PoliticsUSA: Kentucky Senate campaign: Overweening ambition drives Democrat Attorney General to smear Libertarian Republican and Presbyterian candidate who rejects faith-based social service

A blog called Hot Air has revealed that Rand Paul, a Republican candidate for the Senate in Kentucky, does not support the very important important role of tax-supported faith-based agencies (not churches!, as the blog falsely states) to have a level playing field in competing with secularistic organizations to perform service tasks that they often can better provide than can a directly-governmental bureaucracy.

John McCormack quotes a speech given by Paul in 2008, before his run for the Senate officially launched, about his reasoning on defunding faith-based government initiatives:

“One, I think the money sort of pollutes the mission of a purely Christian organization, or Muslim or whatever organization it is. And it obscures the church-state separation that there really ought to be. We shouldn’t have tax money flowing into churches, and we should let churches do charity work, and that’s wonderful, but they shouldn’t be corrupted with government money.”

Whether or not one agrees with this reasoning, it’s at least a rational argument, and one heard from many people of faith who worry about the co-opting influence of government money in churches. It’s hardly an attack on religion. As for ending tax deductions for churches, Paul supports that because he wants an end to the income tax altogether, which would mean the end of all income-tax deductions. Paul wants the income tax replaced with the Fair Tax, and all deductions would be eliminated in the change.

This ad may not be quite as offensive as Grayson’s despicable attack on Webster through the use of out-of-context sound bites that made Webster sound as if he said the exact opposite of what he actually said, but it’s pretty close. Sticking “Washington Post 8/11/2010″ on a known smear doesn’t sanitize it at all. Unless Conway wants to demand religious tests for office, what’s left in this ad is almost as awful, too.

I don't like MSNBC's reporter Chris Matthews, but I have to give him credit for his on-camera investigative journalism in this case of Jack Conway's violation of the Westminster Catechism regarding "unnecessarily exposing the sins of others" (something l+k that) -- even were the anonymous allegations true. The alleged events were said to have taken place some decades ago, when Conway's opponent was a student at (Baptist) Baylor University in Texas.

The come-uppance for Conway, Attorney General of Kentucky, occurs on the same YouTube page  (subscribe free to my yUT2ube Channel that now includes this video) where a commenter named Schmauey blurts out:

Hey Jack, maybe the women of Kentucky would like an answer about YOUR frat (SAE [Sigma Alpha Epsilon]) at Duke which was known for raping women. Why was your frat kicked off campus Jack? Why did the national SAE organization disown your chapter at Duke, Jack? Could it be because of all the rapes and sexual assaults?

All that important 'hit aside, we come back to Dr Paul's position on equality for faith-based organizations in receiving gov funds to conduct social services much more cheaply than the gov can. That's why the gov puts out money to secularistic organizations, and presently allows the faith-baseds service orgs to compete against the secularistics, often winning the available funds becawz their applications and performance records are better than those of the secularistics.

Rand Paul is an optometrist with blindspots that prevent him from seeing what great good faith-baseds do for down-and-out folks in need of help, but which orgs need better funding than their own fundraising and volunteers can provide. I woud never vote for a candidate l+k Paul becawz of the blindness of his brand of Libertarianism. Were Paul to be elected, he woud undoubtedly be a strong influence in the Tea Party Caucus in Congress, and that means he'd have too much destructive influence on gov social assistance of all kinds, turning these programs entirely over to the secularists. That's not pluraliformity. And that's not Christian compassion. However, the alternative in Kentucky's Senate election campaign is self-r+tchus dumpster Jack Conway, whose overweening ambition leads him to stop at nothing to get a six-year term in the Senate.

Were I voting in Kentucky, I think I'd have to hold my nose and vote for Paul, praying for him that the Lord woud break his subchristian political ideology and lead him to an authentically Christian political vision. I can't believe that all, or most, Christian Libertarians and Christians participants in the Tea Party, are l+k Dr Rand Paul. That woud be a heartbreaker.