Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in
Dallas, made news last week when referring to Mormonism as a cult
while introducing Texas Governor Rick Perry to the Values Voters
Summit.
In the past couple of days, Jeffress is doing anything but
backing away from his comments, saying on Sunday that “Part of a
pastor’s job is to warn his people and others about false
religions. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Mormonism are all
false religions. And I stand by those statements.”
My views on these various religions aside, this sort of
rhetoric is distinctly unhelpful in reaching the goal that
a majority of
Americans now share: ending the
Obama administration after one term.
The “mainstream” media are already foaming at the mouth
over Jeffress’s remarks, using them to reinforce their journalism
school-learned bias against Republicans as small-minded bible
thumpers, or perhaps, to coin a phrase, as people bitterly clinging
to religion.
Liberals, like the Washington Post’s Sally Quinn,
are already making parallels such as wondering if Jeffress’s
statements are Rick Perry’s “Reverend Wright
moment.” But there’s a big
difference: those same liberals wanted nothing to do with the
Reverend Wright story even though Barack Obama’s attendance at the
anti-Semitic Wright’s America-hating church for two decades said
much about that candidate.
They didn’t want to talk about any of Obama’s other
unsavory friends, either, such as unrepentant
terrorists Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine
Dohrn, or criminal and helpful house-finder
Tony Rezko (except perhaps to say that Obama had given away Rezko’s
donations and was distancing
himself from the convicted
felon.)
While Obama attended Wright’s church for twenty years,
soaking in the reverend’s hatred and lunacy, Rick Perry does not
attend Mr. Jeffress’s church. Indeed, a 2010 story in an Austin
newspaper discussing the fact that Perry and then challenger Bill
White “mirror
(the) population in attending more than one
church,” does not mention First Baptist
Church as being a place whether either man worships, not
surprisingly since Perry lives in Austin, not in Dallas.
It’s true that Pastor Jeffress sent members of his
congregation to an August 6th prayer rally organized by Governor
Perry called “The Response.” In an interview prior to that event,
Jeffress said that Perry had assured him that the governor’s
remarks at the rally would stay away from the political, and that
he believed Perry’s “heart was pure
about this.”
If Jeffress thought that it was wise to keep an overt mix
of religion and politics away from his candidate — and their
apparent shared desire to beat Barack Obama in 2012 — it’s hard to
understand why he continues to try to inject religion into the
Republican primary with his repeated attacks on Mormonism, going
from calling it a “cult” to mentioning it in the same breath with
Islam, obviously implying it is a threat to the nation.
Jeffress may think that he is weakening Perry’s leading
opponent (though Herman Cain may soon take that position if current
trends continue), but he is doing much more damage to the GOP and
its electoral hopes, and perhaps to Rick Perry, with the
distraction he is creating and the minor furor he is allowing the
media to foment.
Rick Perry has released an aggressive
ad
attacking Mitt Romney for “Romneycare,”
tying the man and the issue to President Obama and Obamacare.
The ad has high production value and might be effective in getting
more conservative voters to think twice before supporting
Romney.
But the “earned media” that Perry should be getting on
this ad is being overrun with talk about Jeffress’ remarks about
Mormonism. In part because Mitt Romney seems like a decent guy no
matter what you think of his policy positions, Jeffress’ attacks on
Mormonism make Romney seem like the victim of a small-minded
extremist, thus working directly against Perry’s
interests.
Furthermore, one cannot doubt that these questions will be
front and center in tonight’s Republican debate in Hanover, New
Hampshire. Instead of being able to go after Romney on the issue of
health care (to be followed, certainly, by Romney going after Perry
on immigration — a battle of issues that I agree with Ann Coulter
represents a bigger problem for Perry than for Romney), Perry will
have to spend his time criticizing his would-be supporter and
trying to gracefully defend his opponent.
One can almost hear Perry already, trying to thread the
needle while keeping some suspicion of Romney’s faith alive:
“Pastor Jeffress speaks for himself. While I am not a Mormon and
can’t say I understand that faith entirely, Governor Romney has
shown himself to be a fine family man. Voters will simply have to
decide for themselves how they want their candidate’s faith to
inform their political views. With me, the answer is
plain.”
And the controversy will live on, spurred by the gleeful
liberal media who live to create divisions with the Republican
Party, especially when the president they have so much invested in
is teetering on irrelevancy.
It’s a particularly unfortunate time for the Jeffress
distraction given the Occupy Wall Street movement being visibly
co-opted by
unions and Democrats.
Pictures of unwashed youth and probably more hygienic government
workers who believe they are owed a living by the rich, which is to
say by those who already pay a disproportionate share of federal
income taxes, would and should be everywhere in the
media.
Liberal news outlets are actually promoting the Occupy
protests,
blind and deaf to the double standard
they are creating compared to their coverage of the Tea Party
movement. But just as one can’t be angry at a puppy for peeing on
the rug — it’s just what they do — it’s hard to be too angry at
the addled “journalists” from whom we have learned to expect so
little. Instead, at least in this case, the fact that they are so
out of touch as to think that these protests are broadly popular
should be used by Republicans to their advantage.
Other than the several dozen viewers of MSNBC, few
consumers of TV news will look fondly at these protesters even if
they share some anti-banking sentiments. Most viewers would tie the
protesters to the Democratic Party and its union backers (almost
the only backers the party has left, other than trial lawyers and
the unemployed), a connection made much easier by those groups
bear-hugging the protesters — and presumably taking a shower
afterwards.
As
Jonah Goldberg points out, one of the
“leaders” of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Brian Phillips, is
“the head of communications for the NYC General Assembly.” In
an interview
with a New Zealand television station, Mr. Phillips is living
proof of
Newt Gingrich’s description of the
Occupiers: “I regard the Wall Street
protests as a natural outcome of a bad education system teaching
them really dumb ideas.”
Gingrich is exactly right, as is Herman Cain who called
the protests “more anti-capitalism and anti-free market than
anything else.” Even with the pro-protester bias in most
“mainstream” reporting, Occupy Wall Street should be a golden
opportunity for conservatives to show what a “Progressive” mindset
really is: barely-tempered socialism and support for
beggar-thy-neighbor policies based on a mindset of jealousy and
entitlement which is, or at least until relatively recently was,
anathema to the American mindset.
But instead, we’re deluged with media reports about Pastor
Jeffress, Mormonism and cults, all in an effort to get voters to
think of Republicans and the future Republican presidential nominee
as out of touch with mainstream America.
Governor Perry should put Pastor Jeffress back in his box
(and I hope Jeffress understands the importance of staying there)
so that the conversation can be refocused on America’s true
dangerous and false religion: Obamaism.
