Evangelicals for Harris has become a key tool for the vice president in her efforts to win the White House with confusing messaging, Ryan Helfenbein said on American Family Radio Monday.
The group began an aggressive ad campaign last week targeting Christian media with the plan of attacking Donald Trump. The ad begins with Billy Graham then rolls into Trump answering a faith question at The Family Leader Summit.
Dem strategy: A dishonest ad to woo good ChristiansSteve Jordahl, AFN.net The left-wing group “Evangelicals for Harris” has dropped a new political ad that purposely misquotes Donald Trump, and takes his words out of context, but a veteran journalist predicts the target audience might believe it all anyway. The ad starts with a Bible verse urging Christians to test the spirits and see if they’re from God, which sounds pretty biblical and apolitical, but from there it strings together a number of Trump quotes over the years. The ad’s intention is obvious to many, not to mention it’s bearing false witness in the name of Christianity, but will it work? “Elections are won at the margins,” David Brody, the longtime CBN correspondent, tells AFN. 
Among Evangelicals who attend church regularly, Brody says approximately 25% of them dislike Trump and won’t vote for him in November. “All this group needs to do,” Brody cautions, “is convince 1%, maybe 2% of Evangelicals in a couple of key swing states, that they're tired of Trump and all the drama.” Going back to Barack Obama’s election in 2008, he won about 26% of the white evangelical Protestant vote. Hillary won 16% in 2016 and lost. In 2020, Biden won 24% of the white evangelical Protestant vote and won. Harris needs to win at least 20% of the evangelical vote, Brody says, and any figure above that probably gives her the White House. |
The website for the group attacks Trump less. It explains that Evangelicals should support Kamala Harris because she upholds “Christian Values” – and it also presents “Kamala’s faith story.”
A news release posted there last week uses Matthew 25 and Christ’s reference to “the least of these” to support Harris’ proposed economic agenda, starting with a $25,000 subsidy for first-time homebuyers.
Related op-ed: The facts about 'Evangelicals for Harris'
A communist blast from the past
In his interview on AFR, Helfenbein – vice president of communications at Liberty University – told show host Jenna Ellis that Harris is less like Jesus and more like a well-known communist from decades ago.
“This is a part of a Saul Alinsky tactic, going back to Rules for Radicals. The idea is to pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. That target actually is her opponent, Donald Trump. It has nothing to do with policies,” Helfenbein said.
Alinsky, among other things, said in his book that changing the world requires a deep understanding of one's community – in the case of Kamala Harris, her opponent. He also recommended the use of ridicule and polarization to put the opponent on defense and create division within the ranks. These tactics can work to discredit and weaken opponents, he wrote.
Helfenbein explained that Evangelicals for Harris “is trying to appropriate the Leftist terminology of cultural appropriation to appropriate Christianity, to appropriate the Bible and take out passages of Scripture in order to pick their target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.
"So, Evangelicals for Harris is part of that move to hijack scripture and to use it, not to talk about the policy," he added.
Slick social media advertising, according to Helfenbein, helps Harris avoid the issues. The campaign, he said, is essentially saying, “We’ll take some passages of scripture, voice them up on a meme, and then we will direct them specifically toward the person, Donald Trump, rather than talking about the substance of issues and the things that actually matter in political debate.”
For Harris, he continued, a key part of the plan is limiting live interviews.
“She is being shielded from the media right now; [she] doesn't want to actually go on the record to talk about any of these things. [She's being told to] just smile and give a friendly laugh and a wave for the cameras,” Helfenbein said.
Values yes – but consider the big picture
Part of the Evangelicals for Harris messaging includes a middle-aged white woman outdoors in what appears to be a neighborhood setting discussing the importance of values-based voting:
“We don’t have to just pick the one issue that some men in power tell us we have to pick. We get to choose who to vote for based on our own values. When I get alone in that voting booth, I’m going to be thinking, ‘Who best reflects all around, all of my values as a Christian?’ Nobody gets to decide that for me. That’s solely my decision, and I get to vote based on my values,” the woman says.
Values voting is an important right granted to Americans by the Constitution, David Closson, the Family Research Council’s director for the Center for Biblical Worldview, said on Washington Watch Friday. It’s important to consider a candidate’s values, he acknowledged, but it’s also important to not reduce the Bible to one passage in which Jesus discusses charity toward others.
“When it comes to Evangelicals for Harris, we believe the Bible has spoken. There’s a ‘Thus saith the Lord’ on really clear issues – and when it comes to those issues, the Harris-Walz campaign is on the opposite side of scripture,” Closson told show host Jody Hice.
“[On] the abortion issue, when she was a senator, she voted against providing protection for babies who survive botched abortions. She voted against providing protection for babies who can feel pain in the womb.”
If Harris’ record alone doesn’t do enough to minimize life, conservative pundits contend she clearly showed where she stands on abortion with her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate.
“Of all the Democrats in the United States that Harris could pick to be her running mate, she chose Tim Walz, the person who signed legislation last year that legalized abortion through all nine months. This is the governor who gave the courts the right to temporarily take custody of children whose parents won’t allow them to go through with these horrible gender surgeries,” Closson said.
The abortion GOAT in a bad way
Voters who look past the soft, cozy images of a suburban housewife generalizing the topic of values (as exemplified above) should be alarmed by Harris’ values they can clearly see, Helfenbein said.
“There are other things we can talk about. There’s socialism. We could talk about the transgender debate. We can talk about parental rights and medical freedom and all of that, and Kamala Harris has a radical position.”
But Harris takes abortion to new heights, said Helfenbein. “What you’re talking about is a candidate who is the most radical person in American history on abortion alone,” he said.
“[Christians should be] absolutely alarmed by this,” he warned. “We need to be outspoken, unabashed and unashamed on the issue of life in particular.”
