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August 20, 2009
Obama Plays the Religion Card on Healthcare
Seeing his cherished healthcare bill going down the drain, President Obama has gotten desperate:
President Barack Obama on Wednesday tried to retake the upper ground in this month's healthcare debate by casting reform as a "moral conviction" in a conference call with religious leaders. "The one thing that you all share is a moral conviction," Obama said. "This debate over healthcare goes to the heart of who we are as American people... This is part of an ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another."In the wealthiest nation on Earth, we are neglecting to live out that call," the president said.
Obama asked religious leaders to help him "spread the truth" about reform, and also took the opportunity to push back against critics...More than 30 religious groups have banded together to support the Democratic-led reform efforts, including the progressive group Catholics United, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., the National Council of Churches in Christ and the United Church of Christ. The group sponsored Wednesday's call and describes itself on its Web site as "an effort from the faith community to make clear to Congress that quality, affordable health care for every American family is a moral priority for millions of people of faith."
Can you imaging the outcry if George W. Bush had done this?
What's ironic is that it's the liberals who always accuse the conservatives of mixing politics with religion, or of using religion to advance their political agenda. But during the last campaign it wasn't the GOP injecting religion into politics. It was the Democrats.
Consider these two events:
1) In June of 2007 John Edwards, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton participated in discussion on an Presidential Forum on Faith, Values and Poverty. The event was hosted by the Sojourners, and was broadcast on CNN (transcript here).
2) Then, in April, then-Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton participated in a "Compassion Forum" at Messiah College in Grantham Pennsylania. Messiah College is a private Christian institution. CNN broadcast the event.
As I said at the time, I was glad to see the Democrats get religion. I think it only common sense that your religious convictions will influence your public policy.
But using religion as your philosophical basis for public policy is different than using organized religion to promote a cause, or from using it to beat up your political opponents, which is what Obama is doing
Victor Davis Hanson has it about right:
There is something creepy about the sudden invocation of Christian morality by the president to galvanize support for his state-run health care plan, as if his opponents are suddenly to be seen as somehow selfish or even un-Christian. This is an unfortunate, counter-productive tactic for at least four reasons:1) The moral argument comes at the eleventh hour, rather than the first, of public debate, as if it is a desperate fall-back position intended to shame opponents who happen to think that massive state intervention will make health care worse rather than better;
2) Ironically, the religious trope would argue against the entrance of the state that would relieve citizens of their own moral responsibilities to help out family and friends in times of illness. It is no accident that secularism, agnosticism, and atheism are strongest in socialist Europe, where the government has relieved citizens of traditional moral responsibilities emphasized by religion;
3) This contrived use of religiosity (e.g., "There are some folks out there who are frankly bearing false witness.") has a Reverend Wright flavor of mixing politics and religion in cynical fashion to bolster Obama's fides as an authentic moral figure. And isn't the use of religion as a political tool precisely what Obama and others have objected to in the Christian Right?;
4) Rather than demonize opponents as callous and disingenuous, all the president has to do to refute their supposed scare tactics is to explicitly assure the public that abortion receives no state funds in his program, that illegal aliens are not included in his proposed new blanket coverage, and that autonomous government panels will not withhold federal health-care coverage, in the case of the elderly, on the basis of perceived cost-benefit considerations.
I think we are seeing a sort of presidential meltdown. As Obama's polls free-fall, and threaten wider political damage, it causes him a certain novel exasperation that for the first time in his life soaring hope-and-change rhetoric for some strange reason no longer substitutes for a detailed, logical, and honest agenda. The problem right now is not with un-Christian opponents, but dozens of congressional Democrats who simply do not wish to run on state-run medical care (as well as higher taxes, larger deficits, cap-and-trade, etc.), and no longer sense the president's popularity trumps the unpopularity of his agenda and gives them cover with the voters.
Posted by Tom at August 20, 2009 9:30 PM
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Comments
"I think we are seeing a sort of presidential meltdown."
Absolutely! And he revealed more of that meltdown in the meeting he held with the fanatics of Organizing for America, his permanent campaingn arm.
He's expressing a level of bitterness, anger, even hatred for people just because we have a philosophical difference with him.
And worse yet, HE'S LYING about what is in the bill and what it would do to change American society.
No one is buying his snake oil.
CHARLATAN!
Posted by: Mike's America at August 20, 2009 11:44 PM
Tom,
I think Republicans are just not going to approve the health bill period, and want nothing to do with it or any other proposals on the table. Obama and Congress, with Republicans in the minority, could just push the bill through, and maybe they will. I think Obama is addressing the hypocrisy of those on the right who label themselves Christians and don't remember the Beatitudes. http://www.thenazareneway.com/beatitudes_of_christ.htm
President Bush was held up not just as moral and ethical, but as a Christian. That evangelist who recently died said that he had succeeded in putting a born-again Christian in the White House, and the evangelicals were elated. It isn't just Christians who are ethical and moral.
I asked my husband about what Christ said (I think it was Christ who said it) "if a man is unclothed, give him your cloak" etc, and he told me to read the Beatitudes online. (the cloak thing isn't in there). I am not a Christian, but many Democrats are, like my husband, yet you said "I was glad to see the Democrats get religion". Many Dems I know "have religion", they are Catholics, Protestants, Baptist, non-demoninational, Jewish.
I think Obama was trying to remind people what makes us different from other nations---we don't step over a person who has fallen unconscious in the street and just go on our way---agnostic or religious, we seem to have better ethics and morality than other nations. Where did it come from? Wasn't it from Christ's words? He doesn't want us to be like third-world countries, and we should be innovative enough to make reform work.
Also, many people in Europe still care for their elderly themselves, whereas here many people are too ready to have their elders sign over everything to them so they can put their elders on the dole and ship them off to nursing homes at the taxpayers expense because of the current caps on Medicare and private insurance.
In looking at those protesters at the town hall meetings, they all seem to be little old people and they admit they are on Medicare and Social Security, programs they don't seem to realize are government run and unsustainable. Those little old protesters will be OK, but Medicare and Social Security won't be there for the next generation, and people have begun to depend on those programs even when they were touted at the time they were put into effect as "socialist". What will the little old people do? Will enough of the next generation save enough to do without those government programs? I think not; one, the majority can't match that, and two, they want to live longer and don't realize that the longer they live, the more decrepit and helpless they will get and that they will want and need to be patched up until the doctors can't keep them patched up any longer.
If someone thinks Obama is lying about what is or isn't in the bill, they can read it for themselves online. There isn't anything about providing for illegals or abortions or withholding care after a certain age or benefits used. http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillTest-071409.pdf
Emilie
Port Orchard, WA
Posted by: Emilie at August 21, 2009 6:45 PM
Emilie said "There isn't anything about providing for illegals or abortions or withholding care after a certain age or benefits used."
Emilie: There isn't anything in that bill which PROHIBITS the government from doing those things. And there is plenty of leeway in that bill for regulators and the various boards that are set up to do just that.
Republicans proposed a series of amendments to address each of those concerns and they were all voted down in committee by Democrats.
Why do you think that is?
Posted by: Mike's America at August 21, 2009 10:29 PM
As Obama rightfully said, WE are our brothers keeper. WE have to send millions in aid to Kenya so that HIS brother does not starve to death. WE have to pay taxes through our nose so that HIS aunt can live off welfare.
Posted by: seeteufel 
at August 22, 2009 12:10 PM
