Webster (R-FL) Running Vs. McCarthy All Up In There With Whackaloon IBLP That "Taught" Josh Duggar

Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) is running as the alternative to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to succeed John Boehner as Speaker of the House. He also has a decades-long affiliation with the Institute in Basic Life Principles, the controversial ministry whose founder, Bill Gothard, resigned last year after more than 30 women accused him of sexual harassment. As TPM reported earlier this month, IBLP subjected young followers to victim-blaming “counseling” for rape, as well as grueling work schedules at its facilities for little or no pay, requiring women to engage in gendered tasks that included scrubbing carpets on their hands and knees.

Webster’s association with IBLP and its homeschooling program, the Advanced Training Institute, made national headlines when he first ran for Congress in 2010. Alan Grayson, the firebrand incumbent Democrat, criticized Webster, who had served 28 years in the Florida legislature, in an ad characterizing him as “Taliban Dan.” The ad showed clips from a Webster speech to an IBLP conference during which he spoke of a biblical command that wives submit to their husbands. Webster, who went on to win the election, insisted the clips were taken out of context.

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Webster has claimed that the “Hedge of Thorns” prayer he learned at the legislative seminar has protected him, his family, and his congressional district from Satan. A 1990 ATI newsletter also describes how Webster “began to pray in the name and through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, that God would rebuke Satan and all his principalities from any evil attack in his district.” Webster and his family were featured in a 2002 newsletter, which described how he “looked to the Lord for a campaign plan, studying the Scriptures in Psalms and Proverbs that relate to leadership and government.” He continued to speak at IBLP seminars, including in 2007 and 2010. A former ATI member recalled Gothard inviting the entire Webster family to the stage at the 2007 Nashville conference, declaring, “Wouldn't it be great to one day have a President Webster?” That, she said, was met with “loud applause.”

Despite scrutiny over the years that culminated in Gothard’s 2014 resignation and declining enrollments, IBLP continues to keep committed families, including Webster’s, under its wing. One of Webster’s sons, John, married Alyssa Bates, daughter of IBLP board member Gil Bates, patriarch of another mega-family and friends of the Duggars, which has its own reality television show on the UpTV network. Another son, Jordan, met his future wife, Olivia Fredrickson, while both were working at IBLP headquarters, according to the couple’s blog. In May 2014, two months after Gothard resigned from IBLP, Josh Duggar—who a year later would himself be embroiled in a sex abuse scandal—spoke at an IBLP conference in Nashville. Duggar, who at the time was the executive director of Family Research Council Action, lamented Congressional gridlock but acknowledged the presence of an ally at the conference.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/dan-webster-speaker-running-iblp-bill-gothard