- There is a defining moment in the life of every news
organisation that marks a coming of age. In the case of CNN it was the
opening bombardment of the first Gulf war. The upstart cable channel went
live to Peter Arnett in Baghdad, while the traditional broadcast networks
could only watch from their New York studios in shock and awe.
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- In the case of the Manchester Guardian, it was the day
in 1959 when the paper reached beyond its Mancunian roots to become a national
newspaper. And in the case of The 700 Club, Pat Robertson's daily evangelical
news broadcast, it was November 3 2004. The day it became clear that George
Bush had won a second term.
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- This day formally marked the transformation of The 700
Club. No longer could it be viewed as an outlet of relevance only to the
loony Christian right. Not only did it join the ranks of the mainstream
media. In many ways it supplanted them. Suddenly, if you seriously wanted
to take the pulse of America, you had to tune your TV to the news division
of televangelism.
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- The 700 Club has been operating under the radar of traditional
journalistic scrutiny for over two decades. Anchored by Pat Robertson,
he initially created it as a vehicle to promote his personal political
ambitions. After his failed presidential bid in 1988, Robertson founded
the Christian Coalition and embarked on an ambitious plan to influence
the mainstream political agenda from the inside out.
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- He used The 700 Club as the marketing and political advocacy
tool of this plan. The broadcast's focus is instructing viewers on how
they could best lobby elected officials to enact the Christian right's
agenda.
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- Robertson's show regularly has more viewers than CNN.
And while the rest of the world wasn't watching he has been phenomenally
successful in realising a three part blueprint to essentially take over
all branches of the US Government.
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- Goal number one was to take over Congress, and Robertson
can honestly take credit for the Republican revolution of 1994. Of the
52 freshman Republican congressman, who ended four decades of Democratic
rule that year, 44 owed their election to the Christian coalition which
endorsed them on The 700 Club. The coalition's scorecards, ranking candidates
on issues from abortion to marriage and family were a regular feature of
the broadcast, promoting hand-picked candidates and discrediting unfavourable
ones.
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- Goal number two was the presidency. George Bush made
it to the White House and is there today, because of the lockstep support
of The 700 Club's faithful, who make up the bedrock of the "values
voter".
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- Goal number three is yet to be achieved: taking over
the legislature. From his anchor chair, Robertson is coordinating an intricate
strategy to de-liberalise every court from the Supreme Court down to federal
judges at the district level.
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- The key to Robertson's success so far has been his obsessive
attention to legislative details, the minute, often picayune rules that
together constitute the levers of political change. In his attempt to wrestle
control of the last branch of government his approach is the same.
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- Up to now arcane Senate rules have impeded the appointment
of jurists friendly to the Robertson agenda. So Robertson is using his
television pulpit to change them. Current Senate regulations allow a minority
of Democrats to prevent votes on judges they don't like from ever taking
place by employing a technical filibuster. The filibuster can only be overturned
by a super-majority of sixty senators - a number Republicans cannot reach.
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- But Robertson has discovered that the Senate filibuster
rules can be amended at the opening of the next Senate session in January
at the discretion of the Senate majority leader Bill Frist - a detail insiders
say the Tennessee Republican was not even aware of himself.
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- So for weeks Robertson has been flashing the senator's
telephone number on the screen and imploring viewers to jam the congressional
switchboard with demands that Frist change the filibuster rules so that
it can be overturned by a simple majority of 51 votes - a number Republicans
can muster. Frist is now considering doing just that. Come January the
procedural block on a raft of reactionary judges may be lifted before the
first gavel comes down.
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- While the admittedly liberal mainstream media are still
scratching their heads, wondering how they missed the tectonic shift in
favour of the Christian right in this country, they may still be looking
in the wrong place for hints at what the future holds.
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- CNN's promotional tagline may be "watch what happens
next", but to really know what's about to unfold in today's America
you need to switch on The 700 Club.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1355381,00.html
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