H4a news Clips [April 26, 2015] Summary of Today’s news


Chelsea Clinton and the wannabe Clinton dynasty: The blood thins [Thomas Lifson, American Thinker



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Chelsea Clinton and the wannabe Clinton dynasty: The blood thins [Thomas Lifson, American Thinker, April 25, 2015]
Chelsea Clinton has the role of “heir” to a trans-generational political dynasty.
It has been obvious for some time that Bill and Hillary Clinton wish to emulate the Bush and Kennedy families and establish a transgenerational political dynasty. Poor Chelsea Clinton is stuck in the role of heir, whatever her own desires may or may not be.
And like a dutiful daughter, she is going through the paces, taking a series of prestigious jobs (McKinsey, investment banking, and NBC), none of which worked out well enough to pursue for very long, marrying the son of a congresswoman and convicted fraudster (tapping into a rich vein of useful experience), and even posing for a sad attempt at glamorization in Elle Magazine.
Now, in the wake of the scandals uncovered by Peter Schweizer, she has been pressed into the role of defender of her mother. On the face of it, this is rather despicable, since her mother is perfectly capable of speaking for herself but chooses not to, in order to avoid awkward questions. Or let me amend that: “perfectly capable” may imply skill. Hillary Clinton is not nearly the gifted liar her husband is. But she is not struck dumb by some ailment; she has the gift of speech, so it would be better to write that there is no reason she cannot speak for herself.
But instead, Chelsea, the new mother, is pushed out on stage to defend her own mother. And as in he other jobs, she is just not in top percentiles. Which is not to say she is completely incapable. With the benefit of her Stanford, Columbia, and Oxford education, she can string together words. But the delivery is not at all convincing. Watch as she dodges a question speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations (hat tip: White House Dossier) over the Clinton Foundation accepting donations from regimes that oppress women. She delivers a bunch of canned platitudes, never addresses the question itself, and does so in a flat and frankly boring tone of voice.
I am no fan of Ms. Clinton. She seems to have accepted the values of her parents. But I also feel more than a little pity for her. It cannot have been a treat to be reared by this couple.
It is often remarked of dynastic families that “the blood thins,” meaning that the energy and talents of the founding generation may not be passed down in full force to the successors. Something like that seems to be operating in the wannabe Clinton Dynasty. All the sadder for Chelsea.
Progressives can’t trust Hillary Clinton: What’s behind her bizarre alliance with the Christian right? [Paul Rosenberg, Salon, April 25, 2015]
Many progressives are skeptical of Hillary Clinton’s liberal bona fides.
As Hillary Clinton launched her 2016 presidential bid, there were rumblings of concern about how progressive she would really be on economic issues, particularly given her wealthy donor base. Seemingly conscious of these concerns, Clinton herself stressed a populist message in her video announcement, as well as in the form of her initial road-trip foray to Iowa. She even said that “We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all—even if it takes a constitutional amendment.”
John Nichols of The Nation is right to argue this is still too cautious, and Clinton has barely addressed the fight for a $15 minimum wage (outside of a vague tweet), which has already galvanized a growing movement for economic justice. But at least there are challenges being raised which hold out the prospect of moving Clinton in a more progressive direction.
In contrast, there other areas in which Clinton’s politics leave much to be desired by progressives, which haven’t gotten as much attention—or de facto acknowledgment from Clinton. Truthout columnist Joseph Mulkerin summarized the con side, covering foreign policy, the environment, civil liberties and the culture wars, in addition to the economy in “Five Reasons No Progressive Should Support Hillary Clinton.”
Democracy Now! featured a spirited debate, with author/journalist Robert Scheer and socialist Seattle councilwoman Kshama Sawant (who spearheaded the $15 minimum-wage fight) taking the critical side, and journalists Joe Conason and Michelle Goldberg taking the “realist” position. Goldberg called Clinton “a kind of chameleon-like candidate,” which may usually seem negative, but, she said, “opens a potential opportunity for progressives… if they get organized…[to] exert pressure on her from the other direction.”
How to do this is a much bigger question—one that’s already answered, somewhat, on economic issues. Grassroots campaigns like the Fight for 15 are well under way. But what about the rest?
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Conveniently overlooked in the GOP’s recent embarrassment over Indiana’s “religious freedom restoration act” is Clinton’s own deeply questionable history on the subject from the ’90s, along with other culture-war issues, such as “Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act—all of which Clinton supported, along with then-President Bill Clinton.
Obviously Clinton has evolved—far beyond anyone on the GOP side—but this history remains troubling. It’s even more worrying when one considers the broader question of how cultural wars and economic issues interact (as in Clintonian welfare reform), and how neoliberlism inevitably tilts to the right, regardless of sentiments that proponents may express.
If we look closely at the history of Clinton’s relationship with three pieces of legislation affecting LGBT rights—Religious Freedom, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT), and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), we see three wildly different patterns. First off, there are major differences between the Indiana law Pence signed and other RFRAs, going back to the federal RFRA that Clinton signed in 1993. As author Garrett Epps put it, in the Atlantic,  “1) businesses can use it against 2) civil-rights suits brought by individuals.”
The real problem, so far as Hillary Clinton is concerned, is her earlier support for a conceptually related bill, the “Workplace Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which the ACLU strongly opposed as a poorly drafted bill that would open the floodgates to all manner of discriminatory behavior. The potential troubles were well-known and clearly articulated. Nevertheless, Clinton supported it in tandem with religious conservative GOP Sens. Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum. Her strange alliances with religious conservatives in the Senate was explored in Jeff Sharlet’s fascinating book “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” We’ll return to that book later.
The history of Clinton’s relationship with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is dramatically different. Religion played virtually no role in the policy anywhere, and Clinton turned against it early and clearly.
Growing efforts to repeal the preexisting military ban on gays and lesbians in the military in the early 1990s led to the introduction of legislation by Sen. Brock Adams, D-Washington, and Rep. Barbara Boxer, D-California. That same year, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney responded to a question by Barney Frank—who knew that Cheney’s press aide, Pete Williams (now of NBC News), was gay–by dismissing the idea gays posed a security risk as “a bit of an old chestnut” in congressional testimony. After that, several major newspapers endorsed ending the ban. During the Democratic primary the next year, all candidates supported ending the ban, and it did not become a campaign issue.
Nonetheless, there was a firestorm once Bill Clinton proposed changing the policy. But it was pure politics. U.S. allies with openly serving gays and lesbians already included Canada, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands and Norway, and a Rand Corporation report for the National Defense Research Institute, “Sexual orientation and U.S. military personnel policy: options and assessment,” laid to rest the most popular objections, based on investigations into these allied forces, as well as research into related kinds of organizations in the U.S., domestic fire and police departments.
Although Bill Clinton bowed to the political necessities, that appears to be as far as it went for either of the Clintons. Hillary went on record in December 1999, while still First Lady, but running for Senate in New York, as supporting repeal of DADT. “Gays and lesbians already serve with distinction in our nation’s armed forces and should not face discrimination,” she said in a statement reported by the New York Times, confirming reports from a private fundraiser. ”Fitness to serve should be based on an individual’s conduct, not their sexual orientation.” Rudy Giuliani, expected to be her opponent at the time, also opposed the ban. Hence, there were a minimum of conflicting forces and currents. End of story, more than 15 years ago.
When it comes to gay marriage, it’s exactly the opposite. Clinton’s record on gay marriage has been a complicated one, often to the point of deeply ambivalent silence, or sharp outbursts of surprising anger and frustration. Only after announcing her candidacy did she finally “evolve” completely on gay marriage, to the point of supporting marriage equality as a Constitutional right in advance of Supreme Court arguments later this month, as opposed to leaving it up to the states, as she had previously held.
Two years ago, in March 2013, Clinton announced her support for gay marriage in a video release. At the time, political scientist Paul Kengor, author of ”God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life,” wrote a column, “Hillary Clinton’s evolution on gay marriage,” arguing it was “an honest transformation” not “political opportunism,” yet the story he told was long on talk about religion, and very short on talk about gay rights or the law. He tried to tell a story about Clinton’s painfully slow evolution, from supporting the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act signed by her husband, which banned federal recognition of gay marriage and allowed states to ignore same-sex unions recognized by other states. Mostly, though, she did notevolve on DOMA—instead she came to support “domestic partnerships,” a bizarre form of second-class citizenship “rights.”
Here a consideration of legal and historical arguments would have been helpful—particularly since both Clintons are lawyers—but it’s nowhere to be found. And for good reason: From the beginning, DOMA stood in obvious tension with the Constitution’s “Full Faith and Credit Clause,” which states that “Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state.” Hence, ordinarily, if two people are married in Hawaii—where the possibility of gay marriage first seemed imminent circa 1995, then every other state must recognize their marriage as well.
There is what’s known as the “public policy exception,” which doesn’t require a state to substitute a conflicting statute from another state for its own statute. But this logic was used to preserve laws forbidding interracial marriage, so it’s repugnant, to say the least. So how did Clinton—a knowledgeable lawyer—either deal with or avoid thinking about that? Kengor doesn’t say. He doesn’t come anywhere close to even talking about legal concerns. That’s how religion functions in his hands—as one giant red herring. And in that, he stands in for almost all of the political press.
In Kengor’s account, Clinton “evolved” so that in 2003 she “introduced legislation to grant homosexual couples the same rights as heterosexual couples,” except, of course, the right to marry. Several paragraphs later, he mentions, “As late as the 2008 presidential race, Clinton still opposed same-sex marriage.” Indeed, in 2007, Politico breathlessly reported that Clinton had repudiated DOMA—only to have to walk that back:
UPDATE: Clinton’s spokesman points me to the text of her actual questionnaire (.pdf), in which she distances herself from a central plank of DOMA — its bar on the federal recognition of same-sex marriages — but not from the portion which allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages from other states.
In short, Clinton hadn’t changed, and would not change, more than a smidgen, at best, until finally in 2013, a full decade after 2003, she came out for gay marriage—though not as a federal constitutional right. That didn’t happen until just this past week.
Still, however tardy and halting her progress on marriage equality, Clinton has clearly moved in a progressive direction, just as she did much more swiftly and decisively on gays serving in the military. But what of the issue of “religious freedom” and the quagmire of entanglements with right-wing senators hinted at above?
I mentioned that the ACLU had opposed the Workplace Religious Freedom Act that Clinton co-sponsored. Here’s a sample of some of what they had to say, in a letter to senators, about specific examples of  “some type of harm or potential harm to critical personal or civil rights” that were prevented under existing law, but could be allowed if WRFA became law:
Religious Minorities: The courts have rejected an array of claims by employees claiming a right to proselytize others, or otherwise engage in unwanted religious activities directed toward others, while at work….
A court held that an employer had no duty to accommodate an employee’s need to write letters to both a supervisor and a subordinate at their homes severely criticizing their private lives and urging religious solutions….
Racial Minorities: In addition to the claim for an accommodation for the display of a swastika discussed in the religious minorities section above, Kaushal, 1999 WL 436585, a court rejected a claim by an employee in a private workplace to uncover and display his KKK tattoo of a hooded figure standing in front of a burning cross….
Women: Courts have rejected several claims made by male employees claiming that employers failed to accommodate their religious objections to working with women during overnight shifts because they could not sleep in the same quarters as women….
Gay Men and Lesbians: …. A court rejected a claim from a state-employed visiting nurse who, during a nursing visit to a gay man with AIDS and his partner, explained that they would only have salvation through her view of Christian beliefs and that God “doesn’t like the homosexual lifestyle.” The court held that accommodating the nurse’s request to proselytize her patients was not reasonable because it would interfere with the state providing services in a religion-neutral manner.
It should be obvious that—whatever the excuses—the effect of this “religious freedom” law would simply be to empower religious bullies.  This makes a lot of sense for folks like Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback, but it’s a lot harder to square with the public persona of Hillary Clinton. So what’s going on?
To answer that, take a look at Sharlet and his book “The Family.” Before the book came out, NBC did a segment (transcript here), based on Sharlet’s reporting, which touched on Clinton. It was anchored in a discussion of Douglas Coe, who leads the Family:
Mr. JOSHUA GREEN (Atlantic.com): I think in part through her involvement with The Fellowship’s prayer group, she was able to meet a lot of these conservative Republican senators, get to know them on a one on one basis.
[ANDREA] MITCHELL: In her autobiography, Clinton describes Coe as “a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide” to many, who became a “source of strength and friendship” during her White House years, starting with a prayer lunch at Coe’s Virginia retreat in 1993. Her official log showed he came to her West Wing office and introduced her to business leaders outside the White House.
In the NBC report, Clinton confidantes distanced her from Coe, according to Mitchell:
Asked about Coe’s influence on Hillary Clinton, people close to her said “she does not consider him one of her leading spiritual advisers, has never contributed to his group, is not a member,” and has never heard the sermons that we have cited. And they said he is not her minister.
But in an online discussion spun off from that report by author/journalist Frederick Clarkson, Sharlet explained a possible context for thinking about Clinton’s complicated and often conservative record on social and cultural issues:
In my book, “The Family,” I tell the story of how they helped create faith-based initiatives, going back to the late ’60s, when they began experimenting with what would become “compassionate conservatism,” through the ’70s, when they helped create Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship — which provided Bush the first test run of his project in Texas — and the ’80s, when Attorney General Ed Meese and then education official Gary Bauer collaborated with Coe on a welfare privatization project to the ’90s when Family member John Ashcroft introduced the charitable choice laws — with Hillary’s help — that made faith-based initiatives possible.
Regarding Hillary Clinton specifically, he added:
I argue that she’s associated with an authoritarian religious group that’s fundamentally anti-democratic. She is much to the left of the group — I voted for her, as it happens — but she still has some very conservative instincts rooted in her religious convictions. She’s entitled to them, and we, the voters, are entitled to ask about them.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It doesn’t work that way. Sharlet first wrote about Clinton’s involvement with the Family (aka the Fellowship) in a Mother Jones article, co-authored with Kathryn Joyce in 2007. It contains this very telling vignette of how the Family operates in terms of politics, ideology and power:
The Fellowship isn’t out to turn liberals into conservatives; rather, it convinces politicians they can transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics. Only the faith is always evangelical, and the politics always move rightward.
Who can object to personal relationships that “transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics”? Isn’t this supposed to be the cure to all that ails our politics today? Or perhaps it’s part of the cause?
Picking up on Sharlet’s origin story about faith-based initiatives, Frederick Clarkson provided a comprehensive overview last fall, “An Uncharitable Choice: The Faith-Based Takeover of Federal Programs,” part of a special issue of The Public Eye magazine from Political Research Associates on “Neoliberalism: How the Right Is Remaking America” [pdf here]. While neoliberalism is often conceived of as a descendent of New Deal Liberalism, this issue paints a starkly different picture:
The privatization of public services has long been a feature of neoliberalism. It has also been part of the domestic and global agenda of the Christian Right, and more broadly, of conservative evangelicalism. The free-market agenda of the economic elite and the interests of elite evangelicalism found common cause and a historic opportunity during the Clinton administration [as “Charitable Choice”]. It is a relationship that continues to this day under the rubric of the Faith-Based Initiative.
While Clarkson noted that Bill Clinton explicitly limited the impact of “Charitable Choice” with a signing statement to curb “religious organizations that do not or cannot separate their religious activities from [federally funded program] activities,” the theocrat’s long-term thinking was always at least several steps ahead. “The intentions of backers varied, as they still do, but the effect has been to begin to privatize government-funded services, and in particular to increase the capacity of conservative Christian institutions to provide such services in the U.S. and around the world,” Clarkson wrote. It’s the religious right that is shaping the whole framework of discussion and debate:
As David Kuo, an aide to Sen. Ashcroft and later the Deputy Director of the original White House office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in the Bush administration, recounts, they picked the name “Charitable Choice” because it sounded innocuous. “It didn’t draw attention to anything religious,” he recalled:
Charitable choice was something anyone could support and few people could justify voting against. The name just worked.
It did not lead to further legislation, but continued to expand via executive orders under both Bush and Obama, with an extremely curious set of policy developments:
These programs have taken money out of existing, primarily social service programs and redirected the funds to religious agencies. But since many of the conservative Christian bodies that wanted to receive Faith-Based Initiative funds lacked the institutional capacity and experience to be eligible, there was an early emphasis on training, capacity building, and technical assistance so that groups that wanted to become eligible could be shoehorned in.
This redirection of resources also tended to politically empower religious organizations and leaders, such as prominent evangelical pastor Rick Warren, whose economic view tends toward laissez-faire neoliberalism. Warren’s popularity has helped in recent years to strengthen the political constituency for free-market policies.
Religious charities are as old as the hills, but this money was going to groups with no history of such works—which is why they needed so much government assistance via executive order, just to become eligible for government assistance under law. It all makes perfect sense, once you realize the Family’s role in getting the whole scam started.
When Obama ran for president, he promised to clean things up, Clarkson notes, but it didn’t turn out that way, as revealed in a 2014 investigation by Andy Kopsa in The Nation, “Obama’s Evangelical Gravy Train.” It found that “Despite the president’s promise to cut funding to discredited HIV and pregnancy prevention programs, taxpayer dollars are still bankrolling anti-gay, anti-choice conservative religious groups.”
Given Hillary Clinton’s long-standing ties with the Family, will anything change? In the end, Clarkson concluded:
It should be a matter for public debate that political appointees in both parties are not only diverting federal funds to pursue political agendas well beyond the intent of Congress but also are deepening the government’s reliance on religious institutions as service providers. These trends do not seem to be aberrations and glitches in a fresh approach to the delivery of government services so much as a transpartisan program of neoliberal transformation of our government’s functions at all levels.
This neoliberal transformation of government functions stands in stark contrast to Clinton’s evolution on various LBGT rights issues. The question is not “How fast did Clinton evolve?” or “Was she a leader when it counted most?” It’s not a question of degree, it’s a question of fundamental direction. The question is “Where is she taking us? And why?” It’s not just for her, obviously. It’s a question for the entire political establishment around her. And it needs to be asked—loudly–if it’s ever to be answered at all.
Who had the worst week in Washington? Hillary Clinton [Chris Cillizza, WaPo The Fix, April 25, 2015]
Chris Cillizza argues that Hillary Clinton had the worst week in Washington.
'The past is never dead," William Faulkner wrote. "It's not even past." Faulkner wasn't writing about Hillary Clinton, but he might as well have been.
The former first lady, senator and secretary of state - who has spent a political career trying to use her immense talent between constant bouts of controversy - woke up to these headlines this past week: "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company" (New York Times); "For Clintons, speech income shows how their wealth is intertwined with charity" (Washington Post); and "Hillary Clinton struggles to contain media barrage on foreign cash" (Politico).
At issue are the complicated donation practices of the massive foundation run by Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton. All of the stories touched on questions of quid pro quos - or the appearance of such - tied to whom the Clinton Foundation took money from and why.
Like the semi-scandals of the 1990s and 2000s, none of the pieces was the sort of death blow that could end or even badly hamstring Clinton's presidential candidacy. But taken together, they remind people - even people who are favorably inclined toward the Clinton family - of all the baggage that goes along with electing them to any office.
Remember that when it comes to Hillary Clinton, America already holds two contradictory ideas in its collective head. On the one hand, a majority (62 percent in a recent Quinnipiac University poll) believe she would be a strong leader. On the other, more than half of the public (54 percent in that same poll) believes she is neither "honest" nor "trustworthy." Hillary Clinton, for playing to type long after you should have known better, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something.
Six Ways Hillary Is Running Against Bill Clinton’s Legacy [Fred Lucas, The Blaze, April 25, 2015]
There are six areas where the former secretary of state seems to be running against the record of President Clinton’s administration.
When Hillary Clinton kicked off her presidential campaign this month, she declared: “The deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.” That’s a populist tone that differs sharply from her husband’s successful presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996, which relied on phrases such as “new Democrat” and “the era of big government is over.”
President Bill Clinton’s crowning legislative achievements were welfare reform, a balanced budget and the North American Free Trade Agreement — themes that Hillary Clinton likely won’t dwell on.
“As much as those on the left say the Republican Party has moved to the right, the Democrats have also moved to the left,” said Tim Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa. The reason, he said, is fewer competitive House seats over the last two decades, which drives the party activists on both sides to be more ideological.
“That certainly makes it more difficult for [Hillary Clinton] to seek the nomination as a centrist, or at least as the type of centrist [Bill Clinton] was in 1992,” Hagle said.
Here are six areas where the former secretary of state seems to be running against the record of President Clinton’s administration.
1. Free Trade
President Clinton antagonized many in his party’s base with NAFTA and advocating for other free trade deals. However, during her 2008 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton called for a “timeout” on trade deals.
Today, the Trans-Pacific Partnership is causing division among Democrats. After initial support while serving as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton is being iffy at best about whether she will support the President Barack Obama-backed Asian trade deal, which organized labor opposes.
“Hillary Clinton believes that any new trade measure has to pass two tests,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in a statement last week. “First, it should put us in a position to protect American workers, raise wages and create more good jobs at home. Second, it must also strengthen our national security. We should be willing to walk away from any outcome that falls short of these tests. The goal is greater prosperity and security for American families, not trade for trade’s sake.”
Just before leaving the State Department in January 2013, Clinton spoke in favor of the deal. “In order to keep producing jobs and rising incomes, we have to be smart about how we use our economies,” she said. “So I think the Trans-Pacific Partnership is one way that could really enhance our relationship.”
2. Keystone XL Pipeline
Not all differences emerge from Bill Clinton’s days in the Oval Office.
In January 2012, during Clinton’s tenure, the State Department recommended that Obama reject the Keystone XL pipeline, kicking off a prolonged, ongoing review by the department.
A little more than a month later, Bill Clinton gave his support for the pipeline, saying, “I think we should embrace it and develop a stakeholder-driven system of high standards for doing the work.”
Hillary Clinton has since avoided the topic. Don’t count on her taking her husband’s side on this matter during the campaign, Hagle said.
“I also can’t see her getting behind the Keystone pipeline in a serious way given the emphasis on climate change within her party, particularly the more progressive left,” Hagle said.
3. Entitlement Reform
Stumping in New Hampshire this week, Hillary Clinton stated her policy on Social Security: “We don’t mess with it.”
Yet President Clinton was willing to “mess” with entitlements as the next order of business after the bipartisan balanced budget deal, saying in 1997, “It could be done before the ’98 election.”
The bipartisan mood in Washington collapsed in early 1998 with the Clinton impeachment scandal.
“The Clinton administration wanted to reach a deal, but Monica Lewinsky sort of got in the way of that,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Hillary Clinton is in an interesting position. Does she harken back to Bill Clinton or does she go the direction of [Massachusetts Democratic Sen.] Elizabeth Warren, who wants to expand Social Security?”
4. Same-Sex Marriage
In 2013, Hillary Clinton announced she had changed her stance on same-sex marriage from her 2008 opposition. Last week, the campaign announced an official position, when spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod said, “Hillary Clinton supports marriage equality and hopes the Supreme Court will come down on the side of same-sex couples being guaranteed that constitutional right.”
President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. The bill recognized marriage as only between one man and one woman and prevents one state from being forced to recognize a gay marriage from another state. For his part, Bill Clinton also changed his position on DOMA, but his wife’s campaign stance still represents a departure from the Clinton presidential legacy.
5. Income Inequality
The wage gap was not something Bill Clinton talked a lot about during the booming 1990s. But as Obama and other Democrats have taken up the cause, Hillary Clinton has too.
Clinton said last week, ”There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker.”
But, as the Washington Post reported, the disparity between the highest and lowest earners jumped from 75–to–1 before the Clinton administration to 400–to–1 during the Clinton administration. As the economy worsened, the gap narrowed.
6. ‘Vigorous Government’
Bill Clinton’s 1996 declaration that the “era of big government is over” may have been incorrect, but it’s also represents the change in the Democratic party and a difference with Hillary Clinton’s assertions during her previous campaign.
In her 2008 campaign, Hillary Clinton said, “We were most successful when we had that balance between an effective, vigorous government and a dynamic, appropriately regulated market.”
That approach isn’t likely to change with her new campaign, analysts say.
“There was a time when people said the Democratic Leadership Council was the future of the party,” Tanner said, referring to a moderate Democratic group. “Now, most of the moderate new Democrats, [former Nebraska Sen.] Bob Kerrey, [former Louisiana Sen.] John Breaux, they’re gone.”
Even though she is far ahead of any potential Democratic rivals, a move to the left is still needed to mollify the base, Hagle said.
“One of the things Hillary Clinton needs to do is win big, not just by default,” Hagle said. “One way to do that is say the kinds of things that energize her base.”
He added, “Of course, for the general election she wouldn’t want to be too far to the left or she’ll lose a lot of voters in the center.”
National Coverage - GOP
National Stories
Republican Field Woos Iowa Evangelical Christians [Trip Gabriel & Jonathan Martin, NYT, April 25, 2015]
Nine declared or likely Republican candidates descended on a large church in Iowa on Saturday to court evangelical Christians, the voters who played the starring role in the state’s two most recent caucuses.
WAUKEE, Iowa — Nine declared or likely Republican candidates descended on a large church in Iowa on Saturday to court evangelical Christians, the voters who played the starring role in the state’s two most recent caucuses.
They included the winners of those two contests (Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee), newcomers whose biographies lend themselves to evangelical support (Ted Cruz and Scott Walker), and candidates who would like to win some support from the Christian right but are eyeing broad coalitions (Rand Paul and Marco Rubio).
The nine-candidate lineup in the worship hall of Point of Grace Church in Waukee, a Des Moines suburb, was proof of evangelical power in Iowa, but also a warning that the script may be rewritten in 2016, with so many candidates competing for social conservatives that their votes splinter.
“The problem for Christian conservative candidates is they’re all running in the same lane,” said Kedron Bardwell, a political scientist at Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa, who studies religion and politics.
The speakers wooed the crowd, several hundred who were seated in steeply banked rows, with stories about the role of faith in their personal lives and pledges to support issues important to social conservatives, not only abortion and same-sex marriage but also a newly rising interest in security threats in the Middle East.
Many portrayed Christians as an increasingly persecuted community, seeking to appeal to the evangelical audience with vows to protect what they described as religious liberty for people of faith.
There were glimpses of personal biographies that are not the usual staples of stump speeches. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, told of moving back into his childhood bedroom after a career in the Air Force, when he felt lost, until he had an epiphany that “I was going to spend the rest of my life doing God’s work.”
“I just really never realized how large the pulpit was going to be that he was going to make available to me 30 years later as the governor of Texas,” he said.
Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, talked about how after losing a daughter to addiction, “it was my husband Frank’s and my personal relationship with Jesus Christ that saved us from a desperate sadness.”
And Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana governor, said the most important moment in his life was not his wedding day or when he held his first child, but “the moment I found Jesus Christ.”
Although the percentage of Iowans who are evangelical Christians is no greater than the national average — about one in four, according to the Pew Research Center — they represent nearly 60 percent of the Republican caucus turnout. Their outsize influence in Iowa and other primary states has pulled the Republican field to the right in the past, especially on issues like abortion and immigration, and led critics to discount the caucus as harmful to the party’s nominee in the general election.
A number of the candidates were adamant about opposing same-sex marriagedespite the view of some national Republican strategists that the party is losing touch with younger voters on the issue.
Mr. Rubio, a Florida senator, defended traditional marriage. “I remind people that the institution of marriage as one man and one woman existed long before our laws existed,” he said. “Thousands of years of human history teach us a simple truth: The ideal way to raise children is when a mother and father married to each other, living in the same house, raise children together.”
At a house party nearby earlier in the day, Mr. Rubio, making his first visit here as a declared candidate, indicated he would compete aggressively in Iowa. “We want to win the caucuses in this state,” he said.
On the same night that leaders of the national press corps were dining in Washington with sundry entertainment celebrities, Mr. Jindal offered a message for “Hollywood and the media elite.”
“The United States of America did not create religious liberty; religious liberty created the United States of America,” a line that earned a standing ovation.
Mr. Cruz, the Texas senator, also used much of his speech to highlight the importance of religious liberty, and said that believers in traditional marriage must “fall to our knees and pray” between now and the start of oral arguments next week at the Supreme Court on a case that could legalize same-sex marriage across the country.
Speaking at a V.I.P. reception before the main event, Mr. Cruz spoke in blunt terms about Iowa’s role in the Republican presidential contest, saying caucusgoers must propel “a real conservative” to the nomination.
Mr. Paul promised to speak out on an issue as important to evangelicals: expanding restrictions on abortion. He described as a doctor holding a severely underweight one-pound baby, which fit in the palm of his hand, and wondered how abortion-rights advocates could agree it was a human being, but that an unborn fetus many pounds heavier was not.
“I think we can win this argument,” he said. “I plan to be a big part of it. I’m going to keep talking about it.”
Mr. Santorum, the winner of the 2012 caucuses, thanks to a plurality of support from evangelicals, surprisingly did not make an appeal on the expected social issues. Instead he spoke about foreign policy in the Middle East, harshly criticizing the Obama administration for pushing for a treaty with Iran aimed at slowing its nuclear program. He said that at meeting after meeting he held in Iowa this year, there was fear the country was not safe.
Promising to throw any such treaty in the trash on his first day if elected president, Mr. Santorum sounded an apocalyptic note. “I just hope,” he said, that by then “we haven’t put Iran on a path to a nuclear weapon and something cataclysmic hasn’t occurred.”
Mr. Walker, the last to speak, seemed poised to cement the support he already enjoys in Iowa, where he is on top of recent polls, with a lengthy story of unlikely coincidences involving an uplifting passage from a devotional book, “Jesus Calling,” which he read aloud to the rapt audience. It had been sent to him by a friend in case he lost his recall election as Wisconsin governor in June 2012. Instead, Mr. Walker explained, he ended up reading it to the widow of a dairy farmer whose husband died the Monday before Election Day.
The candidates were invited by the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition, a branch of the national organization led by the Christian political activist Ralph Reed. The group wants constitutional amendments prohibiting abortion and same-sex marriage, the elimination of the federal Education Department, prayer in public schools and new I.R.S. rules to allow ministers to preach about politics.
Can Jeb Bush win the GOP nomination . . . by praising President Obama? [Ed O'Keefe, WaPo, April 24, 2015]
Jeb Bush risks alienating conservatives by supporting President Obama’s trade deal, praising his management of the National Security Agency and agreeing that Congress should have moved faster to hold a vote on new attorney general Loretta E. Lynch.
Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush supports President Obama’s trade deal, praises his management of the National Security Agency and agrees that Congress should have moved faster to hold a vote on new attorney general Loretta E. Lynch.
And that’s all since last week.
It’s an unusual approach for Bush in seeking the nomination of a conservative party that mostly loathes the current president. The former Florida governor has gone out of his way at times to chime in on issues where he agrees with Obama — bolstering his attempt to be a softer-toned kind of Republican focused on winning a majority of the vote in a general election.
But the strategy also carries grave risks for a likely candidate who is already viewed with deep suspicion by conservatives, many of whom have little desire to find common ground with Democrats. Tea party leaders are already warning that Bush, the son and brother of former presidents, is alienating conservatives.
“It’s stunning, frankly, that a candidate on the Republican side would be doing his best to line himself up with some of the president’s policies,” said Mark Meckler, ­co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots who now leads a group called Citizens for Self-Governance.
Bush’s tone, he added, puts him “out of step with the American people.”
The former Florida governor is hardly an Obama booster, of course. He regularly attacks Obama’s foreign policy and his handling of domestic issues such as the economy and the Keystone XL pipeline. He calls the Affordable Care Act a “monstrosity” that should be overhauled.
But Bush is sticking to his support for education and immigration reforms — positions unpopular with many GOP voters. And his tendency to refrain from being too aggressive in his attacks on Obama reflects his absence from what he often calls the years-long “food fight” between the current White House and congressional Republicans.
David Bozell, the president of For America, a conservative group strongly opposed to a Bush presidential bid, said the candidate is clouding his criticisms of Obama by “dropping these little nuggets of support.”
“He’s kept his gloves on, I suppose,” Bozell said.
“A lot of people are noticing. Not a day goes by where I don’t get an e-mail about his latest statements,” said Erick Erickson, a radio show host and founder of the conservative Red State blog. “He has said in the past he is concerned about the tone and rhetoric of the primary season, but I think he has overcorrected to the point of sounding more closely aligned to the president than ­Hillary Clinton.”
Last week, Bush urged Republican senators to move ahead with the confirmation of Lynch, saying he had concerns with her nomination but that “presidents have the right to pick their team.”
Then on Tuesday, Bush was asked in a radio interview what he thought was an accomplishment of the Obama administration, and he credited the president for sticking with the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone data “even though he never defends it.”
A day later, he reiterated his support for an Obama trade agreement that is gaining bipartisan support in Congress, while faulting Clinton for hedging on the deal.
Farther back, Bush offered Obama modest praise for continuing efforts started by Bush’s brother, George W. Bush, to tighten sanctions on Iran as it developed its nuclear program.
“The president, to his credit, was successful in bringing other people along and making it tougher,” Bush said during a recent appearance in Denver when asked how he would have handled Iran. “I’m not a big Obama fan, but when he does something right we need to give him credit.”
At the same time, Bush says he strongly opposes the recent interim deal with Iran brokered by the Obama administration and other world powers. On Thursday, he reportedly called the agreement “very naive.”
As he prepares to officially launch his campaign, Bush is traveling the country to meet with voters in early primary campaign states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, along with places not usually visited until a general election campaign: Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio and, next week, Puerto Rico.
In New Hampshire last week, he was questioned about his support for education standards commonly known as Common Core, as well as his support for an overhaul of immigration policy.
He reiterated that he supports Common Core but opposes the Obama administration’s decision to tie federal funding incentives to the standards, saying, “That is not the job of the federal government.”
“For states that don’t want to be part of Common Core because it’s poisonous politically and people are tired of explaining it — fine — create your own higher standards,” he told the crowd.
He was also lectured by a conservative, who warned that “you’re going to have a tough sell” on immigration reform.
“That’s my job,” he told the man. “My job is to not back down on my beliefs.”
Bush served as Florida governor from 1999 to 2007 and left office just weeks before Obama formally launched his presidential campaign. In recent years, while a new crop of Republicans were elected with tea party support — including presidential contenders Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — Bush was running a foundation promoting education reforms and building his personal wealth as an investment manager in Miami.
Bush sat out the 2012 presidential campaign even though many Republicans urged him to run. In a June 2012 interview with PBS’s Charlie Rose, he lamented the “armed camps” that had gripped political Washington — and struck a tone similar to the one he’s adopted on the campaign trail this year.
“I don’t have to play the game of being 100,000 percent against President Obama,” he said at the time. “I’ve got a long list of things that I think he’s done wrong and with civility and respect I will point those out if I’m asked. But on the things I think he’s done a good job on, I’m not just going to say no.”
In the same interview, Bush alleged Obama was repeatedly blaming his brother for his own missteps and suggested it would be nice to hear Obama give “just a small acknowledgment that the guy you replaced isn’t the source of any problem and the excuse of why you’re not being successful.”
While some conservatives dismiss Bush’s pleas for comity, others embrace them. Fergus Cullen hosted a house party for Bush in New Hampshire in March and said he did so because “he’s going to up the level of dialogue for himself and other candidates.”
“I appreciate the tone that he has offered in the last couple of months,” he said. “I think the party needs a lot more of that this cycle.”
Even Erickson hasn’t given up on Bush — at least not yet.
“I’d gladly support him if he were the nominee. His record as governor of Florida was impressively conservative,” he said. “His tone of late, however, has noticeably drifted left.”
Is America ready for President Graham? [George F. Will, WaPo, April 25, 2015]
Lindsey Graham wants 2016 to be “a referendum on [his] style of conservatism.”
In 1994, Lindsey Graham, then a 39-year-old South Carolina legislator, ran for Congress in a district that he said had not elected a Republican since Union guns made it do so during Reconstruction. He promised that in Washington he would be “one less vote for an agenda that makes you want to throw up.” He was elected to the Senate in 2002 and soon almost certainly will join the Republican presidential scramble, enlivening it with his quick intelligence, policy fluency, mordant wit and provocative agenda.
He has the normal senatorial tendency to see a president in the mirror and an ebullient enjoyment of campaigning’s rhetorical calisthenics. Another reason for him to run resembles one of Dwight Eisenhower’s reasons. Graham detects a revival of the Republicans’ isolationist temptation that has waned since Eisenhower defeated Ohio’s Sen. Robert Taft for the 1952 nomination.
Graham insists he is not running to stop a colleague: “The Republican Party will stop Rand Paul.” But Graham relishes disputation and brims with confidence. “I’m a lawyer. He’s a doctor. I argue for a living.” If Paul is nominated and elected, Graham will support him and then pester President Paul to wield a big stick.
Graham believes that events abroad are buttressing the case for his own candidacy. He says national security is the foremost concern of Republicans in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. He sees the 17,000 members of the Iowa National Guard who were deployed overseas as the foundation of a Graham plurality among the 120,000 Iowans expected to participate in the caucuses.
He wants voters to ask each candidate: Are you ready to be commander in chief? Do you think America is merely “one nation among many”? Are you committed to putting radical Islam “back in the box” (whatever that means)? Do you understand that any Iranian nuclear capability “ will be shared with terrorists”? Do you realize that, if that had happened before 9/11, millions, not thousands, might have died?
He wants 2016 to be “a referendum on my style of conservatism.” Voters might, however, wonder if it is the no-country-left-unbombed style. Suppose, he is asked, you could rewind history to 2003. Knowing what we know now — the absence of WMDs , the difficulty of occupation, the impossibility of nation-building and democracy-planting — would you again favor invading Iraq? “Yes,” he says, because “the Saddam Hussein model” of governance is “unsustainable” and “on the wrong side of history.”
Good grief. Barack Obama repeatedly says, as progressives must, that history — make that History — has an inevitable trajectory toward sunny uplands and will eliminate many bad things. Perhaps it will, eventually, but we live in the here and now, where we must answer this question: Is America’s duty-bound role to be history’s armed accelerant?
Yes, Graham answers, because Arabs, too, are eligible for “the American value set.” And, he adds, Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength” is inadequate to the stormy present because “there can be no peace with radical Islam.” So, the “box” Graham wants it put in is a coffin.
Graham is equally provoking and more convincing regarding domestic policy, warning that “the way the American Dream dies is we fail to self-correct.” He forthrightly says something indubitably true and, given the distempers of the Republican nominating electorate, semi-suicidal: The retirement of more than 70 million baby boomers by 2030 means that the nation needs immigrants — to replenish the workforce — as much as they need America.
When Graham was born in 1955, there were nine workers for every retiree; today there are three, trending toward two. We need many immigrants to sustain the entitlement state — unless, he says, many Americans volunteer to have four children after age 67. “Not too many people raise their hands [to volunteer for this] at my town meetings.”
As the economy’s growth limps along at 2 percent, Graham warns that 10 percent growth would not erase trillions of dollars of unfunded entitlement liabilities. He will tell Republican voters that a grand bargain — pruned entitlements and increased taxes — is necessary. They may think this is one of his jokes.
“I’m somewhere between a policy geek and Shecky Greene,” the comedian. Campaigning, he says, “brings out the entertainer in you,” so his town hall meetings involve “15 minutes of standup, 15 minutes of how to save the world from doom, and then some questions.” He at least will enlarge the public stock of fun, which few, if any, of the other candidates will do.
Zombies of 2016. [Paul Krugman, NYT, April 24, 2015]
On the GOP side, the 2016 race is already set up to be an election about ideas that should have died long ago in the face of evidence that undermines their basic premises.
Last week, a zombie went to New Hampshire and staked its claim to the Republican presidential nomination. Well, O.K., it was actually Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. But it’s pretty much the same thing.
You see, Mr. Christie gave a speech in which he tried to position himself as a tough-minded fiscal realist. In fact, however, his supposedly tough-minded policy idea was a classic zombie — an idea that should have died long ago in the face of evidence that undermines its basic premise, but somehow just keeps shambling along.
But let us not be too harsh on Mr. Christie. A deep attachment to long-refuted ideas seems to be required of all prominent Republicans. Whoever finally gets the nomination for 2016 will have multiple zombies as his running mates.
Start with Mr. Christie, who thought he was being smart and brave by proposing that we raise the age of eligibility for both Social Security and Medicare to 69. Doesn’t this make sense now that Americans are living longer?
No, it doesn’t. This whole line of argument should have died in 2007, when the Social Security Administration issued a report showing that almost all the rise in life expectancy has taken place among the affluent. The bottom half of workers, who are precisely the Americans who rely on Social Security most, have seen their life expectancy at age 65 rise only a bit more than a year since the 1970s. Furthermore, while lawyers and politicians may consider working into their late 60s no hardship, things look somewhat different to ordinary workers, many of whom still have to perform manual labor.
And while raising the retirement age would impose a great deal of hardship, it would save remarkably little money. In fact, a 2013 report from the Congressional Budget Office found that raising the Medicare age would save almost no money at all.
But Mr. Christie — like Jeb Bush, who quickly echoed his proposal — evidently knows none of this. The zombie ideas have eaten his brain.
And there are plenty of other zombies out there. Consider, for example, the zombification of the debate over health reform.
Before the Affordable Care Act went fully into effect, conservatives made a series of dire predictions about what would happen when it did. It would actually reduce the number of Americans with health insurance; it would lead to “rate shock,” as premiums soared; it would cost the government far more than projected, and blow up the deficit; it would be a huge job-destroyer.
In reality, the act has produced a dramatic drop in the number of uninsured adults; premiums have grown much more slowly than in the years before reform; the law’s cost is coming in well below projections; and 2014, the first year of full implementation, also had the best job growth since 1999.
So how has this changed the discourse? On the right, not at all. As far as I can tell, every prominent Republican talks about Obamacare as if all the predicted disasters have, in fact, come to pass.
Finally, one of the interesting political developments of this election cycle has been the triumphant return of voodoo economics, the “supply-side” claim that tax cuts for the rich stimulate the economy so much that they pay for themselves.
In the real world, this doctrine has an unblemished record of failure. Despite confident right-wing predictions of doom, neither the Clinton tax increase of 1993 nor the Obama tax increase of 2013 killed the economy (far from it), while the “Bush boom” that followed the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 was unimpressive even before it ended in financial crisis. Kansas, whose governor promised a “real live experiment” that would prove supply-side doctrine right, has failed even to match the growth of neighboring states.
In the world of Republican politics, however, voodoo’s grip has never been stronger. Would-be presidential candidates must audition in front of prominent supply-siders to prove their fealty to failed doctrine. Tax proposals like Marco Rubio’s would create a giant hole in the budget, then claim that this hole would be filled by a miraculous economic upsurge. Supply-side economics, it’s now clear, is the ultimate zombie: no amount of evidence or logic can kill it.
So why has the Republican Party experienced a zombie apocalypse? One reason, surely, is the fact that most Republican politicians represent states or districts that will never, ever vote for a Democrat, so the only thing they fear is a challenge from the far right. Another is the need to tell Big Money what it wants to hear: a candidate saying anything realistic about Obamacare or tax cuts won’t survive the Sheldon Adelson/Koch brothers primary.
Whatever the reasons, the result is clear. Pundits will try to pretend that we’re having a serious policy debate, but, as far as issues go, 2016 is already set up to be the election of the living dead.
Scott Walker, a Pastor’s Son, Runs on Faith as Iowa Beckons [Trip Gabriel, NYT, April 25, 2015]
Scott Walker is running on his faith in the evangelical-heavy state of Iowa.
DES MOINES —  Scott Walker, the son of a Baptist preacher, learned a lot about being a politician by going to church.
He was introduced to glad-handing while greeting worshipers beside his father after Sunday services. His confidence as a public speaker began at 2, when he delivered a Christmas greeting from the pulpit, and it blossomed when he preached occasional sermons as a teenager. And now, Mr. Walker’s lifelong church involvement may be a powerful asset as he positions himself to run for the Republican presidential nomination and focuses on early primary and caucus states dominated by evangelical voters.
Already a hero to fiscal conservatives — both the Tea Party base and billionaire donors like Charles G. and David H. Koch — Mr. Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, made his most explicit appeal yet to the Christian right on Saturday before hundreds of social conservatives in Iowa. During his toughest times in office, he said, “What sustained us all along the way is we had people who said, ‘We prayed for you.’ ”
His implicit message is that in an unusually fractured Republican field, with 10 or more candidates potentially on the ballot in the Iowa caucuses next year, he is best positioned to unite the party.
Ahead of Saturday’s candidate event — organized by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, part of the national group led by the religious activist Ralph Reed — Mr. Walker hardened his positions on issues considered litmus tests for social conservatives, including abortion and immigration. He suggested in an interview with Glenn Beck on Monday that there are too many legal immigrants, a position to the right of other 2016 hopefuls.
But it is Mr. Walker’s biography that could make him especially attractive to Christian conservatives. A life story that began in the Baptist churches his father led in Colorado, Iowa and Wisconsin continues today at the nondenominational evangelical church he attends in his hometown, Wauwatosa, Wis.
“My relationship with God drives every major decision in my life,” Mr. Walker said in an emailed statement. While that relationship does not direct his daily decisions, he said, “our walk of faith helps us prepare for those decisions and provides us comfort as we seek to do God’s will.”
During his political rise in Wisconsin, Mr. Walker did not often emphasize his faith. But evangelicals make up nearly 60 percent of Republican caucusgoers in Iowa. They are an important factor in Southern primaries. And they continue to have an outsize influence on the Republican nominating process.
While he was raised a dutiful “P.K.,” or pastor’s kid, Mr. Walker’s spiritual journey has not been without conflict. Over the years, his political views have sometimes made him a source of controversy in the places where he has worshiped.
Mr. Walker’s father, the Rev. Llewellyn S. Walker, was a minister in the American Baptist Churches USA, a more pluralistic denomination than the conservative and better-known Southern Baptist Convention. Pastor Llew, as he was known, is a Republican, but politics and the social causes of the day did not animate his First Baptist Church in Delavan, Wis., where Mr. Walker lived from age 10 until he left for college. His father was foremost “a caregiver to the congregation,” said the church’s current pastor, the Rev. Michael Ida. He would spend half a day sitting in the hospital room of an ailing church member, praying and shooting the breeze.
Before the elder Mr. Walker retired in 1995, at the age of 56, he struggled with depression, Mr. Ida said. His wife, Pat, and the teenage Scott Walker shouldered some of his pastoral duties. “There were Sundays when Scott would preach the sermon,” Mr. Ida said.
As an adult, Mr. Walker moved to Wauwatosa, a Milwaukee suburb, in search of a Republican-leaning district in which to run for the State Assembly. He and his wife, Tonette, joined another American Baptist congregation, Underwood Memorial Baptist Church, which had a history of social activism.
A dozen years later, in 2005, Underwood voted to affiliate with the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, a gay-accepting national group, and a small rainbow flag was affixed to its signboard. (The hiring of a woman as pastor in 2003 had accelerated its progressive tilt.)
Mr. Walker, by then a candidate for governor, left the church.
“Tonette said they were looking for a more family-friendly place,” said Marilyn Carrington, a longtime member.
Some members believed he had cut ties because of Underwood’s liberal drift. “As soon as we put the flag on the sign, he was out of there,” said Kevin Genich, a former church member who knew Mr. Walker.
After a campaign event in Iowa on Friday, Mr. Walker deflected a question about whether he had left Underwood because it openly embraced gay members. He said there were few children the ages of his sons there. “Ultimately, we wanted to go to a place where our kids would have the ability to interact with other kids,” he said.
Mr. Walker’s parents, who in retirement had moved to be near their son and joined Underwood, had no objections. They continue to worship there.
Meadowbrook Church, where Mr. Walker now worships, is politically and theologically conservative. It is accepted among the church’s clergy and congregation that the Bible is the word of God, “without error,” and that Christ’s return is “imminent.” It is led by a council of elders that is open only to men.
While the Rev. Jamie Washam, the pastor of Underwood, opposed a Wisconsin ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage in 2006, Meadowbrook’s pastor urged members to vote to define marriage as between one man and one woman. “The church cannot recognize any alternative arrangements as being God’s will for any persons or society,” the pastor, John Mackett, wrote on a church blog.
At the same time, Meadowbrook is not politically active on issues like abortion. Sermons hew close to Bible readings.
Mr. Mackett, who stepped down as pastor last year, said he had often received text messages from Mr. Walker on a Monday discussing his sermon. “It was never a trite remark,” he said. “It came out of a thoughtful reflection on something that was said or happened in church.”
Describing the governor as “a very disciplined man,” he said Mr. Walker followed a morning routine that included exercise, prayer and Bible study. Before being elected governor, Mr. Walker and his wife met with other couples for Bible study Sunday evenings in their home.
“Scott’s seeking God is a 24/7 thing,” said Mr. Mackett’s wife, Betsy. “It’s not just checking a box on Sunday.”
But Meadowbrook did not escape the political convulsions touched off during Mr. Walker’s first term as governor. In a speech to the congregation during its annual meeting in 2013, Mr. Mackett pleaded for an end to the “turmoil” caused by “slander” and “name calling” among members divided by politics.
He declined to elaborate in an interview. But Lee Heyward, who succeeded Mr. Mackett as head pastor, said, “John and Meadowbrook were going through a really tumultuous time during that whole season of Act 10,” referring to the law Mr. Walker signed in 2011 that stripped Wisconsin’s public employees of most bargaining rights.
The church has many members who are teachers, Mr. Heyward said, and they vociferously opposed the governor. “There were people in the church that wanted John to come out and speak against Governor Walker and his policies,” Mr. Heyward said. There were also supporters of the governor who wanted to hear their pastor defend him. Mr. Mackett refused to introduce politics into his sermons. Some people on both sides left Meadowbrook. Mr. Walker said that when tens of thousands of protesters filled the State Capitol during the debate over Act 10, “my faith helped me stay calm and focus on the issue instead of matching anger with anger.”
Beyond policies, what evangelical voters say they want to learn about candidates is whether they speak a common language about the role of faith in their lives. On Saturday, Mr. Walker sought to show just that, telling a lengthy story of a devotional text he had been sent by a friend. The passage was meant to console him in case he lost his 2012 recall election. “It really would have been powerful if I had lost,” Mr. Walker said.
But not long after his victory, he learned of a supporter, a Wisconsin dairy farmer, who had died of a heart attack the day before the June election. Mr. Walker said he realized the devotional passage might console the man’s widow. The governor told of calling her, and he read the phrases, in the voice of Jesus, that he had read to her.
“ ‘The way to walk through demanding times is to grip my hand tightly,’ ” he read, letting the leather book fall open as if leading a congregation. “ ‘Regardless of the day’s problems, I can keep you in perfect peace as you stay close to me.’ ”
Walker hits back at Rubio over whether a governor can be ready for presidency [Ashley Killough, CNN, April 25, 2015]
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker hit back Saturday at potential GOP presidential rival Marco Rubio over the Florida senator's charge that there's "no way" a governor can be ready for president when it comes to foreign policy.
Urbandale, Iowa (CNN) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker hit back Saturday at potential GOP presidential rival Marco Rubio over the Florida senator's charge that there's "no way" a governor can be ready for president when it comes to foreign policy.
"I think he's questioning how Ronald Reagan was ready," the Wisconsin Republican told reporters after speaking at an event for Iowa Rep. David Young in Urbandale.
Walker argued that, in his lifetime, Reagan "was the most impactful" president on foreign policy, while President Barack Obama "shows as a first-term senator, (he) isn't prepared to lead, or at least is not in the case of Barack Obama."
"I think governors innately have the ability to lead. We are every day required to use our Cabinet to make decisions, not just give speeches," he continued. "Not to just travel to foreign places but to ultimately make decisions based on using top talent in our Cabinet and our management team."
Walker made similar remarks in his speech earlier Saturday, arguing that leadership matters more than experience.
"I'm not saying being a senator or a governor makes you better or worse automatically, 'cause Jimmy Carter was a governor and he wasn't that great either," Walker said. "But what it's about is leadership."
The governor vs. senator debate has been fueled in recent weeks by the presidential announcements from Rubio, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz -- all first-term senators. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have also questioned whether first-term senators are qualified for the job.
Rubio, in a meeting with the Des Moines Register's editorial board on Saturday, highlighted his experience on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, and pointed to his background as a state legislator and House speaker in Florida as proof that he was more qualified than Obama was during his first campaign.
"I believe that I can take over on Day One as President, prepared to lead this country in the most crucial obligation the President faces, as commander in chief," Rubio said. "Governors can certainly read about foreign policy, and take briefings and meet with experts, but there is no way they'll be ready on Day One to manage U.S. foreign policy."
Both men were expected to take the stage in Waukee later on Saturday at an event sponsored by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, where seven other presidential contenders and potential candidates will also speak.
Walker hasn't declared a presidential run, but he said this week he plans on making his 2016 decision later in June after the Wisconsin legislature passes a budget.


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