1 Boring Old Man

Dobson preaches mixed message
Conservative leader criticizes, praises GOP leadership

Standing before an enormous American flag in Mellon Arena, conservative evangelical activist James Dobson told thousands of supporters he was deeply disappointed in the nation’s Republican leadership, but that the nation’s future depended on re-electing them.

"I have flat-out been ticked at Republicans for the past two years," he said, to some applause from a crowd that arena security estimated at around 3,000.

However, he said, "This country is at a crisis point. Whether or not the Republicans deserve the power they were given, the alternatives are downright frightening."

…

He accused the Republican House and Senate of "sitting on their hands" on key conservative social issues. He said they had squandered a growing public sentiment that abortion should be limited or banned.

But, he asked his audience to consider what would happen if Republicans lost control of key committees on education, the judiciary, and especially, the armed forces.

"We are at war in this country with an enemy who wants to destroy us," he said. He stressed that only a small minority of Muslims believe that their faith justifies violence, "but let’s say 4 percent of Muslims want to kill us … . That’s 48 million people who want to bring us to our knees."

He compared those who want to negotiate their way out of crises in the Middle East to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who sought to appease Adolph Hitler prior to World War II.

There’s a subtilty here that might be easy to overlook [by the blind]. James Dobson claims to be a Christian Psychologist whose organization is called Focus on the Family. He came to prominence by advocating good old time parenting, family values, and other things that fit for his mostly white, middle class, consituency. His forray into politics was based on certain self-defined Christian values: anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, etc.

In this speech, he’s saying "the Republicans let us down" BUT we need to vote for them because they are strong on War. The Democrats will be weak on War. What is a Christian Psychologist who runs a Conservative Family organization doing weighing in on War? What is either Christian, or Family Oriented, or Psychological about War? And he’s picking up Bush’s failed talking point, Nazis, Chamberlain, to boot. Do they think it will play better to this audience than it did a couple of weeks ago when Bush and Rumsfeld used it? The [not so] subtle point here is that James Dobson is part of the Republican machine, not what he says he is. So he gives a speech saying we should vote for Republicans because they’re big on War standing in front of a giant American flag, and he runs a tax-exempt Christian Family organization? Someone call the I.R.S.!

There’s a saying, "Power corrupts absolutely."