Graham Not Sold on Obama's Christianity, Santorum Warned of Satan in 2008

Eric Gay/AP Photo

The 2012 race turned to God, Satan and religion when Franklin Graham said he's surer that Rick Santorum is a Christian than President Obama and a 2008 Santorum speech surfaced in which the top GOP candidate told a religious audience that Satan is attacking U.S. institutions.

Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, said on MSNBC Tuesday that he could not verify that President Obama is a Christian. "I just have to assume that he is," Graham said.

But he has no question about Rick Santorum. "His values are so clear on moral issues. No question about it. … I think he's a man of faith."

Santorum's faith was in the news for another reason, too. The Pennsylvania Republican said in 2008, two years after losing his Senate seat and four years before seeking the presidency, that Satan was attacking U.S. institutions in government and religion.

The comments, not before mentioned during the 2012 election cycle, were the lead item on the Drudge Report Tuesday. Santorum has surged to even or even ahead of Mitt Romney in opinion polls, including in Romney's home state of Michigan, where Republican voters cast their preference for the GOP nominee next Tuesday.

Santorum, speaking at the conservative Catholic Ave Maria University in Florida, praised the Catholic Bishop Samuel Aquila for pledging to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights and said the matter went beyond politics and was a symptom of Satan's reach in U.S. society.

"While we all see all this as a great political conflict in warfare between the Obama camp and the McCain camp and culture wars, what Bishop Aquila put his finger on and what I think, I suspect those of you who are here understand, this is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war. This is a spiritual war," Santorum said in August of 2008.

"And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age. There is no one else to go after other than the United States and that has been the case now for almost 200 years, once America's preeminence was sown by our great Founding Fathers."

Santorum said Satan's reach in U.S. society has grown.

"He didn't have much success in the early days. Our foundation was very strong, in fact, is very strong. But over time, that great, acidic quality of time corrodes even the strongest foundations. And Satan has done so by attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition."

The Republican presidential contest that has so far focused on the economy has taken a definitive swing toward social issues with the emergency of Santorum as a major contender. And where Republicans and candidates had attacked President Obama for his stewardship of the economy, they today are focusing more on his social positions and even the religious underpinnings of his policy.

Even Mitt Romney, the Mormon front-runner, who has by and large shied away from including religion in his campaign, today argued that Obama has a " secular agenda."

Santorum has never been shy about his faith and its effect on his policy.

Rick Santorum went after President Obama in Ohio last week for "exercising his values and trumping the values of the Church," but less than two years ago, the candidate wasn't so opposed to letting theology into the presidency.

During a speech at American University in November 2010, Santorum told the College Republicans , "I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute."

Santorum went on to say, "It has allowed politicians to say, 'I am privately this way, but publicly that way.' "

Santorum spoke last week in regard to the president's controversial mandate requiring employers to provide insurance that offers co-pay-free birth control. Santorum argued that this imposed a way of thinking on religious people that ran counter to their beliefs.

Santorum continued on that vein this weekend , saying, "It is imposing his ideology on a group of people expressing their theology, their moral code, and saying the government will force you to do what your faith says is gravely wrong."

There have been exceptions to the rule.

Santorum has said that while he personally opposes contraception and believes that it contributes to societal degradation and "the whole sexual libertine idea," he would not seek to outlaw it as a policy matter. And he pledged in 2006 not to curb access to contraception.

Likewise with homosexuality, he has said he would not vote for a law to outlaw homosexual behavior. But Santorum opposes  the landmark Supreme Court decisions that overturned such laws on contraception in 1965 and homosexual behavior in 2003.

ABC's Sarah Parnass contributed to this report.

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The Caucus: Santorum Steps Up Critique of Obama's Worldview

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — Visiting coal country, Rick Santorum repeated criticisms of President Obama‘s pro-environmental “theology” and women’s health mandates that caused a dust-up over the weekend. He did not rescind one bit of his earlier remarks, as he sought support as a blue-collar native of neighboring Pennsylvania, here in a state that leans to the right in Republican primaries.

Mr. Santorum enjoys a lead over Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in state polls in Ohio, which votes on March 6, a week after Michigan, where he is vying closely with Mr. Romney and where he was headed on Monday afternoon for three more rallies.

Mr. Santorum was applauded for reiterating his critique of Mr. Obama’s health overhaul that requires insurance plans to cover prenatal screenings. The issue boiled over earlier when he suggested such screenings were used to “cull” fetuses with birth defects.

His objection, he explained, was to amniocentesis. The procedures “are done by and large to find out late in pregnancy whether the child in the womb has a disability,’’ Mr. Santorum said. “And as we all know, 90 percent of Down syndrome children in this country are aborted once the mother and father find out that child is going to be less than what they were expecting.’’

He charged that the president’s health care overhaul was heading toward “a brave new world” in which doctors would be pressured to make decisions based on cost, not the interests of the patient. “Let’s take a child who is high cost and who the world, particularly, unfortunately, the medical profession increasingly is looking at as less utility, less value than others in society,’’ he said. “‘I don’t want to see this patient. This is going to be a real cost for me. I’m going to get nailed on this one, so let’s minimally treat, let’s not treat all because it’s going to be such a cost to the system.’ That’s happening now, folks.’’

Mr. Santorum also revisited his charge that Mr. Obama was motivated by “a phony theology,’’ which he said was criticized by some “of our less-than erudite members of the national press corps.’’

He explained he was referring to the president’s embrace of “radical environmentalism” that valued all species equally.

That attitude, he said, was responsible for thwarting energy development including in coal country, although he also excoriated the president’s veto of a pipeline from Canada.

Global warming, he said, “is not climate science, it is political science,’’ adding, “affordable low-cost energy really drove this country.’’

“Ladies and gentlemen,’’ he said, “We need somebody who comes from the coal fields, who comes from the steel mills.’’

Mr. Santorum, never a natural speech-maker, has become more concise and attuned to the emotions of his crowd. More than 300 turned out to a catering hall here and he seemed to read their mood well.

“This guy in a sweater vest traipsing in a worn pickup truck in Iowa a couple of months ago with nobody paying attention to us,’’ he said, “has a message that is your message.’’

“Ohio is going to make a huge difference,’’ he told them. “You have the opportunity here to stand up and shout loudly across this country that you want a true conservative.’’

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Political Memo: Obama’s Tax Policy Targets Slice of His Base: The Affluent

You would not know it from Republican cries of class warfare swirling around Mr. Obama’s new budget, which reiterates his calls for higher taxes on individuals earning more than $200,000 and households earning more than $250,000. Conventional understanding of election-season populism assumes that the president will be looking to stick it to die-hard Republicans.

In fact, affluent Americans have represented a growing portion of the Democratic Party for a generation. Even though Jimmy Carter won the presidency in 1976, for example, he trailed the Republican incumbent, Gerald Ford, 62 percent to 38 percent among voters in the highest income group (those earning more than $20,000, the equivalent of roughly $80,000 today) that were measured by people conducting exit polls.

By 2000, Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, trailed George W. Bush 54 percent to 43 percent among the highest income group (those earning more than $100,000). In winning the presidency four years ago, Mr. Obama defeated Senator John McCain by 52 percent to 46 percent among voters in the top income group, those earning more than $200,000.

The conservative author Charles Murray, in his new book “Coming Apart,” which is about the nation’s widening class divide, identifies “Super ZIP codes” that the “hyper-wealthy and hyper-elite” call home. Even as he proposed higher taxes on the wealthy in 2008, Mr. Obama beat Mr. McCain in 8 of the top 10 such ZIP codes — by a ratio of 2 to 1 in communities like Atherton, Calif., Gladwyne, Pa., and Chappaqua, N.Y.

Mr. Obama also continued the Democrats’ progress among the much larger group of upper-middle-class voters. In counties with above-average incomes that the research organization Patchwork Nation calls Monied ’Burbs, Mr. Obama received 55 percent of the vote, up from the 49 percent President Bill Clinton received in 1996, the 43 percent that the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis received in 1988 and the 36 percent Mr. Carter received in 1980.

To make the point that he is not lashing out at opponents, Mr. Obama often notes that his proposals would raise his own taxes or those of allies like Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor. But the Democratic Party’s increasing electoral success in upper portions of the income scale points to something broader: an argument that people like him have a civic responsibility to bear more of the burden of deficit reduction and to pay for government spending priorities.

“It is the opposite of a pander,” said Dante Chinni, the director of Patchwork Nation. And it carries risks as well as potential rewards.

Some fallout appears evident in donations from Wall Street executives, who feel particularly aggrieved by Mr. Obama’s criticisms and policies. After besting Mr. McCain four years ago with donations from the securities, hedge-fund and banking sectors, the president has seen the former Bain Capital executive Mitt Romney amass far more cash from each of them, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

And in the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, Mr. Obama is supported by 43 percent and Mr. Romney by 47 percent of voters earning more than $100,000, even as he leads by six percentage points over all in a head-to-head matchup. In 2008, Mr. Obama split voters in the $100,000-plus category evenly with Mr. McCain. Yet Democratic strategists consider that fallout relatively modest and ascribe it more to frustration over gridlock in Washington than ire over potential tax increases. They see Mr. Obama as more vulnerable to defections among economically pinched working class voters than among higher earners whose taxes he would raise.

In large part that owes to the cultural influences that turned a large chunk of well-educated baby boomers toward the Democrats beginning in the 1960s. Those include support for activist government in areas like education, training and job creation, which Mr. Obama argues are necessary to spur growth and stem widening inequality of income and wealth.

“The types of affluent voters who have been going to vote for Democrats are unlikely to be driven away” by the prospect of higher taxes, said Geoff Garin, a pollster for Democratic candidates and for the “super PAC” backing Mr. Obama. “They have an appreciation for what those higher taxes pay for.”

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Why Obama’s flip-flop on super PACs won’t matter

President Obama’s flip-flop toward embrace of the "super PAC" formed to support his reelection campaign should come as no surprise.

Yes, Mr. Obama railed against the Supreme Court decision that allowed outside groups to support campaigns with unlimited donations, visibly offending some justices over the matter at his 2010 State of the Union address. More recently, he has called them a “threat to democracy.”  

But the super PAC that supports Obama’s reelection, Priorities USA Action, was getting clobbered. It raised just $4.4 million last year. The conservative American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by former George W. Bush political guru Karl Rove, raked in $51 million. The biggest super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, Restore Our Future, brought in more than $30 million.

Election 101: Five basics about 'super PACs' and 2012 campaign money

All told, experts predict the Republican super PACs will collect a half billion dollars for the 2012 election. And Team Obama wasn’t about to “unilaterally disarm,” as campaign manager Jim Messina put it in an e-mail late Monday to supporters.

“The campaign has made clear that they cannot engage in this campaign, they cannot compete effectively ... if they play by a different set of rules,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday.

Liberal bloggers largely support Obama’s decision, agreeing that he cannot go into electoral battle under the system he wants, but with the system he has. The most vocal critic has been former Sen. Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin, co-author of the 2002 campaign-finance law aimed at limiting the role of money in politics.

"This is dancing with the devil. I know a lot of Democrats in D.C. don’t agree, and I understand the desire to do everything possible to win," Mr. Feingold said in a statement. "But this decision will push Democrats to become corporate-lite, and will send us head-on into a battle we know we will lose, because Republicans like Mitt Romney and his friends have and will spend more money."

But chances are, Obama’s flip-flop won’t hurt him with voters. In his first presidential campaign, he initially promised to operate within the public financing system, which would have limited how much he could spend.  By June of 2008, he had changed his mind. In an e-mail to supporters then, Obama declared his independence “from a broken system.” Republican Sen. John McCain, his eventual opponent in the general election, accused him of breaking a promise.

Voters hardly blinked. Obama went on to raise $750 million, and won the presidency. As best we can tell, there weren’t legions of voters who otherwise would have supported Obama but for his broken promise on public financing.

The real challenge for Obama may be finding enough liberal money-bags to open up their checkbooks and match the Republicans in their super PAC giving, or least come in with respectable numbers. The best-known big donor to Democratic causes is billionaire investor George Soros. There’s big money in liberal Hollywood. And there are Obama’s “bundlers,” major donors who solicit additional donations from their personal networks.   

On Monday night, Obama campaign officials had a conference call with major bundlers, explaining the change in policy and encouraging them to donate to the Obama super PAC. According to CNN, one bundler on the call “questioned the effectiveness of the new approach, explaining every large donor of means had already been approached for a donation by Priorities USA.”

Election 101: Five basics about 'super PACs' and 2012 campaign money

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View the original article here

Obama's election-year budget to target rich

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will propose an election-year budget on Monday that raises taxes on millionaires and seeks billions of dollars for job-creating infrastructure projects, drawing a populist battle line with his Republican opponents.

Obama's fiscal 2013 budget proposal to Congress will defer significant cuts in the deficit until the economy is securely back on track, a priority as he seeks re-election in November, while outlining measures to shrink that funding gap over time.

"I think there is pretty broad agreement that the time for austerity is not today," new White House chief of staff Jack Lew, the president's budget director until a few weeks ago, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Obama's budget is likely to be declared a non-starter by Republicans, in control of the U.S. House of Representatives, who want to paint the president as a tax-and-spend liberal. They warn that tax hikes will kill jobs while doing nothing to halt the climb in the crushing level of national debt.

"We're taking responsibility for dealing with the drivers of our debt," said Republican Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee. "Unfortunately, the president and his party's leaders - they're not a part of this conversation," he told ABC News' "This Week" on Sunday.

The budget grants Obama one of his biggest platforms before the November 6 presidential election to lay out his vision for America's future, casting Republicans as the party of the rich as he tries to convince voters he would do more to protect their +interests.

Polls consistently show that even as the economy has demonstrated surprising strength in recent weeks, Americans are still unsure of Obama's economic stewardship, a major problem for him as he seeks to persuade them to give him a second White House term.

BUFFETT RULE

Obama will repeat a demand for millionaires to pay a minimum tax rate of 30 percent, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, and identify $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years that broadly mirrors a plan he laid out in September.

The budget projects a deficit of $901 billion in 2013, representing 5.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), down from $1.33 trillion, or 8.5 percent of GDP this year, White House officials say.

Obama pledged back in 2009 to have cut the deficit in half by next year, but his budget does not anticipate getting it back under 3 percent of GDP until 2018 -- satisfying credit rating agencies and investors who view this as a key threshold to stabilize the growth in national debt as a proportion of output.

Obama's deficit projections are based on growth forecasts that will be released along with the rest of the budget at 1115 EDT (1615 GMT).

The White House has already declared its budget prediction of an 8.9 percent 2012 unemployment as "stale," after an improving labor market lowered unemployment to 8.3 percent in January.

That encouraging sign for the recovery implies that deficit projections could be revised lower if growth, and accompanying tax revenues, also turn out to be stronger than expected.

However, Republicans say Obama uses gimmicks to massage the deficit numbers, pointing to savings from winding down wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which they complain amounts to counting funds that were never going to be spent.

The president will propose using half of the money from ending Americas' two foreign wars to subsidize investment in infrastructure as part of his request for over $800 billion in multi-year spending on job creation and transportation.

This includes tax breaks for companies and individuals that would be worth more than $300 billion in 2012 if passed into law, potentially delivering U.S. growth an additional fiscal stimulus as Obama campaigns around the country for re-election.

One of the biggest boosts would come from extending a payroll tax cut for 160 million Americans for all of 2012, which expires on February 29 unless Congress acts. The White House estimates this could add a percentage point to 2012 GDP.

Overall, the budget proposes raising $1.5 trillion over a decade through higher taxes, with around half coming from allowing tax breaks for families earning more than $250,000 a year to expire at the end of 2012 - a longstanding Obama goal.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

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Why Obama’s flip-flop on super PACs won’t matter

President Obama’s flip-flop toward embrace of the "super PAC" formed to support his reelection campaign should come as no surprise.

Yes, Mr. Obama railed against the Supreme Court decision that allowed outside groups to support campaigns with unlimited donations, visibly offending some justices over the matter at his 2010 State of the Union address. More recently, he has called them a “threat to democracy.”  

But the super PAC that supports Obama’s reelection, Priorities USA Action, was getting clobbered. It raised just $4.4 million last year. The conservative American Crossroads, the super PAC founded by former George W. Bush political guru Karl Rove, raked in $51 million. The biggest super PAC supporting Mitt Romney, Restore Our Future, brought in more than $30 million.

Election 101: Five basics about 'super PACs' and 2012 campaign money

All told, experts predict the Republican super PACs will collect a half billion dollars for the 2012 election. And Team Obama wasn’t about to “unilaterally disarm,” as campaign manager Jim Messina put it in an e-mail late Monday to supporters.

“The campaign has made clear that they cannot engage in this campaign, they cannot compete effectively ... if they play by a different set of rules,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Monday.

Liberal bloggers largely support Obama’s decision, agreeing that he cannot go into electoral battle under the system he wants, but with the system he has. The most vocal critic has been former Sen. Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin, co-author of the 2002 campaign-finance law aimed at limiting the role of money in politics.

"This is dancing with the devil. I know a lot of Democrats in D.C. don’t agree, and I understand the desire to do everything possible to win," Mr. Feingold said in a statement. "But this decision will push Democrats to become corporate-lite, and will send us head-on into a battle we know we will lose, because Republicans like Mitt Romney and his friends have and will spend more money."

But chances are, Obama’s flip-flop won’t hurt him with voters. In his first presidential campaign, he initially promised to operate within the public financing system, which would have limited how much he could spend.  By June of 2008, he had changed his mind. In an e-mail to supporters then, Obama declared his independence “from a broken system.” Republican Sen. John McCain, his eventual opponent in the general election, accused him of breaking a promise.

Voters hardly blinked. Obama went on to raise $750 million, and won the presidency. As best we can tell, there weren’t legions of voters who otherwise would have supported Obama but for his broken promise on public financing.

The real challenge for Obama may be finding enough liberal money-bags to open up their checkbooks and match the Republicans in their super PAC giving, or least come in with respectable numbers. The best-known big donor to Democratic causes is billionaire investor George Soros. There’s big money in liberal Hollywood. And there are Obama’s “bundlers,” major donors who solicit additional donations from their personal networks.   

On Monday night, Obama campaign officials had a conference call with major bundlers, explaining the change in policy and encouraging them to donate to the Obama super PAC. According to CNN, one bundler on the call “questioned the effectiveness of the new approach, explaining every large donor of means had already been approached for a donation by Priorities USA.”

Election 101: Five basics about 'super PACs' and 2012 campaign money

Get daily or weekly updates from CSMonitor.com delivered to your inbox. Sign up today.

View the original article here