The Christian Coalition unveiled its 2004 “voter guides” this week, supposedly a sign of the faltering group’s reemergence. Instead, the new drive was met with a combination of pity and laughter.
First, the funny part. These guides are supposed to be non-partisan because the Coalition is mysteriously still tax-exempt. With this in mind, the campaign materials the group produces are supposed to steer clear of intervention in the campaign itself.
And yet, the CC’s voter guides provide seek to highlight the differences between Bush and Kerry on such issues as “unrestricted abortion on demand,” “adoption of children by homosexuals,” “permanent elimination of the death tax,” “federal firearms registration and licensing of gun owners,” “affirmative action programs that provide preferential treatment,” and “allowing younger workers to invest a portion of their Social Security tax in a private account,” among other issues.
Non-partisan? Here’s the punch line:
Roberta Combs, coalition president, said the guides were an attempt to educate voters. “I don’t think the wording is loaded at all,” Combs said.
That Roberta, she’s hilarious. More important than her spin about the guides’ content, however, are her misstatements about their distribution.
The group claims 30 million voter guides will reach evangelicals this year. This contrasts nicely with the 70 million guides the Coalition claims to have distributed four years ago. The limited circulation effort, according to the Coalition, will cost the group $4.2 million in — wink, wink — non-partisan election-year efforts.
But the Christian Coalition is almost certainly inflating its numbers. The group, for example, is being sued by its law firm for unpaid legal fees. The CC is also facing a suit from its direct mail company because of — you guessed it — unpaid bills. In recent years the Coalition has had a budget of about $4 million a year. We’re supposed to believe a group that can’t pay its bills can spend $4.2 million on its election efforts? Isn’t there a commandment about bearing false witness?
Also keep in mind, the group’s credibility on voter guide distribution is already about as strong as Dick Cheney talking about Saddam Hussein’s connection to al Queda.
As the group’s budget and staff dwindled in the mid-1990s, the Coalition found it impossible to meet its own targets of voter guide distribution. The CC simply couldn’t afford it. In 1998, the group bragged about having distributed more than 40 million voter guides. They weren’t telling the truth — a former staffer later told the New York Times it was all a lie. “We never distributed 40 million guides,” Dave Welch, the coalition’s former national field director, admitted.
And they won’t distribute 30 million guides, either. The group’s a paper tiger; nothing more.