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Buzzflash Interview with Sarah Posner
Talk to Action's Sarah Posner, as regular readers know, has a new book out about the frauduently inclined preachers of the "posperity gospel." Many of them are also very politically involved and comprise an important part of the religious right.
The book is titled God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters .
The progressive news site Buzzflash, has an interview with Sarah about the themes of her book. |
Here is an excerpt:
BuzzFlash: Okay. The Republican Party is kind of growing disunited and has kind of fallen into three factions -- the neocons, the corporatists and the religious right wing. The religious right wing has been backing Huckabee. Where do you see this movement going politically? What happened with Huckabee was the wing that actually controls the Republican Party, the careerists of the Republican Party, so to speak, got all upset and basically said, you people, you took it seriously? Like you're going to get power? No, no, no. You're just there to vote for us. Forget about Huckabee. He's got too many crazy ideas. You just sit back there and vote for us. So what's going to happen now that the Evangelical movement is sort of being pushed back by the establishment types in the Republican Party, the neocons and the corporatists?
Sarah Posner: I don't think they're being pushed back. I think there are several things that are simultaneously going on. Many of the power brokers within the Christian right have resisted endorsing any of the candidates. That has, in part, led to a splintering of the grassroots vote. Huckabee is getting a lot of that, but Romney was getting a piece of it, and even McCain is getting a piece of it. So it's not like the entire grassroots of the Christian right has gone for Huckabee.
A lot of the religious right leadership is concerned about Huckabee for the same reasons that worried the Club for Growth group -- his not toeing the line on tax cuts and small government, for instance, or Rush Limbaugh thinking he's soft on immigration. The leadership of the Christian right is looking for not just a candidate who could be a pastor in chief, which is basically what Huckabee could be, but is also looking for one that embodies the rest of the pieces of the Republican base. That is why Huckabee hasn't really gotten the groundswell of support after Iowa. It's not because the Christian right has fewer voters or has any less political sway in the Republican Party. Ultimately, whoever becomes the nominee, just from an accounting standpoint, will need those votes in November to make a go of it. Which is why there's been a lot of speculation that if McCain got the nomination, he might pick Huckabee as his running mate.
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