Long-time readers may recall that we’ve been covering David Kuo, the former second-in-command at the White House Faith-Based Office, since he first went public with his concerns in early 2005. Kuo, an evangelical Christian and conservative Republican, joined the Bush gang after stints with Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft, thinking he would help implement an aggressive policy that funded churches with tax-dollars to tackle social problems.
What he found, however, is that the White House’s interest in the faith-based initiative was a charade; it was a political ploy from the outset. Kuo is setting the record straight in a new book, “Tempting Faith.”
More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.
The office’s primary mission, providing financial support to charities that serve the poor, never got the presidential support it needed to succeed, according to the book.
Kuo has noted before that the White House never committed any real resources to the initiative, and never seemed particularly interested in the plight of the poor. Worse, Kuo’s new book insists the Bush gang had contempt for the religious-right leaders.
“National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,'” Kuo wrote. He added that Karl Rove called some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders “the nuts.”
Perhaps the biggest scandal was the way in which the Faith-Based Office was used in the 2002 campaigns.
More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races. According to Kuo, “Ken loved the idea and gave us our marching orders.”
Among those marching orders, Kuo says, was Mehlman’s mandate to conceal the true nature of the events. Kuo quotes Mehlman as saying, “… (I)t can’t come from the campaigns. That would make it look too political. It needs to come from the congressional offices. We’ll take care of that by having our guys call the office [of faith-based initiatives] to request the visit.”
Nineteen out of the 20 targeted races were won by Republicans, Kuo reports. The outreach was so extensive and so powerful in motivating not just conservative evangelicals, but also traditionally Democratic minorities, that Kuo attributes Bush’s 2004 Ohio victory “at least partially … to the conferences we had launched two years before.”
With the exception of one reporter from the Washington Post, Kuo says the media were oblivious to the political nature and impact of his office’s events, in part because so much of the debate centered on issues of separation of church and state.
(I have a unique interest in this because I personally exposed the trend of using the faith-based initiative in this fashion in a 2002 expose. The Washington Post picked up on the story after seeing my piece. Kuo is now confirming what I reported at the time.)
As for the religious right, how will conservative activists respond to the revelations that they’re held in contempt by the GOP elites? Tucker Carlson noted the other day that GOP leaders “have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power.” He added that “the base is beginning to figure it out.”
But are they? Kevin Drum recently compared it to Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown. That’s exactly right — every campaign cycle, the GOP tells its theocratic wing that they’ll deliver a religious-right agenda in exchange for votes. Every cycle, followers of Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, et al, fall for it. Two years later, it happens again, with the same results.
Kuo is making plain what most of have known for years. Face it, religious right, the Republicans just aren’t that into you.