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Sanford Cites Secretive Christian Group's Role in Helping Confront Affair
Tweet Share on Facebook June 24, 2009 Comment (55)By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
Mark Sanford's news conference today was unusual for lot of reasons, but here's a less obvious one: The South Carolina governor referred to "C Street," a Washington dormitory for lawmakers funded by a highly secretive Christian organization called the Fellowship. (The Fellowship is the group behind the National Prayer Breakfast, where President Obama rolled out his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships earlier this year.)
It's rare for elected officials to publicly allude to C Street or to anything affiliated with the Fellowship. But here's the exchange between Sanford and a reporter:
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Sanford Affair a Blow to GOP Values Brand
Tweet Share on Facebook June 24, 2009 Comment (20)By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's admission today that he had an extramarital affair strikes another blow to the GOP's brand as the party of family values, particularly in a region of the country—the Deep South—that has become ever more critical to Republicans, who've lost ground recently in the Northeast and the West.
Outside South Carolina, "Sanford is most well known in states like North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, which are growing more competitive for Democrats," says Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who worked for Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee during the 2008 campaign season. "This is devastating for the Republican Party in the very region where it has to make gains."
Fast on the heels of an admitted affair by Nevada Sen. John Ensign—another emblem of the GOP's values brand—Sanford's announcement also makes it harder for the national Republican Party to maintain credibility with the values voters who've been most loyal to it.
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Obama's First Meeting With Pope Could Yield Economic Common Ground
Tweet Share on Facebook June 24, 2009 Comment (24)By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
It's official: President Obama will have his first meeting with Pope Benedict XVI on July 10, while in Italy attending a G8 summit. While Obama's May appearance at the University of Notre Dame has strained his relationship with many U.S. bishops, Rome has been more conciliatory toward his administration.
For Obama, his first papal sit-down probably couldn't have been better timed; it comes shortly after the long-scheduled release of Benedict's encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" (Charity in Truth), which he says will focus on "the extensive issue of the economy and labor." Encyclicals are letters from the pope to the Roman Catholic hierarchy on key church matters.
If Benedict's encyclical argues that moral shortcomings precipitated the world economic crisis, as seems likely to be the case, it could line up with Obama's own interpretation of the recession. The president outlined his views on how the abrogation of values led to the financial crisis in his commencement address at Arizona State University:
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Mark Sanford's Weird Weeklong Trip: Another GOP Letdown to Pro-Family Movement?
Tweet Share on Facebook June 24, 2009 Comment (10)B y Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
As the plot around South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's mysterious weeklong absence thickens—it turns out he was not hiking the Appalachian Trail, as his staff claimed, but he says he was vacationing alone in Buenos Aires—it will be interesting to see how the Christian right reacts. The movement's leaders were so keen on Sanford during the 2008 presidential cycle—and so unenthusiastic about the rest of the Republican field—that they tried to draft him to run for the White House.