“Faith-Based Budgeting”: The New Testament According To Disciple Paul Ryan
Probably everyone has heard the New Testament story in which Jesus entered the temple and told the money changers, “You know, if you got a massive tax break, the benefits would probably benefit poor families eventually.” Or something like that, right?
That seems to be the message I’ve been hearing from the right this week. Over the weekend, evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren said the Bible “says we are to care about the poor,” but he also said he opposes “wealth redistribution,” adding, “When you subsidize people, you create the dependency.”
He’s not the only one adopting this theological approach.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), whose budget plan recently passed the House in a party-line vote, says his faith contributed in shaping the proposal, which he says is consistent with Catholic teachings.
“A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan said in an interview released on Tuesday by the Christian Broadcasting Network. “So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?”
To be sure, Ryan’s spiritual beliefs are his own business, and his religious beliefs are between him and his conscience. I’m not going to pretend to be a theologian or try to interpret Scripture for him.
I can, however, point out the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops — the leaders of Ryan’s faith tradition — have urged Republicans to adopt a budget strategy that “requires shared sacrifice by all,” including additional tax revenues and eliminating unneeded military spending. In a letter last year, the bishops also characterized “massive cuts” to programs that benefit the poor as unacceptable. “The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first,” the bishops said, articulating a principle that the Ayn Rand acolyte considers ridiculous.
I can also point out that Ryan’s budget plan is simply brutal towards the poor.
The House Republican agenda gets “at least 62 percent of its $5.3 trillion in non-defense budget cuts over ten years from programs that serve people of limited means,” while also “giving a massive tax break to the wealthy.” This means redistributing wealth in the wrong direction — taking money from SNAP, Medicaid, and education, and redirecting that money towards those who are already rich.
If his read on the New Testament is that Jesus would cut food stamps while giving millionaires a tax break, Paul Ryan has a far more creative mind than I do.
I hate to break it to the right-wing Budget Committee chairman, but praying that dubious numbers will somehow add up doesn’t count as a budget shaped by faith.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, April 12, 2012
“He’s Gone Far Enough”: Why The Republican “Establishment” Can’t Stomach Rick Santorum
While winning big in Alabama and Mississippi, Rick Santorum has also swept some other important primaries of late—the magazine primaries—picking up the enthusiastic support of Bill Kristol and other conservative editors and writers who think the former Pennsylvania senator is the real deal.
I am a conservative who has worked for Republicans in the Republican National Committee, Senate, White House, and California governor’s office. I guess that makes me an “establishment Republican.” To paraphrase Samuel Goldwyn, if Rick Santroum is what you want, then include me out.
Why do so many Republicans with political experience shudder so at the thought of Rick Santorum as our party’s standard-bearer?
After all, Rick Santroum is prolife. But then, so am I.
He’s prodefense? So am I.
Skeptical of the regulatory state? Check.
Budget-cutter? True, Santorum was an earmark enthusiast, but he makes an articulate case against the budgetary incontinence of the Obama administration.
Moreover, he generates real enthusiasm with his base and can connect with blue-collar folks in the Midwest we used to call Reagan Democrats.
Why, then, can’t I go there?
I couldn’t define it until I recently read Mark Twain’s account of his return to Hannibal, Missouri, in Life on the Mississippi.
Twain wrote:
The Model Boy of my time—we never had but the one—was perfect: perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed place with the contents of a pie, and nobody would have been the worse off for it but the pie.
As for the contents of Santorum’s skull, I see not pie-filling but a zest for culture war. Launching a culture war now would fracture the Republican Party, while striking independent voters as massively beside-the-point with near 9 percent unemployment and an international situation pregnant with danger.
In the face of such a simple political target as President Obama, Santorum simply cannot stay on message. He and his people feel compelled to go beyond the issue of religious liberty to let us know that he believes contraception is morally wrong. I respect his right to that belief—and I join him in passionately upholding the right of the Catholic Church not to be coerced into acting against its doctrine on contraception. But that doesn’t mean I embrace that belief itself. I don’t. And I sure don’t want to hear about contraception from the bully pulpit of the White House—neither do tens of millions of other Republicans, many of them Catholics.
Or take Santorum’s strange denouncement of President Obama as a “snob” for wanting people to go to college. Or his odd diatribe against John F. Kennedy over his classic speech on separation of church and state. Both statements may contain many yeasty issues and fine distinctions—all of them are irrelevant to beating Obama.
And really, how tone-deaf do you have to be to launch an out-of-the-blue attack on JFK?
Like the Model Boy, Santorum is divisively pure. Such purity cannot win because it cannot command a coalition. And the key to a coalition is acceptance of people who share your basic objectives but who are not like you.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt repeatedly won the presidency by stitching together a coalition of Northern liberals and segregationist southerners who shared a belief in a stronger role for government. Ronald Reagan won two terms with his “big tent” of southern conservatives, blue-collar voters in the Midwest, and Western libertarians. Some avid Reagan supporters wanted to change the Constitution to re-establish school prayer. Other avid Reagan supporters legalized prostitution in Nevada.
The Reagan coalition may have frayed, but it remained together because everyone in the tent wanted smaller government and an end to Communism.
A winning Republican campaign today would have to bring together evangelicals, libertarians, defense conservatives, economic conservatives, and Tea Party enthusiasts united against Obama. Then it would have to move independents disaffected from Obama—but not if they are scared away by Rick Santorum.
Santorum, chastened by the loss of Ohio, is visibly struggling to stay on the economic message. But there always seems to be yet another strange observation suppressed behind those pursed lips. He can’t keep it under wraps. Count on it. A Santorum nomination would be guaranteed to blow up the party by focusing on the wrong issues at the wrong time.
Twain ended his riff on the Model Boy thusly:
This fellow’s reproachlessness was a standing reproach to every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all the mothers, and detestation of all their sons. I was told what became of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter into details. He succeeded in life.
Santorum has already succeeded in life. He’s gone far enough.
By: Mark W. Davis, U. S. News and World Report, March 16, 2012
“Turning Back The Clock”: What The South’s Scary Republican Electorate Says About The GOP
There has been a lot written about the make-up of the Republican primary electorate in 2012. By now, it has become clear how very conservative they are, how many of them are evangelicals, how social issues motivate many of them, and how truly angry they are at President Obama.
As I have written before, this is not your mother’s Republican Party.
But the latest polls by the reputable and respected Public Policy Polling group in Tuesday’s primary states of Alabama and Mississippi tell a pretty disturbing story. They surveyed 656 likely Republican voters in Mississippi and 600 in Alabama this past week.
In Alabama, 45 percent described themselves as “very conservative” and 36 percent as “somewhat conservative”; in Mississippi, those numbers were 44 percent and 34 percent respectively. Not a huge shock there.
In Alabama, 68 percent describe themselves as “Evangelical Christian.” In Mississippi, that percentage was 70 percent. Again, not that surprising in the deep South.
But here comes the more disturbing news: In Alabama, 60 percent do not believe in evolution. In Mississippi, the figure is 66 percent.
When it comes to interracial marriage, 29 percent of Republican primary voters in Mississippi believe it should be illegal. In Alabama, 21 percent think it should be illegal.
Now, both of those last two answers would really mean turning back the clock!
And on Barack Obama’s religion, in response to the straightforward question, “Do you think Barack Obama is a Christian or a Muslim or are you not sure?” the answers are scary. In Alabama, 14 percent say Christian, 45 percent say Muslim, 41 percent are not sure. In Mississippi, 12 percent say Christian, 52 percent say Muslim, and 36 percent are not sure.
Several years ago we saw disturbing numbers on the Muslim question, but there has been enough publicity, enough coverage, enough debunking of the false accusations, that one would think that people would have moved on. Not so.
Why do the most engaged voters in Republican primaries seem to hold views that are outright false? Is the hatred of Obama so visceral that they will believe anything that comes across the Internet? Are their views reinforced by friends and neighbors? Do they simply not believe any facts when they are presented?
The truly scary thing is that though these numbers are from two states, this is looking less like an aberration. The Republican primary voters over the last few decades have become increasing more radically conservative, the delegates to the conventions more far right, the Republican Party more rigid. It was impossible for Sen. John McCain to nominate a Tom Ridge or a Joe Lieberman as vice president—too pro-choice. The platform at each convention has become more conservative, especially on social issues. The no-tax pledge has become a needless straight-jacket, yet signed by virtually all Republicans in Congress.
But, these two polls show a remarkable closed-mindedness when it comes to issues of race and religion that many thought were settled with open-mindedness. Apparently not.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, March 14, 2012
Mitt, Grits And Grit: “He Knows How To Hold A Baby” Y’all
“I’m learning to say ‘y’all,’ and I like grits. Things, strange things are happening to me.”
Those are the words of Willard Mitt Romney campaigning in Pascagoula, Miss., this week.
Wow. Note to Mitt: As a Southerner, I’ve never known us to find caricature endearing. But welcome to the Deep South anyway, Mitt. I wonder if you’ve been introduced to one of my favorite Southern sayings: the backhanded “Bless your heart.”
By all accounts you’re going to need it. No one expects you to do well on Tuesday when Mississippi and Alabama hold their primaries.
(Kansas holds its caucuses on Saturday, and Rick Santorum is leading the polls there.)
When Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi endorsed Romney on Thursday, he tried his best to humanize him, saying: “He just has a warm, comfortable way about him. I like to see a man when he’s holding a baby. And he looks like he’s held a baby before. Let me tell you, this man is connecting with the people of this nation, and it is about those simple things.” He knows how to hold a baby? Nice try, governor. Bless your heart.
According to Gallup, Mississippi is the most conservative state in the union, and Alabama clocks in at No. 4. Romney continues to struggle with more conservative voters. In the 2008 elections, 7 out of 10 Mississippi primary voters described themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. Romney has also struggled with that group.
Last Tuesday, in the primaries in the states of Oklahoma, Georgia and Tennessee, about 70 percent of voters said it was important that their candidate share their religious views. Romney won no more than a quarter of those voters in each state. Welcome to the Southern G.O.P. Bless your heart.
Some argue that this is inconsequential and that all Romney has to do is win the nomination and rank-and-file Republicans will fall in line. They even argue that his less-than-strident, often inconsistent, views may be an asset in a postnomination tack to the middle.
It is true that these states are in no danger of swinging Democratic. Mississippi and Alabama haven’t voted Democratic since 1976. And since Mississippi started holding primaries, no Republican candidate except the eventual presidential nominee has won the state, according to Catherine Morse, a University of Michigan government and political science librarian.
In fact, Obama lost both states to John McCain in 2008 by large margins, and the votes were largely along racial lines. In both states, 88 percent of whites voted for McCain, while 98 percent of blacks voted for Obama.
Obama will not win Mississippi and Alabama, period. But that’s not the issue. The issue is enthusiasm, which has a way of bleeding across borders and ideological boundaries.
In elections, enthusiasm has two sources: for your candidate or against the other. We know well that there is a high level of hostility toward Obama on the right, but he still maintains a number of liberal devotees. Although there are some on the left who have softened on him, he still has a wide swath of passionate supporters who seem to feel that he is moving in the right direction and deserves a chance to finish the work he has started. In fact, according to Gallup, at this point in the race, Democrats are more enthusiastic about Obama than Republicans are about Romney.
The elections will boil down to a duel between anger and optimism, and in general elections optimism wins. Energy wins. Vision wins.
If the message that emerges from the nominating process is that Republican voters lack confidence in their candidate, that is not a message that can be easily sold to swing voters. It’s hard to point to your candidate’s good qualities when you’re using your hands to hold your own nose.
If the Republican nominee can’t appeal to his own base, how can he expect to draw from the middle and the left?
This is the conservative conundrum.
The Republican Party had an opening as wide as the Gulf of Mexico to unseat President Obama, but it appears that it could close with a weak candidate. The president has been hammered by a sputtering economy and hemmed in by an intransigent Congress. All the Republicans needed was a presidential nominee who could capture their discontent on a gritty, granular level and put a positive, big-picture, forward-looking face on it.
Instead, they find themselves with a scraggly lot of scary characters, each with a handicap larger than the next. And the one who’s likely to win the nomination is the one whom the base has the biggest doubts about. He has the good looks of a president but not the guts of one. The only view that he has consistently held is that he wants to win. Everything else is negotiable.
He projects the slick feel of a man who’s trying to sell you something that you don’t want by telling you something that you don’t believe. People don’t trust and can’t fully endorse it, even the ones who deeply dislike the president. In fact, poll after poll finds that the longer the nomination fight drags on and the more people come to know Romney, the higher their unfavorable opinions of him climb.
Furthermore, postnomination pivots have become more difficult in a world driven by YouTube, social media and citizen activism, where prenomination politicking lives forever online in a candidate’s own voice (and often on video).
Unfortunately for Romney, grits don’t give you grit. Dabbling in dialectic speech won’t quench people’s thirst for straight talk. Being called warm and comfortable doesn’t remove the gut feeling that you are cold and rigid. There is something missing from the core of the man, and people can see straight through him.
That makes places like Mississippi a real litmus test — of Romney’s ability to convert his base by connecting with it. Mississippi is a world away from Massachusetts. It’s a ruby-red state and the heart of conservatism. Mississippi is where he has to sell himself.
Bless his heart, y’all.
By: Charles Blow. Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 9, 2012
“Opus Dei”: Rick Santorum’s Old-Time Religion
Rick Santorum, a proudly letter-of-the-canon-law kind of Catholic, was once a good bit more relaxed in the practice of his natal faith, according to a profile of the Republican presidential hopeful’s religious journey that appears in today’s New York Times.
Reporters Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Laurie Goodstein attribute the hardening of Santorum’s religious beliefs to his relationship with his father-in-law, Dr. Kenneth L. Garver, a physician and father of 11. Garver’s daughter, Karen, who went on to marry Santorum, apparently went through something of a rebellious period: as a young woman, she was romantically involved with a doctor who performed abortions who was many years her senior. But when she married the man who would go on to become a congressman and then a U.S. senator, her rebellious days came to a close.
From Stolberg and Goodstein’s article:
The Santorums’ beliefs are reflected in a succession of lifestyle decisions, including eschewing birth control, home schooling their younger children and sending the older boys to a private academy affiliated with Opus Dei, an influential Catholic movement that emphasizes spiritual holiness.
That description of Opus Dei kind of snapped my head back for a minute. Opus Dei is essentially a secret society of laypeople whose members generally hail from among society’s higher ranks, affording the organization a degree of temporal power not typical of your everyday prayer circle. Stark distinctions are made regarding the roles played by the sexes.
There are various strata of membership in Opus Dei. For instance, married people, known as supernumeraries, play a different role from the single people, called numeraries, who live in Opus Dei housing. Here’s a bit from an article about Opus Dei that appeared in the Jesuit magazine, America, in 1995:
According to two former numeraries, women numeraries are required to clean the men’s centers and cook for them. When the women arrive to clean, they explained, the men vacate so as not to come in contact with the women. I asked [Opus Dei spokesperson] Bill Schmitt if women had a problem with this. “No. Not at all.” It is a paid work of the “family” of Opus Dei and is seen as an apostolate. The women more often than not hire others to do the cooking and cleaning. “They like doing it. It’s not forced on them. It’s one thing that’s open to them if they want to do it. They don’t have to do it.”
“That’s totally wrong,” said Ann Schweninger when she heard that last statement. “I had no choice. When in Opus Dei you’re asked, you’re being told.” According to Ms. Schweninger [a former Opus Dei member], it is “bad spirit” to refuse. Women are told that it is important to have a love for things of the home and domestic duties. “And since that’s part of the spirit of Opus Dei, to refuse to do that when you’re asked is bad spirit. So nobody refuses.”
In other words, no home ec classes for the Santorum boys.
The Santorums, of course, are entitled to practice their religion as they see fit — an entitlement, if you will, that is one of those things that truly does make America great. The problem is, Rick Santorum thinks you should live by his religious beliefs, too. In a chilling Washington Post Outlook piece, Sarah Posner imagines what Santorum’s America would look like.
By: Adel Stan, Washington Monthly Political Animal, March 4, 2012
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