Newt Gingrich woos religious right for his anti-tax cause Muriel Kane

Published: Friday March 20, 2009





Print This Email This When Newt Gingrich served as Speaker of the House in the 1990's, he never appeared to be particularly close to the religious right. His Contract with America was all about deregulation, balanced budgets, tort reform, and getting tough on crime and welfare.



Even when Gingrich re-emerged last summer as a would-be Republican leader, it was with a "drill here, drill" now campaign aligned with the oil industry. However, in the wake of the Republicans' crushing defeat in last fall's election, he has apparantly decided that the only hope for the GOP lies in an alliance between his own anti-tax adherents and religious conservatives.



A story which appeared Friday in US News and World Report explores Gingrich's growing alliance with the religious right.



"In the last few years I've decided that we're in a crisis in which the secular state, if allowed, will fundamentally and radically change America against the wishes of most Americans," Gingrich told US News. "You've had such rising hostility to religious belief that I wanted to reach broadly into the country and dramatically raise public awareness of threats to religious liberty."



According to Gingrich, it was a 2002 court decision finding the phrase "in God we trust" to be unconstitutional that caused him to say, "It's time to challenge head-on secular domination in the West."



In 2006, Gingrich published Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation's History and began making appearances before groups of pastors. That led to his creation of an organization called Renewing American Leadership, headed by his former communications director.



Renewing American Leadership has now developed a PowerPoint presentation with which it will attempt to convince pro-business groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform -- as well as major Republican donors -- that the most reliably anti-tax members of Congress are also the strongest social conservatives.



As evidence of this claim, the American Family Association has already agreed to participate in Gingrich's anti-tax rallies.



Gingrich himself will be speaking this spring to several large gatherings of politically conservative clergy, organized by evangelical activist and former RNC political consultant David Barton, who also sits on the board of Renewing American Leadership.



Barton is best known for his attempts to prove that the founding fathers were dedicated Christians and never intended for the Constitution to mandate separation of church and state. Those same ideas form the central argument of Gingrich's Rediscovering God in America.



However, Barton has darker associations as well, which makes it particularly disturbing that Gingrich now seems to be relying on him as a mentor. According to an article originally published in 1993 by Americans United for Separation of Church and State:



"Barton also has ties to extremist elements. In his literature, Christian Reconstructionist authors and organizations are sometimes recommended. Reconstructionist activist Gary DeMar's book God And Government is suggested reading, and Reconstructionist-oriented groups such as the Plymouth Rock Foundation and the Providence Foundation are touted as resources.



"Perhaps most alarming, Barton also has had a relationship with the racist and anti-Semitic fringes of the far right. According to Skipp Porteous of the Massachusetts-based Institute for First Amendment Studies, Barton was listed in promotional literature as a 'new and special speaker' at a 1991 summer retreat in Colorado sponsored by Scriptures for America, a far-right ministry headed by Pastor Pete Peters. Peters' organization, which is virulently anti-Semitic and racist, spreads hysteria about Jews and homosexuals and has been linked to neo-Nazi groups. (The organization distributes a booklet called Death Penalty For Homosexuals.)"







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