Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday he regrets referring to Focus on the Family and its founder James Dobson as “the Antichrist” – a term among the worst slurs in Christianity.
Salazar issued a statement Wednesday evening, backing down from a remark he made Tuesday night during an audio interview aired on KKTV of Colorado Springs.
In that interview, Salazar said of Focus on the Family: “From my point of view, they are the Antichrist of the world.”
The remark and Salazar’s retraction represent the latest development in a bitter fight over President Bush’s judicial nominees and efforts by religious groups like Focus on the Family to get them approved by the Senate.
Not the Anti-Christ, but rather a big flaming asshole. But wait, there is more:
“After being relentlessly attacked in telephone calls, e-mails, newspapers and radio stations all across Colorado, having my faith questioned, and having my wife’s business picketed as part of these attacks, I spoke about Jim Dobson and his efforts and used the term ‘the Antichrist,’ ” Salazar said in a written statement.
“I regret having used that term. I meant to say this approach was unchristian, meaning self-serving and selfish.”
I carry no torch for Ken Salazar, and I probably hate his politics, but I can understand some pent up venom at vermin like Dobson. Plus, the Focus on the Family theocrats are located in Colorado Springs, home of the opressed Christian airmen, so he probably has had to deal with them on a personal level for far too long.
Focus on the Family’s political arm had placed print and radio ads against Salazar, a Democrat, and senators in 15 states, urging them to “STOP the nonsense” and end filibuster rules that have prevented 10 controversial judicial nominees from getting up-or-down confirmation votes.
Salazar, who is Catholic, fired back last week, accusing Focus on the Family of “hijacking Christianity” and trying to turn the United States into a “theocracy.”
On Sunday, Dobson and other conservative religious activists held a rally dubbed “Justice Sunday” in Louisville, Ky., that was beamed into churches and homes across the country. They highlighted the phone numbers of Salazar and other targeted senators, urging viewers to call and register their opposition to the filibuster.
That same day, a separate church group picketed a Westminster Dairy Queen run by Salazar’s wife, Hope. Focus on the Family officials denied having anything to do with the protest, but it angered Salazar that opponents were targeting a family member, not him.
After the Antichrist remark, Focus issued a statement accusing Salazar of “overheated rhetoric” and “trying to take attention away from his failure to keep his campaign promises.”
Push someone to the breaking point, when he fires back, he is trying to cover up broken campaign promises. Cute. It gets better:
One former Salazar rival predicted Wednesday that the senator would come to regret his harsh words against religious conservatives.
“The Senate has been and should be regarded as a deliberative body that is above the fray of name-calling and insult,” said former Colorado Congressman Bob Schaffer, who lost the Republican U.S. Senate primary in 2004 and now leads a coalition pushing to end Senate filibuster rules.
Schaffer is state coordinator for The Judicial Confirmation Network, which recently launched the Web site www.SalazarWaffles.com to highlight the senator’s alleged changing of position on giving nominees confirmation votes.
“Americans care about the judicial nominees for a variety of reasons,” Schaffer said. “For some people it’s religious, for others it’s economic, and for others it’s patriotic.
“By insulting those who believe that their religious freedom is at stake . . . he seems to have narrowed his individual emphasis on what ought to be a very broad, general discussion of substantive issues.”
Try to control the laughter- not only are the Democrats filibustering people of faith, why- they are attacking their very religious freedoms!
Probably still inappropriate to call him the antiChrist. I would have settled for fag-lover. Now that would have really upset them.