As the last post concludes, the Republican Party has become the home of religious crazies and moderates are no longer welcome. How did this happen one might ask. Well, Muriel Kane has a good explanation over at Raw Story which traces part of the genesis to Christian Reconstructionist who would abolish the Constitution and make the Bible the law of the land. Fortunately, their plans have not panned out as they would want in the last two campaign cycles, but nonetheless they are inflicting their poisonous social policies on a large scale. Proposition 8 is but the latest and worst fruit of the Reconstructionists' efforts. It is crucial that their agenda be put exposed to the strong light of day and repudiated so that voters are not unknowingly co opted into their sinister plot. What Kane describes in California also applies to how the Republican Party of Virginia has been converted into an extremist organization. Here are some column highlights:*
The Protect Marriage Coalition, which led the fight to pass an anti-gay marriage initiative in California, is now suing to shield its financial records from public scrutiny. . . . Although public access advocates believe this sweeping demand for donor anonymity has little chance of success, it does point up the secretive and even conspiratorial nature of much right-wing political activity in California.
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The man who more than any other has been associated with this kind of semi-covert activity over the past 25 years is reclusive billionaire Howard Ahmanson. Ahmanson is a Christian Reconstructionist, a devout follower of the late R.J. Rushdoony, who advocated the replacement of the U.S. Constitution with the most extreme precepts of the Old Testament, including the execution -- preferably by stoning -- of homosexuals, adulterers, witches, blasphemers, and disobedient children.
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As absurd as this Reconstructionist agenda may seem, the success of Proposition 8 demonstrates the ability of what is sometimes called the "Christian Taliban" to pursue its covert objectives behind the screen of seemingly mainstream initiatives and candidates.
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In 2008, however, a reborn ProtectMarriage.com, flush with nearly a million dollars in funding from Howard Ahmanson and tens of millions from other doners, succeeding in getting Proposition 8 placed on the ballot and approved by 52% of the voters. Proposition 8 is now California law -- at least for the moment, pending challenges to its constitutionality -- and ProtectMarriage.com has turned its attention to demanding that all 18,000 existing same-sex marriages be declared invalid.
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At a Reconstructionist conference in 1983, Johnson outlined an early version of the strategy we see operating in California today. ... The key for the Christian Right was to be able to: 1) remove or minimize the advantage of incumbency, and 2) create a disciplined voting bloc from which to run candidates in Republican primaries, where voter turn out was low and scarce resources could be put to maximum effect. ...
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Although the Christian Right never achieved its original goal of taking over California state government -- which may be why Ahmanson and Johnson have turned their attention to passing socially conservative initiatives instead -- it has been far more successful in establishing dominance over that state's Republican Party.
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"From radical fringe to kingmakers in a decade — how did they do it? 'Basically, there's two places you have influence: one is in the nominating process in the primaries, where you can elect people in ideological agreement with your views, and the other is in the party structure,' says former CRA vice president John Stoos, a former gun lobbyist, member of the fundamentalist Christian Reconstructionist movement, and senior consultant to the State Assembly."
*To many who voted for it, Proposition 8 may have been no more than a nostalgic attempt to keep a changing world more like the way it used to be. But for Reconstructionists like Ahmanson, Johnson, and Stoos, it clearly represents something else -- a dramatic first step towards "the total integration of biblical law into our lives."
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