Jesus Camp

The film documentary Jesus Camp spends a week with a summer camp of Pentecostal kids. There, they get a version of Christianity that is wrapped in the American flag and double-dipped in a gooey adoration of policies of George W. Bush. This is a video of a group of kids from a large, conservative Dallas church. These kids put on a camp that reflects a different sort of Christianity. It is one where the cross is picked up, not pinned on. It is one where “values” aren’t simply slapped on T-shirts. They are lived out. Can I get an “Amen”?

The Third Great Awakening

The first Great Awakening featured the Calvinistic preaching of men like George Whitefield. The result was a burgeoning young country falling to its knees to confess personal and corporate transgressions and embrace the crucified Christ. The second Great Awakening was of a different sort. It featured the man-centered, manipulative techniques of men like Charles Finney. The result were short-lived conversions, burned-overed districts and shallow, religious emotions. Now Republican congressman Mike Pence predicts a third Awakening. Apparently it will feature Bible-pounding Glenn Beck bigotry, a growing fear of goverment and a tea-party-caffinated resentment of taxation (it is, after all, the root of socialism). All which has this third Great Awakening shaping up in manner that would make Whitefield spin in his grave. A true, biblical Awakening will recognize that the evil in the world isn’t in rooted Hollywood or D.C., but in our own wicked hearts.

Beckworld

If you think the placards are scary, wait until you talk to the people holding them.

“You lie!”

Republican congressman Joe Wilson said a mouthful. And as somebody who routinely says things I regret, I appreciate that he manned up and apologized. But, then again, he didn’t. He said he was sorry for blurting out his statement. However, he stands by the statement’s utter accuracy. It’s a bit like saying “I’m sorry I called your mother ugly, but, oh course, she is.” Not a world-class apology. But, hey, after a summer of town hall meetings that would make one admire a Klan rally for its sense of dignity and  decorum, what do you expect? And what is the proper decorum for faux state-of-the union-like addresses? Does Obama call these meetings because our nation totters on the brink of destruction? Or is it just a great way to make the Republicans look like a bunch of dicks as they sit down on every applause line? The real question is, since when does anybody have to point out when a politician is lying? After all, most of us can usually tell. Their lips are moving.

The better part of valor

Peggy Noonan attempts to talk her party out of inflicting another self-inflicted wound:

She is of course a brilliant political pick—Hispanic when Republicans have trouble with Hispanics, a woman when they’ve had trouble with women. Her background (public housing, Newyorican, Catholic school, Princeton, prominence) is as moving as Clarence Thomas’s, and that is moving indeed. Politically she’s like a beautiful doll containing a canister of poison gas: Break her and you die.

The New York Post’s front page the day after her announcement said it all: “Suprema!” with a picture of the radiant nominee. New York is proud of her; I’m proud of our country and grateful at its insistence, in a time when some say the American dream is dead, that it most certainly is not. The dream is: You can come from any place or condition, any walk of life, and rise to the top, taking your people with you, in your heart and theirs. (Maybe that’s what they mean by empathy: Where you come from enters you, and you bring it with you as you rise. But if that’s what they mean, then we’re all empathetic. We’re the most fluid society in human history, but no one ever leaves their zip code in America, we all take it with us. It’s part of our pride. And it’s not bad, it’s good.

Some, and they are idiots, look at Judge Sotomayor and say: attack, attack, kill. A conservative activist told the New York Times, “We need to brand her.” Another told me a fight is needed to excite the base.

Excite the base? How about excite a moderate, or interest an independent? How about gain the attention of people who aren’t already on your side?

Of course, like most good advice, the Republicans will ignore this. Ready. Aim. Shoot off another foot.

Judge not?

The liberals are grinning like a Cheshire cat. A woman, a progressive, an hispanic––so very, very affirmative of Obama! The conservatives are grinding their axeheads into machetes––an intellectual lightweight, a judicial activist, a constitutional neophtye, an hispanic AND a woman––how blatantly affirmative of Obama! But one thing both groups can agree on, if confirmed, Judge Sotomayor will have an inevitable impact: the RNC’s immediate pick of a female hispanic cohort for Michael Steele. That GOP––say what you will––those boys have street cred.

First Arlen, and now this

Joe the Plumber is leaving the Republican Party. Obviously, he looking for a more forthright, plain-spoken political movement. One that calls a spade a spade and a homosexual, a queer. Time magazine reports:

Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he’s so outraged by GOP overspending, he’s quitting the party — and he’s the bull’s-eye of its target audience. But he also said he wouldn’t support any cuts in defense, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — which, along with debt payments, would put more than two-thirds of the budget off limits.

Compassionate Conservative

Before “Compassionate Conservative” was a political buzzword, this man exemplified it. It put Jack Kemp on the wrong side of the issues with a lot of his fellow conservatives. The American Spectator explains:

When he was the Republican nominee for vice president in 1996, for instance, he did his ticket no favors by doing things like going into private, big-donor meetings at Georgia country clubs and hectoring them about their collective racial insensitivity or even outright racism. But Kemp’s lack of discretion about causing needless offense also manifested itself in a willingness to dare giving offense for purposes both worthwhile and timely. At the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston, for example — the one caricatured by the establishment media as being filled with fear and hate — he had the almost impish gall to tell the assembled delegates that history is “on the side of those liberal democratic ideals which gave birth to our nation.” Of course, conservative ideals are indeed “liberal” and (broadly speaking) “democratic,” at least in the classical sense of the words. But to use those words approvingly at a conservative Republican convention was to risk being terribly misunderstood and even unpopular.

He will be missed.

Yes, he can

Okay, Arlen Specter was never one of those Republicans. He always looked like a politician who was accidentally mislabled at the factory. But his switching of parties sort of makes the argument that the the GOP is a big tent party lose even more of its credibility. Of course, every time a Republican opens his mouth these days it seems like he/she is channeling Glenn Beck. So, I suppose the only reason the Republicans would even need a big tent is if Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich needed to do a costume change at the same time.

Hip Hop flops for little Miss Gop

John McCain’s daughter Meghan is not signing on to the Michael Steele plan to energize the GOP by making it more “hip hop.” Ms. McCain tries to decipher the GOP party leader’s youth-focused lingo:

If you’re saying I want people from the hip-hop community — I don’t even know what that means exactly — I guess people that are in the music industry could become more closer and you know try and become Republicans (sic). I just don’t think that is going to work. I think they need to rely on a message that is going to really stick with people of my generation.

A message? Really? I thought the kids just wanted something with a nice beat. Of course, Ms. McCain doesn’t get Ann Coulter, either. Gee! What’s on Meghan’s iPod anyway? Neil Diamond?

Joe the Conservative

It’s not all cities on a hill with the American conservative movement. There is more McCarthyism than Reaganism in the latest strain. Andrew Sullivan observes:

The American conservative era owes just as much to Goldwater’s
libertarianism and Reagan’s pragmatic freedom agenda. It’s also bundled
up with Buckley’s erudition, Gingrich’s populism, and the first Bush’s
realism and prudence. But Gabler is surely onto something in seeing the
McCarthyite strain in American conservatism being more tenacious and
transmittable, because human resentment is more common and politically
potent than agreement about limited government. The resentment theme
also tends to get stronger when there is too little raw political
talent around: when you have the limited grasp of the world of W and
Palin, a resort to McCarthyism is often helpful, even necessary.

Healthcare and the GOP

James Pethokoukis discusses how a Obama-backed healthcare system could spell death to the Republican Party.

The real Maverick

Ron Paul discusses what’s wrong with the GOP:

The Republican Congress never once stood up against the Bush/Rove machine that demanded support for unconstitutional wars, attacks on civil liberties here at home, and an economic policy based on more spending, more debt, and more inflation — while constantly preaching the flawed doctrine that deficits don’t matter as long as taxes aren’t raised.

Meet the Jerk

Sarah Palin’s unnamed critic comes out of the closet. He is McCain campaign’s foreign policy advisor, Martin Eisenstadt. He shares more dirt on the shortcomings of the former GOP Veep candidate:

As you know, I was one of the foreign policy advisers on the McCain campaign who worked with Randy Scheunemann to help prep Sarah on her debate with Joe Biden. Did we outright give her a geography quiz when we started the prep? No, of course not. But yes, in the context of the prep, it slowly became apparent that her grasp of basic geo-political knowledge had major gaps. Could she have passed a multiple choice test about South Africa or NAFTA. Probably. But it was clear that she simply didn’t have the ease of knowledge that we come to expect from a major party political candidate. Other slights came up, too: Not knowing the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. Or the difference between the Shiites and Suni. Or when it came to international terrorist organizations, knowing that the IRA was in Northern Ireland, and ETA in Spain.