Rove to WH Staffer: "Just get me a f—ing faith-based thing. Got it?”

[BurtWorm]

Early 2001. From Think Progress:


David Kuo, the former second-in-command of President Bush’s Office on Faith-Based Initiatives, has a new book detailing how the office was “used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/12/rove-faith-based/

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann had an exclusive report on the book last night, and part two of his report airs tonight at 8 PM ET.

ThinkProgress has obtained an excerpt from the book, set shortly after Bush’s 2001 inauguration:

Every other White House office was up and running. The faith-based initiative still operated out of the nearly vacant transition offices.

Three days later, a Tuesday, Karl Rove summoned <Don> Willett <a former Bush aide from Texas who initially shepharded the program> to his office to announce that the entire faith-based initiative would be rolled out the following Monday. Willett asked just how — without a director, staff, office, or plan — the president could do that. Rove looked at him, took a deep breath, and said, “I don’t know. Just get me a f—ing faith-based thing. Got it?” Willett was shown the door.

Kuo also writes that Rove referred to evangelical leaders as “the nuts,” and claims Rove deputy Ken Mehlman “knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly ‘nonpartisan’ events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.”