[Vision2020] GOP is 2-faced about religion, ex-official says

[Art Deco]

Posted on Fri, Oct. 13, 2006
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GOP is 2-faced about religion, ex-official says
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - A new book by a former White House official says President Bush's top political advisers privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as "nuts" and "goofy" while embracing them in public and using their votes to help win elections.

The former official also writes that the White House office of faith-based initiatives, which Bush promoted as a nonpolitical effort to support religious social service organizations, was told to host pre-election events designed to mobilize religious voters who would most likely favor Republican candidates.

The assertions by David Kuo, the former No. 2 official in the faith-based initiatives program, have rattled Republican strategists who are already struggling to persuade evangelical voters to turn out this fall for the GOP.

Some conservatives lamented Thursday that the book, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, comes in the midst of the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley's interest in underage congressional pages, another threat to conservative turnout in competitive House and Senate races.

The book is scheduled to hit stores Monday.

White House strategists "knew 'the nuts' were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness," Kuo writes, according to cable channel MSNBC, which obtained an advance copy.

The White House denied Kuo's account with help Thursday from former speechwriter Michael Gerson and former faith-based initiative director Jim Towey.

Gerson called Kuo's account "laughable," while Towey cited a December 2002 e-mail from Kuo expressing positive feelings about the program's progress in promoting "compassionate conservatism."
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