POLITICS

CONSULTANT TEACHING DEMOCRATS HOW TO BE RELIGIOUS HYPOCRITES JUST LIKE
REPUBLICANS

DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, NY TIMES - Party strategists and nonpartisan
pollsters credit the operative, Mara Vanderslice, and her 2-year-old
consulting firm, Common Good Strategies, with helping a handful of
Democratic candidates make deep inroads among white evangelical and
churchgoing Roman Catholic voters in Kansas, Michigan, Ohio and
Pennsylvania.

Exit polls show that Ms. Vanderslice's candidates did 10 percentage
points or so better than Democrats nationally among those voters, who
make up about a third of the electorate. . .

Democratic officials in several states said Ms. Vanderslice and her
business partner, Eric Sapp, pushed sometimes reluctant Democrats to
speak publicly, early and in detail about the religious underpinnings of
their policy views. They persuaded candidates to speak at conservative
religious schools and to buy early commercials on Christian radio. They
organized meetings and conference calls for candidates to speak
privately with moderate and conservative members of the clergy.

In Michigan, they helped the state's Democratic Party follow up on these
meetings by incorporating recognizably biblical language into its
platform. In Michigan and Ohio, they enlisted nuns in phone banks to
urge voters who were Catholic or opposed abortion rights to support
Democratic candidates, with some of the nuns saying they were making the
case in religious terms.

But Ms. Vanderslice's efforts to integrate faith into Democratic
campaigns troubles some liberals, who accuse her of mimicking the
Christian right. Dr. Welton Gaddy, president of the liberal Interfaith
Alliance, said her encouragement of such overt religiosity raised "red
flags" about the traditional separation of church and state.

"I don't want any politician prostituting the sanctity of religion," Mr.
Gaddy said, adding that nonbelievers also "have a right to feel they are
represented at the highest levels of government."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/us/politics/26faith.html?ref=us

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HRC NAMES EVANGELICAL CONSULTANT AND JESUS TO HER STAFF

NEWSMAX - Hillary Clinton has hired an "evangelical consultant" to help
woo Christian conservatives in her likely 2008 presidential campaign.
The move comes after a similar political operative successfully aided
Democratic candidates in several states in the midterm elections. More
than one-quarter of the nation's voters identify themselves as
evangelical - a voter bloc that has long been courted by Republicans.
Clinton's new hire is Burns Strider, an evangelical Christian who
directs religious outreach for House Democrats and is the lead staffer
for the Democrats' Faith Working Group, headed by incoming Majority Whip
James Clyburn of South Carolina.

Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi created the group last year when
Democratic strategists observed that the party lost ground in the
previous election in part because candidates failed to reach centrist
and conservative voters in rural areas, who tend to be churchgoers
concerned with moral issues, according to the Washington, D.C.-based
publication The Hill. Strider was an aide to Pelosi when the group was
formed and joined Clyburn's staff as policy director of the Democratic
Caucus earlier this year, the paper reported.

"Observers of Clinton's expressions of faith say religion has always
been important to her, that she attended prayer group meetings while
first lady, and that she joined a Senate prayer group shortly after
winning election in 2000," The Hill reports.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/12/26/122609.shtml?s=al&promo_code=2B60-1

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CONGRESSMAN DEMANDS IRAQIS BE CONVERTED TO CHRISTIANITY

WONKETTE - North Carolina's 8th District congressman has a winning plan
for Iraq: convert all the Muslims to Christianity. In the past, only a
few brave public intellectuals such as Ann Coulter have offered this
only obvious solution to our 3-1/2 year bloodbath occupation of Iraq, so
it is a proud moment for America that [GOP] Rep. Robin Hayes is the
first politician to deal seriously with our disastrous war.

The only way to make Iraq stable enough for the U.S. to withdraw is by
"spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth,
good will towards men. Everything depends on everyone learning about the
birth of the Savior."

http://www.wonkette.com/politics/crazies/congressman-demands-iraqis-be-
converted-to-christianity-223931.php

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BUSH SNEAKS ANOTHER RIGHT-WINGER INTO PUBLIC BROADCASTING

LA TIMES - President Bush quietly appointed television sitcom producer
Warren Bell to the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting this
week, overriding opposition from public broadcasting advocates who fear
the outspoken conservative will politicize the post. Bell's nomination
had been stalled since September because of concerns about his
qualifications among several members of the Senate Commerce Committee,
which must approve nominees to the board of the CPB, the private
nonprofit that distributes federal funds to public television and radio
stations.

But Bush was able to circumvent the need for Senate approval by naming
Bell to the board as a recess appointee. His term will last about a
year, unless a permanent nominee for the seat is confirmed before then.
. .

As a contributor to the online edition of the National Review, Bell has
made no secret of his political views, writing in one piece that he is
"thoroughly conservative in ways that strike horror into the hearts of
my Hollywood colleagues."

His comments alarmed some public broadcasting advocates, who worry he
would plunge the system back into the kind of rancorous debate that
erupted last year when Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, then chairman of the CPB
board, sought to promote more conservatives in the system. Tomlinson
resigned last fall after an internal investigation concluded his actions
broke federal law.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-et-bell22dec22,1,1016415.story?
coll=la-headlines-politics

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INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING SPREADING

NANCY VOGEL, LA TIMES - The cities of Davis, Calif.; Oakland and
Minneapolis, as well as Pierce County, Wash.; have passed ballot
measures that will lead to "instant runoff" or "proportional
representation" voting in city and county elections. There was no
organized opposition to the measures.

Their success has energized election reform advocates, who say the
United States should join most other democracies and pick politicians in
a way that doesn't shut out the 49% of voters who may have favored
someone other than the majority winner. . .

For decades, Cambridge, Mass., has been the only American city to use
the system. But in November, voters in Davis and Minneapolis approved
proportional voting in city elections. . .

"It produces more of a mix of Democrats and Republicans that represent
more of what we call purple California than red and blue California,"
said Steven Hill, political reform director for the nonprofit,
nonpartisan New America Foundation. . .

In a November poll of 600 California voters, the foundation found that
52% said instant runoff voting sounded like a good idea. Half of those
surveyed favored proportional voting. Nearly 70% said they feel like
they often must vote for "the lesser of two evils."

Almost every democracy outside of Britain, Canada and the United States
uses some version of proportional voting, including Australia, Germany,
Japan, New Zealand and South Africa. The new voting systems in
Afghanistan and Iraq are proportional too.

In the United States, two dozen cities used the system in the early
1900s. All but Cambridge had abandoned it by the 1960s, and Illinois
voters stopped using it to elect state lawmakers after a 1980 initiative
. . .

According to a history written by Douglas Amy, a Mount Holyoke College
politics professor, some cities jettisoned proportional voting along
with other corruption-busting Progressive Era reforms such as replacing
mayors.

New York City, where a Communist was elected to the City Council in the
1940s, abandoned the method during the Cold War era after Democrats
decried it as a "political importation from the Kremlin."

Cincinnati rejected the system in 1957 after a campaign in which
opponents asked whether the city wanted a "Negro Mayor." Proportional
voting had allowed African Americans to win seats on the City Council
for the first time in the city's history. . .

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-voting25dec25,1,4207139,full.story

http:/fairvote.org

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