Hillary Clinton’s campaign is doing its part to keep the Obama-Rev. Wright controversy alive. A few days ago one of Clinton’s top advisers acknowledged that the campaign is aggressively pushing the Obama-Wright connection in its pursuit of uncommitted super-delegates.
Hillary herself has repeatedly said that Wright “would not have been my pastor.” And while there’s no doubt the Wright issue will continue to be a headache for Obama, our prediction that Hillary’s own untoward religious connections would become an issue has come true.
Last night NBC interviewed MoJo author Jeff Sharlet on Hillary’s longtime participation in a secretive Capitol Hill group called the Fellowship.
Regular Mother Jones readers will be familiar with Hillary’s involvement in the group from Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet’s feature on the topic last September:
These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives’ group into what may be Coe’s most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfast—regularly attended by about 40 members—is a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.
Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn’t condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn’t back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won’t fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won’t guard abortion clinics.
A few weeks ago over at The Nation, Barbara Ehrenreich called on Clinton to “explain—or, better yet, renounce—her long-standing connection with the fascist-leaning Family.” Today a Daily Kos diarist concurred that Hillary “owes us all an explanation.” But the Clinton camp is keeping mum (Hillary declined to comment for the MoJo feature last year). Maybe she’ll reconsider now?
Keep your eye out for continuing coverage of the Hillary-Fellowship connection and an excerpt of Sharlet’s new book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, to be featured soon on MotherJones.com.
—Justin Elliott
