Angry over the “thumping’” the Republicans took at the polls last week, the Right is frantically casting about for explanations and excuses as to what went wrong.
The latest scapegoat appears to be those religious organizations and leaders who have the audacity to be concerned about more than just outlawing abortion and demonizing gays. Those who voice concerns about issues such as global warming or poverty are, according to Focus on the Family, simply trying to confuse and siphon off the Right’s so-called “values voters”
Carrie Gordon Earll, director of issue analysis at Focus on the Family Action, said it's all spin by liberal faith groups with an eye on co-opting the impact of values voters.
"That's the way the religious left is trying to paint this," she said. "If you vote based on a candidate's position on abortion or defense of marriage, then somehow you don't care about poverty, and you don't care about the war. That's not true."
Now where would be people get the idea that Focus on the Family doesn’t care about issues such as poverty? Perhaps from Focus on the Family
When hundreds of religious activists try to get arrested today to protest cutting programs for the poor, prominent conservatives such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will not be among them.
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Conservative Christian groups such as Focus on the Family say it is a matter of priorities, and their priorities are abortion, same-sex marriage and seating judges who will back their position against those practices.
"It's not a question of the poor not being important or that meeting their needs is not important," said Paul Hetrick, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, Dobson's influential, Colorado-based Christian organization. "But whether or not a baby is killed in the seventh or eighth month of pregnancy, that is less important than help for the poor? We would respectfully disagree with that."
Focus on the Family suggests that it might care about poverty, it is just not a priority for the organization. But if another religious-based organization tries to make an issue like poverty a priority, Focus accuses them of undermining the impact of “values votes.”
Focus apparently preferred it when they and their right-wing allies were the only game in town and could falsely claim to be the voice of the nation’s Christian voters. Fortunately, that appears to no longer be the case, and Focus is none-too-pleased about it.
