Book: Dirty politics of conservative compassion

Keith Olbermann Anchor, 'Countdown' • Profile

In the No. 5 story on Thursday's "Countdown," Keith Olbermann revealed more details of David Kuo's "Tempting Faith," a new book which makes explosive claims against the Bush White House and its relationship with conservative Christians.

You can read the transcript below.

Good evening.  This is Thursday, October 12^th, 26 days until the 2006 midterm elections.

“Just get me a f-ing faith-based thing,” eight words attributed to Karl Rove by author and former special assistant to the president, David Kuo, that could by themselves very well decide those midterms.  In our fifth story on the COUNTDOWN, part two of our look inside Mr. Kuo‘s extraordinary new book, “Tempting Faith,” written from his earlier vantage point as the number-two man in Bush‘s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

And though it‘s a very large tip, the Rove quote is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  As we reported last night, Mr. Kuo is making several explosive claims, among them that, behind their backs, the nation‘s top evangelical Christians were regarded with routine mockery and contempt by White House staffers, called “nuts” and “ridiculous.” 

We also told you that Kuo writes that the faith-based office was so starved for support from the Oval Office that it was forced to transform itself into a political arm of Republican campaign efforts. 

David Kuo is himself a self-described conservative Christian.  His personal and his religion assessment of Mr. Bush is nowhere near the most newsworthy of Kuo‘s revelations in our report tonight, but it might be a valuable key to understanding this president. 

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:  When you accept Christ as a savior, it changes your heart. 

To this day, Kuo writes, he believes Mr. Bush loves Jesus, that he is a good man.  However, Kuo also writes many Christians assume from his belief in Jesus Christ that Bush won't do what other politicians do:  (INAUDIBLE) their work, hide their mistakes, spin the truth, and that those assumptions are wrong. 

In Kuo's eyes, today's national Christians leaders are being used.  They did not have the same shrewdness, he suggests, that Billy Graham had in the ‘70s to question whether Richard Nixon was using him solely for his appeal to religious voters.  In fact, Christians who voted for Mr. Bush based on his religion may have ended up hurting the very people Jesus sought to help:  the poor.

BUSH:  I urge the Senate to pass the faith-based initiative for the good of America. 

But Kuo writes that, when Senator Chuck Grassley tried to rewrite Mr. Bush's $1.7 trillion tax cut to include $6 billion in tax credits for groups helping the poor, tax credits Mr. Bush himself had publicly proposed, Kuo writes, “Bush's assistant told Grassley to drop the charity tax credits.  The White House had no interest.” 

The cuts Mr. Bush did want made things worse for charities.  Kuo writes that the estate tax cuts discourage charitable giving, costing charities an estimated $5 billion.  “The ultimate impact of Mr. Bush tax cuts,” Kuo writes, “was to brutalize the very charities Mr. Bush once identified as his top priorities.  After only a year,” Kuo writes, “charitable donations were down dramatically, and some charities had shut down.” 

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