would prefer quiet consultations with his close friend Ralph Reed to open pandering. And indeed, that’s the theme that comes through from stem to stern in the Alberta/Stanley article, which begins with Jeb simultaneously refusing a formal vetting session with Iowa Christian Right kingpin Bob Vander Plaats while trying to charm him privately. We also learn that last summer Jeb flew out to Colorado to hobnob with the leadership of Focus on the Family, and spent a whole day with Russell Moore, the highly influential head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. He’s extremely close to the president of Florida’s Ave Maria University, sort of the Harvard of hyper-traditionalist Catholicism (and the site of Rich Santorum’s now-famous “spiritual warfare” speech). And he has the support and advice of Mark DeMoss, who was the Romney campaign’s chief liaison to conservative evangelicals in 2012–not to mention the positive memories of many Christian Right folk about his role in the Terri Schiavo saga of 2005.
At a minimum, if Jeb wins the GOP nomination, he will not have to waste time on any courtship of conservative Christians. But at a time when (a) some Christian Right leaders like Russell Moore are expressing a preference for less noisy and more strategically minded political champions and (b) there will be an awful lot of the noisy types in the field, Bush may be quietly competing already with Scott Walker for stealth religion-based support. And he doesn’t really even have to blow many dog whistles: it’s more a strategy of osmosis, where Christian Soldiers learn to view him as a comrade-in-arms who is all the more effective for trying not to set off too many alarms in the secular-socialist enemy camp.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 22, 2015
“The GOP Primary Will Be Bloody As Hell”: GOP Fratricide; If You Turn The Other Cheek, You’ll Get Slapped From Both Sides
“There will be blood.” That’s not just the title of the Oscar-winning 2007 film starring Daniel Day Lewis that I have watched about 20 times on cable. (I’m sorta of obsessed with it.) It’s also what we can expect to see in the 2016 race for the Republican presidential nomination. Same goes for the Democratic presidential race if a well-funded challenger to Hillary Clinton emerges.
Both Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush wants us to believe, though, that they are better than that and would not stoop to such tactics to win the GOP presidential nomination. These two holier-than-thou guys (especially Huckabee) want to be seen as the living, breathing manifestation of Ronald Reagan’s famous 11th Commandment: “thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” (FYI Reagan didn’t actually coin that expression, it was first formulated by the chair of the Republican Party in California in 1965, by why let facts get in the way of canonizing Reagan, right? )
First there was Bush, who last week promised that he would not attack his fellow Republicans during the GOP primaries, noting that, “tearing down other people won’t help at all.”
And then came Huckabee. While campaigning over the weekend in New Hampshire, the former pastor urged his fellow GOP candidates to not engage in a Cain versus Abel type “fratricide.” He then preached to his fellow GOPers to avoid a “free for all” and “demolition derby” among each other.
I have to give it up for both of them. Not for their sentiment. But given their own respective track records of ripping apart their Republican competitors in primaries that they were able to keep a straight face while making these statements.
Let’s look at the history of these two. Bush’s last contested GOP primary was in 1994 when he was running for governor of Florida as part of a crowded field of candidates. Bush, along with the other top-tier Republicans entries, entered into a “Clean Campaign Pledge” promising no personal attacks, just policy-based ones.
So there’s Bush a month before the September 1994 primary with a sizable lead over the pack. But then Bush “stunned” his fellow Republicans, as The New York Times noted at the time, by unleashing negative campaign ads on his top two GOP rivals. These ads alleged in part that the two other Republicans wanted to raise taxes- a claim they both vehemently disputed. (If you run an ad distorting the policy position of your opponents, you are in essence launching a personal attack—especially over taxes in a Southern GOP primary!)
And then in a sheer display of unabashed elitism, the Bush ad stated that his two opponents “are taking millions of your tax dollars to pay for their political campaigns.” The ad bragged that Bush wasn’t.
Technically Bush was correct: His opponents were taking public financing, and he wasn’t. Why? Well, because Bush was wealthy enough to bankroll his own campaign unlike his rivals.
But these attacks pale in comparison to Huckabee, who is expected to announce his presidential run on May 5. When Huckabee says a person should turn the other cheek, apparently it’s so he can slap both sides.
During Huckabee’s 2008 presidential run, he unloaded a barrage of attacks on his GOP rivals; I’m talking Old Testament, wrath of God stuff. For example a day before the 2008 New Hampshire primary, Huckabee mocked Mitt Romney for being wealthy, saying, “I can’t write a personal check for tens of millions of dollars to impress you with what a great guy I am.” Huckabee then ridiculed Romney for not knowing how to clean a gun.
And in the days before the Iowa caucus, Huckabee, reminiscent of what he’s saying now, tried to remain above the fray by holding a press conference to announce he would not run a campaign ad that called Romney “dishonest.” Of course, Huckabee knew by holding a press event it would still get the barb out there anyway.
But worse, the Huckabee campaign then aired that very ad at least 10 times in various Iowa TV markets after publicly promising not to. When Huckabee’s campaign was asked why, the response was, “the campaign gave their best effort to pull the ad. Perhaps they held a prayer circle and asked God to keep the ads off the air because a simple phone call to the TV stations would have presumably done the trick.
And after John McCain beat Huckabee in the South Carolina primary, Huckabee stood next to his pal Chuck Norris as Norris alleged that McCain was too old to be president. I may not be an expert on Jesus like Huckabee, but I’m pretty sure I know what Jesus would not do, and that’s let Chuck Norris do his dirty work for him.
Look, there’s no need for Bush and Huckabee to insult our intelligence by pretending to better than they are on the issue of negative campaigning. We all know this will be a vicious, bare knuckles brawl to the GOP nomination. And given Bush and Huckabees’ own history of attacking fellow Republicans, the question is not: Will there be blood? The only question is: How much Republican blood will they spill?
By: Dean Obeidallah, The Dailt Beast, April 21, 2015
“Huck Starts Sawing Off Social Security Plank”: Casting A Harsh Light On Christie And Bush On Entitlement Reform
In the past I’ve often criticized Mike Huckabee for claiming a “populism” that seemed content-free, and not at all in any conflict with your typical plutocratic conservative economic gospel. But I dunno about now. Last month he blasted “globalism” and past trade agreements with China and also signaled opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement that most congressional Republicans are lining up to support in a rare accommodation of Barack Obama. And now, on the very day that Jeb Bush seems to have climbed off onto the same limb–or perhaps it’s a plank over shark-infested waters–as Chris Christie on entitlement reform, ol’ Huck is preparing to saw it off (per a report from the Weekly Standard’s John McCormick):
As he gears up for another presidential campaign, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is making a big break with the Republican party on the issue of entitlement reform. Meeting with reporters at a hotel in Washington, D.C. this morning, Huckabee strongly criticized New Jersey governor Chris Christie’s proposal to reform Social Security and said he would not sign Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform into law if he were president.
“I don’t know why Republicans want to insult Americans by pretending they don’t understand what their Social Security program and Medicare program is,” Huckabee said in response to a question about Christie’s proposal to gradually raise the retirement age and implement a means test.
Huckabee said his response to such proposals is “not just no, it’s you-know-what no.”
McCormick is quick to quote Huckabee as having said positive things about Paul Ryan’s Medicare voucher proposal in 2012. But I suspect what matters more about this isn’t any affection it gains Huck but the harsh light it casts on Christie and Bush and anybody else that goes back down the entitlement reform highway to political hell.
Huckabee said Republican proposals to reform entitlements are “disastrous, not only politically but I think they may be disastrous in terms of further breaking the trust between the government and its people.”
This probably will not improve Huck’s relationship with the “Club for Greed,” will it? But it will give him something to say on the campaign trail when he or his audience gets tired of whining about being persecuted along with that poor Duck Dynasty man.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 17, 2015
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