{"id":215,"date":"2008-09-01T18:52:34","date_gmt":"2008-09-01T18:52:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html"},"modified":"2008-09-01T18:52:34","modified_gmt":"2008-09-01T18:52:34","slug":"hurricane-gustav-rla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Gustav (R-La.)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If the Republicans had continued partying while the Hurricane smashed Louisiania, they might have been criticized for not getting it, again.  Instead, John McCain has stated that this is a moment to put country first. Delegations at the convention have raised money and will be, admirably, sending care packages.<br \/>\nBut when does their hyper concern go from being sensitive to exploitative?  At the convention Monday, they played a film of Rick Perry, the Republican governor of Texas declaring, &#8220;You&#8217;re seeing Republicans governors in Republican states doing a fabulous job taking care of the citizens &#8211; that&#8217;s what we do.&#8221;  The name of the website set up to help is not &#8220;Gustav Relief&#8221; or &#8220;Help the Gulf&#8221; or something like that. It&#8217;s www.CauseGreater.com, plucked from McCain&#8217;s regular speech line that Americans should serve &#8220;a cause greater than yourself.&#8221;<br \/>\nIf you go to that website, you are redirected to the John McCain website, where you can learn about Gustav-related charities &#8211; or buy McCain paraphernalia, watch a TV ad, or volunteer for the campaign. Click on the giant &#8220;Contribute&#8221; button at the top of the page, and you go not to Gustav relief but an area where you can contribute to McCain-Palin Victory 2008 fund.  This is likely just poor website navigation, not a nefarious plot to divert funds. But the confusion also may indicate that the party is hyper focused on how Gustav might help their cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If the Republicans had continued partying while the Hurricane smashed Louisiania, they might have been criticized for not getting it, again. Instead, John McCain has stated that this is a moment to put country first. Delegations at the convention have raised money and will be, admirably, sending care packages. But when does their hyper concern&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Hurricane Gustav (R-La.) - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hurricane Gustav (R-La.) - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If the Republicans had continued partying while the Hurricane smashed Louisiania, they might have been criticized for not getting it, again. Instead, John McCain has stated that this is a moment to put country first. Delegations at the convention have raised money and will be, admirably, sending care packages. But when does their hyper concern&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-09-01T18:52:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hurricane Gustav (R-La.) - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Hurricane Gustav (R-La.) - Steven Waldman","og_description":"If the Republicans had continued partying while the Hurricane smashed Louisiania, they might have been criticized for not getting it, again. Instead, John McCain has stated that this is a moment to put country first. Delegations at the convention have raised money and will be, admirably, sending care packages. But when does their hyper concern&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2008-09-01T18:52:34+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html","name":"Hurricane Gustav (R-La.) - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-09-01T18:52:34+00:00","dateModified":"2008-09-01T18:52:34+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/09\/hurricane-gustav-rla.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hurricane Gustav (R-La.)"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}