Editor's note. Your comments are welcomed at daveandrusko@hotmail.com.

"A campaign official tells me the tour is designed to feature the 'strong faith and values' of both Barack Obama and running mate Joe Biden. Issues will range from healthcare to poverty to the economy to climate change to yes, even abortion. The campaign understands tough questions may come their way but they're ready with an answer of how they can reduce abortions."
     From "The Brody File," September 19.

Politics 1001 is to maximize turnout from those categories of people most favorably disposed toward you and to scavenge in those precincts less likely to like you for "persuadables" So it is that the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, as pro-abortion as it is humanly possible to get, has initiated a "Faith, Family and Values Tour" to "hit cities and towns and neighborhoods with a massive of moderate mainline protestants and modernist Catholics," according to CBN's David Brody.

The tour, which begins this week, will feature surrogates that include Pepperdine University law school Prof. Douglas Kmiec, former Indiana Congressman Tim Roemer, and popular evangelical author Donald Miller. The caravan would have begun anyway, but there is a hint that its launch may have been moved up--or at least that is the way I read a Saturday blog post by Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe.

"Barack Obama's director of religious affairs, Joshua DuBois, and his evangelical outreach coordinator, Wesley Theological Seminary Professor Shaun Casey, made an unexpected appearance at the Religion Newswriters Association convention late yesterday," Paulson writes. "They apparently wanted to respond to remarks made at the conference by Amy Sullivan of Time magazine suggesting that the Obama campaign was cutting back on its faith outreach efforts, as well as to polling by John C. Green of the University of Akron suggesting that the evangelical outreach was not paying dividends for Democrats."

The idea is that there are plenty of people of faith who are not "single issue" voters--citizens who cast their vote contingent on a candidate's position on abortion. That is true as far as it goes, which isn't very far.

It is one thing to say that there are many people of faith who will not necessarily vote for the pro-life candidate just because he or she stands up for unborn children. It is quite another to say that these same people wouldn't be aghast if they had any idea how militantly, across the board (and beyond) anti-life Obama actually is.

The key to Obama's forays into the Christian community is to convince its various and diverse membership that if he's not exactly in the mainstream, he is at least close. That while he is "pro-choice," he's really serious about "reducing the number of abortions."

In other words, please don't look at my record. If you do you will see the ultimate Stepford Husband, a guy who will do anything the PPFAs and NARALs and NOWs of this world tell him to do.

National Right to Life provides a communications blog at http://nrlcomm.wordpress.com. It makes for very, very good reading, and I highly recommend it to you. On September 20 NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson posted an item on the "Faith, Family and Values Tour."

Mr. Johnson's primary point is the utter insincerity of the Obama camp's pretense to desire to reduce the number of abortions. He could have cited an endless stream of examples to prove his point, but chose five.

1. Obama wishes to vaporize the Hyde Amendment. As pro-abortionists themselves are the first to acknowledge (ruefully), the Hyde Amendment saves lives--at a minimum one million!

2. In addition to ending that proven abortion-reducer, Obama "wants to enact a mandatory national health insurance program that would also mandate coverage of abortion on demand." The multiplier effect of this initiative is almost incalculable.

3. Obama can't wait to sign into law the "Freedom of Choice Act." FOCA would terminate other proven abortion-reducing laws, such as women's right to know laws, waiting periods, and parental notification laws. These laws have saved countless lives, but no matter. As Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in 2007, "The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do."

4. Obama even goes so far as to "advocates repeal of the national ban on partial-birth abortions (which the FOCA would also accomplish)."

5. Finally while a member of the Illinois state Senate, Obama "led the opposition to legislation to provide protection and care for babies who are born alive during abortions," as NRLC has thoroughly documented at http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html. He was no passive spectator, but the ringleader.

Over the next month, the team of Obama surrogates will reportedly visit (at least) Colorado, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida, New Mexico, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Please be sure to do your part to make sure that the omissions and distortions that will be a staple of the day do not go unchallenged.
Unlike the Obama team, we believe in the truth and that the truth WILL set you free.

Part Two -- Obama Goes Nuclear on BAIPA