Bart Stupak Says He Just Rents a Room at the C Street House, But Actually He's a Member of the Family

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

Rep. Bart Stupak knows that the first rule of the Family is that you're not allowed to talk about the Family. And the Michigan Democrat's silence has been golden for the secretive group behind the infamous C Street House.

"I don’t belong to any such group," Stupak told reporters during a recent conference call. "I rent a room at a house in C Street. I do not belong to any such group. I don’t know what you’re talking about -- [The] Family and all this other stuff."

Stupak is consistent in his reticence as far back as 2002, when he told the Los Angeles Times, "We sort of don't talk to the press about the house."

But things haven't always been so quiet. The complex, which used to be a convent but now functions as a church that offers housing to Christian congressmen in Washington D.C., gained a great deal of media attention earlier this year, after three lawmaker-residents were marked by separate scandals.

Despite the way the organization rose to prominence in the 1940s by gathering as many influential men into its ranks and prayer circles as possible, the current leaders of what is sometimes referred to by members as The Fellowship and the Christian Mafia have decided their best course of action is to lay low. The Family's leader, Doug Coe, has been widely quoted as telling other evangelical organizations that "the more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it will have."

I wonder how Coe and other Family members feel being about being mentioned as part of an effort to saddle the House's healthcare reform bill with a pro-abortion amendment. In succeeding in getting the Stupak-Pitts Amendment (which attempts to make abortion entirely inaccessible via both public and private insurance plans) added to the Affordable Health Care for America Act, Stupak may have inadvertently drawn unwanted attention to what some believe is one of the country's largest and most powerful unregistered lobbying firms.

Much of what the public knows about the Family is thanks to the undercover investigative reporting by journalist Jeff Sharlet. In 2003, Sharlet wrote an extensive account of his time spent living in one of the Family's many residences (of which the C Street House is one). He eventually published The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, a book exploring the extensive connections between the country's political elite and this shadowy organization.

More recently, Sharlet has been drawing connections between the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and the Family. He criticized the media's characterization of the amendment as a product of the Catholic Bishops' organization. Though Stupak is Roman Catholic, Sharlet says his residence at C Street, along with Republican co-author Rep. Joe Pitt's long-term affiliation with the Family, has more to do with the anti-choice amendment than anything else. He downplayed Stupak's role to more of a Democratic vehicle via which the Family-led amendment could be smuggled onto the Pelosi plan.

Bruce Wilson, an analyst for Talk 2 Action, a blog about faith and politics, wrote last month that members of the Family "have led much of the GOP’s most virulent opposition to health care reform." He lists several members of what he calls "the powerful, secretive, and anti-democratic Washington Christian fundamentalist association" who have joined in the anti-reform crusade, including Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Bill Nelson (D-FL).

Yet Sharlet also insists that abortion issues are not really the Family's cup of tea. Sharlet says it's the socially-conservative Pitts that brought abortion to the table over years of wrangling with the more fiscally-minded Family. He suggests that the Family's effort is more about taking down healthcare reform than preventing abortion. So who's in charge here?

First of all, Sharlet's media criticism is right on, from what I've seen. Other than MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, recognition of the Family contributions to the amendment has been sparse in the mainstream media. Where his argument wavers is motivation and the role of Stupak. Is the Michigan Democrat being played for a patsy by the Family and Pitts? On Maddow's show, Sharlet says Stupak isn't the "brightest light bulb on the porch," suggesting he somehow doesn't have the intellectual gravitas to construct an amendment on his own.

However, in a recent piece on Salon.com, Sharlet treats Stupak as an equal collaborator with Pitts in an elaborate Christian scheme to being the Democratic Party to the knees of evangelicals:

Together, they're poster boys for the evangelical/conservative Catholic alliance known as "co-belligerency," a culture war strategy designed to take territory within the Democratic Party as well the GOP...

Pitts and Stupak have joined forces on that front before, teaming up to try to turn President Bush's underfunded but laudable President's Emergency Relief for AIDS initiative into an antiabortion crusade. What they couldn't achieve abroad, they've now brought back home, and then some.

Sharlet told Maddow that as what Pitts has identified as part of the Family's objective to create a "god-led government," they need to infiltrate the Democrats, whom he suggested have been in denial about the attack:

I think it's a very comfortable story to tell ourselves, that this is just traditional Catholic conservatism rather than facing the fact that there is a growing and new evangelical, conservative evangelical influence within the Democratic Party...

Conservative Democrats have made this happen. I mean look: Here we are, with a fully Democratic government and Joe Pitts and his colleagues like Chris Smith and so on have just achieved a goal that they could not achieve in eight years of Bush. They've done it with Democratic help... You see a growing movement in the Democratic Party that we just haven't faced up to yet.

Sharlet can't seem to decide whether Stupak is the inside man or the fall guy in this conspiracy to take down the Democratic Party from within and without.

Stupak is a plain-spoken former cop with a heavy Midwestern accent who has degrees from both community college and law school. He's not as dimwitted as Sharlet seems to think he is (or seems to think he's pretending to be).

I can't speak for Stupak's writing abilities, but he suffers no fools as chair of House Energy and Commerce's subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. More than once while watching subcommittee testimony I've seen him sarcastically put right-wing pontificators across the aisle in their place. I have also seen him use his down-to-earth, "help me understand this" questioning style to entrap more than one CEO, asking insurance providers to decipher their own policy applications, or bottled water companies their product labels.

Some argue that you "reap what you sow" and that this is what Democrats pursuing the majority status got in exchange for their "big tent" strategy in 2006 and 2008. Yet of all the Democrats who are reported Family members who voted for the Stupak-Pitts Amendment but against the bill -- Reps. Ike Skelton (D-MO), Mike McIntyre (D-NC), John Tanner (D-TN), Lincoln Davis (D-TN), Dan Boren (D-OK), Heath Shuler (D-NC) -- only one was elected within those two recent cycles (Shuler, who reportedly lives at C Street with Stupak, took office in January 2007).

Surely Ike Skelton hasn't been planning this since 1977. But perhaps these moderate Christian Democrats have been just hanging on, waiting for someone like Rahm Emanuel to swell their ranks before trying to make their mark on the party. Then again, why is their supposed leader, Congressional Pro-life Caucus Co-Chair Stupak, rumored to be leaving Washington for a shot at the governor's mansion in 2010?

I honestly don't know what direction Stupak's true political compass points. He doesn't even appear to be a member of the Blue Dog coalition, though you wouldn't know it from recent media sources who mistakenly peg him otherwise. But his Family ties are undeniable. Bruce Wilson calls the congressman a "minister" for the Family, extrapolating from IRS 990 forms which the organization must fill out to preserve its tax-free status that Stupak must be one of those the organization defines as "persons in ministry."

Sharlet was skeptical of Stupak's denials as well, telling the Michigan Messenger that back in 2003 the congressman was identified by Family members as involved in mentoring at least one younger member on an ongoing, regular basis. Indeed, Stupak's silence before the press seems to underscore that he's taken the oath of secrecy integral to Family membership.

The idea that the Family might be holding the reins of any legislation as historic and wide-reaching as healthcare reform is troubling. Sharlet's reporting has revealed several instances in which Family leaders point to dictators and murderers such as Hitler for inspiration. He writes that "the Family's leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride."

The notion of personal responsibility is likewise shunned by the organization, as members believe themselves to be the new "chosen" people. Sharlet quoted David Coe, son of leader Doug and probable heir to the throne, as telling young members, "If you're a person known to be around Jesus, you can go and do anything. And that's who you guys are. When you leave here, you're not only going to know the value of Jesus, you're going to know the people who rule the world."

And if these people have been "chosen" to rule the world, whither a woman's right to choose?

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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