| Ralph Reed just lost a primary for the Lt. Governor spot in Georgia, and it has been suggested that he lost because he "rode the coattails of his friend Jack Abramoff, noted corrupt superstar lobbyist, into big paydays from gambling interests."
Joe Lieberman is in a fight for his life in today's Connecticut Senate Democratic primary, and the prevailing argument against Lieberman is that he has lost touch with the needs of his constituents with regard to the Iraq War, civil rights and backing President Bush unilaterally.
Mike Ferguson is being challenged heavily by Assemblywoman Linda Stender and is facing the same complaints that he is out of touch with his constituents on contraception, embryonic stem cell research, and on the Iraq War.
And what do these three seemingly different politicians from different parts of the country running for totally different offices have to do with each other? In the 1990s they were all leaders of the religous right, working to tear down the wall separating church and state. Ralph Reed was the Executive Director of the Christian Coalition, Mike Ferguson was the Executive Director of the Catholic Campaign for America, and Joe Lieberman was well known for claiming religion was "under attack." |
| And together they helped found the conservative religous right organization Center for Judeo-Christian Values in America in 1995. This from the Chicago Tribune article on the founding of the group on December 6, 1995.
One of the the center's honorary co-chairmen, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), said American culture and traditional moral values are under unprecedented attack. ...
erving as honorary co-chairman with Lieberman is Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), a Presbyterian who introduced the conservative policy initiative in September called The Project for America. Coats has introduced a symbolic legislative package, which seeks to deal with the social problems of poverty through funding of community groups and charitable organizations rather than government agencies.
Coats' partner in the project, former Education Secretary and drug czar William Bennett, praised Eckstein's new project. "The challenge now is whether we preserve this republic and other republics," said Bennett, a Roman Catholic, "and I think a lot of that will hang on whether we believe man is a moral and spiritual being."
Other speakers supporting the center's mission were Ralph Reed, chairman of the Christian Coalition, and Michael Ferguson, executive director of the Catholic Campaign for America.
The mission sounds nice, but the group was funded by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, "the country's largest and most influential right-wing foundation." Also funded by the Bradleys are the uber-conservative organiazations the Heritage Foundation, the American Spectator, and American Enterprise Institute; and right wing individuals such as Charles Murray, William Bennett and Robert Bork.
Bennet and Bork also sat on the board of the Catholic Campaign for America, and Ferguson used Bennett and Bork's wife Mary Ellen as references on his application for a part time job at Brookdale Community College in 1997.
In fact, Ferguson used to describe himself as a conservative before he figured out in 1998 that it turned off voters from central New Jersey. In discussing how to frame the use of public money for private school vouchers in 1998, Ferguson said:
"Conservatives come under fire when they call for shutting down the Department of Education or just say they're for school vouchers, OK?" he tells listeners. ... In a state in which cultural conservatism has not exactly been a hot topic, Ferguson freely trumpets his strong pro-life stance. ... For some time, Mike Ferguson has stimulated students in the classroom and thousands of fellow conservatives around the country.
The truth is that Mike Ferguson is no more a "moderate" than is Robert Bork or Ralph Reed, no matter how much he wants to pretend he is. The people he worked with after college, and the votes he casts now to oppose stem cell reasearch and women's rights prove it. |
