{"id":698,"date":"2006-10-12T07:19:14","date_gmt":"2006-10-12T12:19:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/wp\/?p=698"},"modified":"2006-10-12T07:19:14","modified_gmt":"2006-10-12T12:19:14","slug":"played-for-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/?p=698","title":{"rendered":"Played for Fools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yet more pre-midterm bad news for Republicans:  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/15228489\/\" target=\"_blank\">a new book<\/a> &#8220;Tempting Faith&#8221;, due out next Monday, documents how the Bush administration has been playing evangelical Christians for fools, using public funds to manipulate them for political purposes while characterizing their leaders as &#8220;out of control&#8221;, &#8220;goofy&#8221; and &#8220;the nuts&#8221;.<\/p><p><!--more--><br \/>\nAuthor David Kuo has sterling right wing Republican &#8220;creds&#8221;: he was a staffer to both Bill Bennett and John Ashcroft before serving as special assistant to Bush from 2001 to 2003.<br \/>\nIn his book, he documents how the Bush administration actually spent $20 million _less_ on &#8220;compassion&#8221; social programs than the Clinton administration.<br \/>\nRather, the Office of Faith Based Initiatives was used to fund partisan political events with public money.  In Kuo&#8217;s opinion, this was so effective that it helped to win Ohio for the Republicans in 2004.<br \/>\nI suppose it would be too much to hope that this message will reach even a few of the 30% or so who still believe that &#8220;the Lord&#8221; wanted Bush to be President.<br \/>\nI for one find it a solace that the Bushites don&#8217;t really believe all their twisted &#8220;family values&#8221; malarkey:  craftiness and deceit are more tolerable in the offices of the leader of the Free World than 17th century religious insanity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yet more pre-midterm bad news for Republicans: a new book &#8220;Tempting Faith&#8221;, due out next Monday, documents how the Bush administration has been playing evangelical Christians for fools, using public funds to manipulate them for political purposes while characterizing their &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/?p=698\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hendersonbrook.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}