Useful idiots
David Kuo, the former deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, claims in a new book that the Bush Administration publicly embraced the Christian Right to get their votes while privately rolling their eyes and considering its leaders "boorish" and "nuts."
Kuo's assertions in "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction" have been disputed by his former boss, now president of St. Vincent's College in Latrobe, Pa., but that is right in line with past practice when other negative insider accounts of the Bush White House have been published. I will say it is possible that someone like Kuo expected reverential treatment of James Dobson and other Christian Right leaders, and that normal political bantering might have offended him. But coming on top of the Foley scandal, his book could drive even more Christian Right voters--Bush's most dedicated bloc up till now--to stay home this coming November and in 2008.
Admit it--didn't you always believe that Bush's public piety was a political sham? I doubt we know the half of it.