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RELATED LINKSInternal LinksGrants to: Profiles: Other internal: External LinksAmerican Center for Law & Justice website Jeff Gannon Affair at AmericaBlog Media Matters for America website National Association of Evangelicals website People for the American Way's profile of the "American Center for Law & Justice" Prison Fellowship Ministries website Washington Post about Tim Goeglein Cursor.orgMediaTransparency.org sponsor More stories by Bill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs' Media Transparency writersAndrew J. Weaver FundometerEvaluate any page on the World Wide Web against our databases of people, recipients, and funders of the conservative movement. |
ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz Tim Goeglein: Selling Brand Bush to the Christian RightYoung and relatively unknown, Tim Goeglein is parlaying his street cred with Christian conservatives into support for a vast array of Bush's policiesOne week after the terrorist attacks in the US in 2001 Tim Goeglein appeared on the radio program of Jay Sekulow, the legal beagle who runs the conservative American Center for Law & Justice (website). Goeglein was there to reassure Sekulow's listeners that President Bush was on job and prepared for the task at hand: He's "doing beautifully, he is uplifted, he's determined, he's resolute," Goeglein told Sekulow's listeners. He also pointed out that the president "knows his own mind, he's comfortable in is own person, he's very convicted...We've heard a lot of good and evil, a lot of talk about justice and righteousness. This is an outgrowth of his faith. This is the genuine article. This is George W. Bush, and he takes his role as Commander in Chief as seriously as any man ever has." Fast forward three-plus-years: On March 9, in a 29-second sound bite for the Free Congress Foundation's radio program, Goeglein talked about president's "major campaign for Social Security reform," saying that the president was "eager for Social Security reform," was "tireless on this question," and was "confirmed to seeing this through successfully." A month or so earlier, Goeglein chatted with Free Congress listeners about Bush's strong support for a constitutional amendment to "protect the institution of marriage"; his commitment to building a "culture of life"; and the need for an up-or-down vote on the president's judicial appointments. For more than four years Tim Goeglein has been reassuring Christian audiences that the president is indeed one of them and seeking their support for a broad array of issues. Who is Tim Goeglein and why is he one of the White House's most important links to the conservative Christian community? In the LoopNearly every morning, Tim Goeglein, the deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison meets -- along with eight White House aides from the four political offices including public liaison, intergovernmental affairs, political affairs and strategic initiatives -- with Bush's Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to pound out and hone the message of the day. "It is Goeglein's job to make sure conservatives are happy, in the loop and getting their best ideas before the president and turned into laws," the Washington Post reported. According to the newspaper, "This is where Rove, Goeglein and others share thoughts on synthesizing the president's ideas, enlisting outside assistance to sell them and heading off potential fights with or among supporters on the outside. When the meeting lets out, Goeglein operates as an ambassador of sorts for Bush and Rove." Goeglein is such a solid "ambassador" to the Christian Right that when Ted Haggard, the head of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE - website), made his first post-election visit to the White House he stopped by and congratulated Goeglein for his effective work of bringing Christian voters to the polls. "He is the key person that actually produced the evangelical vote in America," Haggard told the Indianapolis Star. "It was Karl Rove's initiative, but it was Tim that actually did it. When we call Tim, his office responds. He's the one evangelical leaders across America have a relationship with." In addition to giving Goeglein his props, Haggard was at the White House to "talk about proposed legislation and encourage the White House to hire evangelicals as interns," the Star reported. Goeglein has won critical acclaim from other Christian Right insiders: "Tim's just flat-out the best I've ever seen at this job, and I've seen them all," Ralph Reed, Bush adviser and former head of the Christian Coalition (website), told Newsweek last September. "My experience has been a lot of times when we have had serious questions and we needed administration backing to get them through...if we call Tim, all of a sudden things get through," Charles Colson, the convicted Watergate felon who runs Prison Fellowship Ministries (website) told the Washington Post. Sharpening his Political ChopsBorn in Ft. Wayne Indiana in 1964, Goeglein honed his political chops with the state's two Republican Dans -- Senator Dan Coats in the Senate, and then later with Dan Quayle, when he was vice president under George H.W. Bush. In 2000 Goeglein signed on as a spokesman for the presidential campaign of Gary Bauer, the most conservative candidate in the race. During Bauer's short-lived campaign, Goeglein made a point of telling Salon.com's Jake Tapper that while the campaign would be issue-oriented, "If it is proven that a president of the United States or a man running for president of the United States has used illegal drugs, that will be an issue. If any American has broken the law and that American is running for the highest office in the land, that would certainly be an issue." When Bauer dropped out of the race George W. Bush's campaign neutralized his attacks on candidate "drug use" by hiring Goeglein to shop Bush II's message to Christian right voters and activists. After Bush was appointed to the presidency, Goeglein told the Indianapolis Star that he "had an interview and was offered a job in the White House media affairs office," which he was eager to accept. "The very next day, quite by chance, Karl Rove called me. He was a person who I had worked with very little in the campaign. I was not in the political division. I was in communications...Karl called me and said, 'Tim. This is Karl Rove. I'm going to change your life.' I laughed, and said, 'Karl, you're a very funny man.' But he wasn't laughing." Goeglein, a member of the conservative Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, says that "faith was an important part of his upbringing," according to the Indianapolis Star. However that "faith" manifested itself at home it led to an unusually religious flexibility amongst his siblings: His oldest brother is a lawyer, a Democrat and a Catholic, while his sister is a professor, a Democrat and a convert to Judaism after going to a Quaker school. And, according to the Star, "his younger brother married a Jew and has converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, which is prominent on the maternal side of Goeglein's family." Last year, at the Advent Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zionsville, Ind., Goeglein told "the crowd how he begins each day with prayer and Bible study, and makes a point of nodding in silent thanks to those buried at Arlington National Cemetery as he drives by every morning on his way to work," Newsweek reported in its September 13, 2004 issue. Goeglein/Gannon?Like just about everyone else on the Christian Right, Tim Goeglein has been noticeably silent about the Jeff Gannon Affair. Is it possible that Goeglein, who appears to know just about everything there is to know about his Christian right brethren, was unaware of Gannon/Guckert? Gannon, whose real name is James D. Guckert, represented a conservative news site called Talon News. Within a short time of his entering "journalism" Gannon/Guckert managed to attend White House briefings and toss softball questions at White House officials. He even managed to get called on by President Bush, and he ended his question to the president with "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" referring to Senator Hillary Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. Gannon/Guckert was then exposed as a fraud by Media Matters for America (website), and a few Internet bloggers including John Aravosis' Americablog (website). In addition to operating under a phony name, James D. Guckert was a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com. Gannon/Guckert subsequently quit Talon News and quit blogging; however, he now appears to be attempting to re-start his public life, perhaps not sure whether his 15 minutes of fame are really over. (For more on all of this including links to some of Gannon/Guckert's x-rated Web sites, see Americablog.) In his "Holiday Greetings from the GOPUSA Team," Bobby Eberle, the President and CEO of GOPUSA -- the sponsor of Gannon and Talon News -- made a special point of thanking "all those who personally provided me with their assistance, guidance, and friendship, including Kathleen Eberle, Bruce Eberle, Mike Hiban, Don Stewart, Paul Teller, Tim Goeglein (my bold), Stuart Richens, Matt Smith, Jen Ohman, Bob Johnson, Liz Sheld, Julie Cram, Phillip Stutts, Chuck Muth, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, and G. Gordon Liddy." One of Geoglein's major priorities now is helping get a host of President Bush's radical judicial nominees through the Senate. A few days after the 2004 election, Goeglein told Gary Schneeberger, the editor of CitizenLink, a publication of Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family that "A very important part of that agenda is the federal judiciary, and the kind of nominees who we will send up to the Senate." CitizenLink: So we can expect more judges like Miguel Estrada, more judges like Charles Pickering, being nominated? Tim Goeglein: The president has been clear and consistent, dating from the first presidential campaign and carried over into the second presidential campaign: The president does not have a litmus test. What the president has is a very high bar for outstanding men and women to the federal judiciary. CL: He's used the phrase "strict constructionist." TG: Exactly. The president wants to make sure that the nominees he sends to the Senate are men and women of impeccable professional integrity who have a judicial philosophy rooted in a principle. And that principle is that the job of a judge is not to legislate from the bench, but rather to interpret the law. And so the president is looking for highly competent men and women of unquestioned integrity whose judicial philosophy is the one rooted in the Constitution. In the coming years, Tim Goeglein will help steer Christian conservatives toward a number of Bush administration policies from the privatization of Social Security to overhauling the tax code, from a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to support for Bush's judicial appointments. If a "Supreme Court vacancy emerges," the Washington Post noted, "Goeglein will be Rove's point man dealing with the political right over who should become the next justice." Three years ago Goeglein "created an influential coalition of conservatives to pressure lawmakers to approve Bush's judges in the Senate and prepare for the next Supreme Court fight. That group has raised as much as $5 million and is planning to lead the charge for conservative justices." sign in, or register to email stories or comment on them.
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MORE ORIGINAL RESEARCHBill Berkowitz PERC receives Templeton Freedom Award for promoting 'enviropreneurs'Right Wing foundation-funded anti-environmental think tank grabbing a wider audience for 'free market environmentalism' On the 15th anniversary of Terry Anderson and Donald Leal's book "Free Market Environmentalism" -- the seminal book on the subject -- Anderson, the Executive Director of the Bozeman, Montana-based Property and Environment Research Center (PERC - formerly known as the Political Economy Research Center) spoke in late-January at an event sponsored by Squaw Valley Institute at the Resort at Squaw Creek in California. While it may have been just another opportunity to speak on "free market environmentalism" and not the kickoff of a "victory tour," nevertheless it comes at a time when PERC's ideas are taking root.
Bill Berkowitz Neil Bush of Saudi ArabiaDuring recent visit, President’s brother describes the country as a 'kind of tribal democracy' In late February, only a few days after Saudi Arabia beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh, Neil Bush, for the fourth time in the past six years, showed up for the country's Jeddah Economic Forum. The Guardian reported that Human Rights Watch "said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights." In an interview with Arab News, the Saudi English language paper, Bush described the country as "a kind of tribal democracy."
Bill Berkowitz Newt Gingrich's back door to the White HouseAmerican Enterprise Institute "Scholar" and former House Speaker blames media for poll showing 64 percent of the American people wouldn't vote for him under any circumstances Whatever it is that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has come to represent in American politics, the guy is nothing less than fascinating. One day he's espousing populist rhetoric about the need to cut the costs of college tuition and the next day he's talking World War III. One day he's claiming that the "war on terror" may force the abridgement of fundamental first amendment rights and the next he's advancing a twenty-first century version of his Contract with America. At the same time he's publicly proclaiming how "stupid" it is that the race for the presidency has already started you know that he's trying to figure out how to out finesse Rudy, McCain and Romney for the nomination. And last week, when Fox News' Chris Wallace cited a poll showing that 64 percent of the public would never vote for him, he was quick to blame those results on how unfairly he was treated by the mainstream media back in the day.
Bill Berkowitz American Enterprise Institute takes lead in agitating against IranDespite wrongheaded predictions about the war on Iraq, neocons are on the frontlines advocating military conflict with Iran After doing such a bang up job with their advice and predictions about the outcome of the war on Iraq, would it surprise you to learn that America's neoconservatives are still in business? While at this time we are not yet seeing the same intense neocon invasion of our living rooms -- via cable television's news networks -- that we saw during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, nevertheless, a host of policy analysts at conservative think tanks -- most notably the American Enterprise Institute -- are being heeded on Iran by those who count - folks inside the Bush Administration.
Bill Berkowitz After six years, opposition gaining on George W. Bush's Faith Based InitiativeUnmentioned in the president's State of the Union speech, the program nevertheless continues to recruit religious participants and hand out taxpayer money to religious groups With several domestic policy proposals unceremoniously folded into President Bush's recent State of the Union address, two pretty significant items failed to make the cut. Despite the president's egregiously tardy response to the event itself, it was nevertheless surprising that he didn't even mention Hurricane Katrina: He didn't offer up a progress report, words of hope to the victims, or come up with a proposal for moving the sluggish rebuilding effort forward. There were no "armies of compassion" ready to be unleashed, although it should be said that many in the religious community responded to the disaster much quicker than the Bush Administration. In the State of the Union address, however, there was no "compassionate conservatism" for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Berkowitz Frank Luntz calls Republican leadership in Washington 'One giant whining windbag'On the outs with the GOP, legendary degrader of discourse is moving to California He doesn't make great art; nothing he does elevates the human spirit; he doesn't illuminate, he bamboozles. He has become expert in subterfuge, hidden meanings, word play and manipulation. Frank Luntz has been so good at what he does that those paying close attention gave it its own name: "Luntzspeak."
Bill Berkowitz Spooked by MoveOn.org, conservative movement seeks to emulate liberal powerhouseFueled with Silicon Valley money, TheVanguard.org will have Richard Poe, former editor of David Horowitz's FrontPage magazine as its editorial and creative director As Paul Weyrich, a founding father of the modern conservative movement and still a prominent actor in it, likes to say, he learned a great deal about movement building by closely observing what liberals were up to in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Bill Berkowitz Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action jihadFounder and Chair of the American Civil Rights Institute scouting five to nine states for new anti-affirmative action initiatives Fresh from his most recent victory -- in Michigan this past November -- Ward Connerly, the Black California-based maven of anti-affirmative action initiatives, appears to be preparing to take his jihad on the road. According to a mid-December report in the San Francisco Chronicle, Connerly said that he was "exploring moves into nine other states."
Bill Berkowitz Tom Tancredo's missionThe Republican congressman from Colorado will try to woo GOP voters with anti-immigration rhetoric and a boatload of Christian right politics These days, probably the most recognizable name in anti-immigration politics is Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo. Over the past year, Tancredo has gone from a little known congressman to a highly visible anti-immigration spokesperson. "Tancredo has thoroughly enmeshed himself in the anti-immigration movement and with the help of CNN talk show host Lou Dobbs, he has been given a national megaphone," Devin Burghart, the program director of the Building Democracy Initiative at the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based civil rights group, told Media Transparency.
Bill Berkowitz Institute on Religion and Democracy slams 'Leftist' National Council of ChurchesNew report from conservative foundation-funded IRD charges the NCC with being a political surrogate for MoveOn.org, People for the American Way and other liberal organizations If you prefer your religious battles sprinkled with demagoguery, sanctimoniousness, and simplistic attacks, the Institute on Religion and Democracy's (IRD) latest broadside against the National Council of Churches (NCC) certainly fits the bill.
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