Tag: David Barton

Smart move by David Barton

I wrote about this before and it appears that David Barton has conceded to reality.

Via the Corner over at NRO:

Controversial Evangelical author David Barton just announced that he won’t challenge Senator John Cornyn in the 2014 Texas Senate primary. On Glenn Beck’s radio show this morning, he told Beck’s listeners that, though the primary is “winnable,” the timing isn’t right for him.

“What can I do to talk you into this?” asked Beck, disappointed.

Texas tea-party activists had been hankering for Cornyn to get a primary challenger ever since he removed his name from Mike Lee’s letter urging his Senate colleagues to refuse to support a CR that funded the Affordable Care Act. But finding a candidate with the requisite name recognition, connections, and willingness was a tall order. Enter Barton, former vice chairman of the Texas Republican party, who’s well-connected in the Evangelical movement and has deep ties with the Texas conservative grassroots. Barton is a lightning rod for controversy: The publisher of his most recent book, The Jefferson Lies, pulled it because of concerns over numerous factual inaccuracies. (Beck wrote the foreword for that work and has promised to continue publishing it.)

Barton told Beck’s listeners that he had done polling to investigate his odds in the race, and believed it would have been easy for him to raise the first $3 to 4 million.

“Has Louie ruled it out?” Beck asked, hoping Representative Louie Gohmert would challenge the senator. The Texas congressman did reject the idea in July, and it’s ultimately unlikely Cornyn will get a competitive primary challenger.

I believe this to be a very smart move by David Barton. Because quite frankly, Barton would be a lightening rod for the left to attack the GOP as an extremist party. Furthermore, it would cost the GOP a important seat in the Senate. The plain truth is that while Barton might have some noble intentions; he is simply unelectable and his campaign would be unwinnable.

It simply boils down to credibility and Barton has a credibility problem; his book was pulled because of issues with accuracy. Those sort of things are not exactly a feather in ones cap, when it comes to politics. Either way, I am glad to see that Barton did not try and run; because in his case, the Republican Party simply did not need someone of his ilk trying to run for office. 

No, The Republican Party does not need David Barton serving in the Senate

Christians, Tea Party members and Republicans need to avoid people with extreme views.

The National Review’s blog “The Corner” reports:

David Barton, an Evangelical Christian historian who recently made headlines for a controversial history of Thomas Jefferson, is seriously considering primarying Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas), per multiple sources. Rick Green, one of Barton’s closest advisers, tells National Review Online the following in an e-mail:

More than 1,000 (zero exaggeration, that is an actual number) tea party and republican party leaders have asked David Barton to run. Polling says Sen. Cornyn is vulnerable and that’s why he is running ads right now. Like America’s Founding Fathers, David Barton will not “seek” this office, but if the people of Texas speak loud enough in the next few days, he could most certainly be drafted in by the voters.

Another Republican consultant in Austin familiar with Barton’s thinking elaborates on that. “The conservatives are putting in a significant effort to get him into the race, and this is not a drill — he might actually do it,” the consultant tells me. “I think David is probably mulling the race because he’s getting pushed really hard to mull the race. If people weren’t really pushing him hard, I don’t think he would be considering it. He probably fits the one profile which would be really threatening to Cornyn.”

And JoAnn Fleming, executive director of Texas-based Grassroots America We The People, says that a number of tea-party leaders are slated to have a conference call with Barton in the next few days to discuss his senatorial prospects. “We need a Constitutional conservative in that seat,” she says. “We believe that Senator Cornyn has become part of the establishment and we don’t believe that his priorities reflect the priorities of the people of Texas any longer.”

Here is why I say this; David Barton holds to some of the same views as I, on some subjects. However, David Barton’s work and even his book has been brought into question, even by other Christians and political historians. Furthermore David Barton is a believer that America happens to be a Christian Republic. This is a gross error. America is a Constitutional Republic; nothing more, nothing less.

It is one thing to be a blogger or writer that holds to Fundamentalist Christian views, and have some of them to be considered extreme by some. It is another entirely to be a holder of these views and run for public office. I want my elected officials to uphold the constitution; and it alone. I do not want my elected officials to be operating under some sort of pseudo religious mandate. David Barton believes that there is no such thing as a separation of Church and State. While it might be true that the phrase does not exist in the constitution; Thomas Jefferson made it very clear to the Danbury Baptists that there was a full wall of separation between Government and Religion. This is why the pilgrims fled England, because the pilgrims were being persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church! Yet, people like David Barton want Christianity forced upon Americans!  

Anyone who says anything other than this, seeks to hijack the United States Government for a religious cause; which flies in the face of the founding principles of this great Nation of ours. Again, we must be alert for Christian extremists, who want to infiltrate our Government for their nefarious purposes. I want a free Republic, not the Christian version of Sharia Law in America.