The GOP's Hunt for Heretics

One of the main reasons I left the GOP quite a few years ago now was because I did not subscribe to the fusing of fundamentalist Christianity with the party platform. Indeed, with the Christian Right take over of the GOP, one needed to either become a Kool-Aid drinker or leave. I found the whole situation an affront to the separation of church and state. Obviously, I chose to leave. The mindset I saw, however, continues and the hunt for "heretics" and "RINOS" continues unabated. One cannot deviate from the far right agenda or else the next thing you know, the mob that constitutes the party base is out to burn you at the stake. Kathleen Parker - a conservative with a brain and a conscience - has been doing a terrific job exposing the growing lunacy that grips the GOP today. She has a column today in the Washington Post that looks at how newly elected Senator Scott Brown has already made himself a heretic within the party. One cannot disagree or desire serious discussion of issues. Here are some highlights:
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The RINO hunt is back on, and the coveted trophy is Scott Brown. Inevitably and predictably, the new senator from Massachusetts -- Mr. 41, Mr. I-Drive-A-Truck, tea party poster dude -- has disappointed his base by, alas, representing his constituents. It's the purity test all over again; only this time, the stakes are high and the weird are turning seriously pro.
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Not that the tea partiers are weird, not most of them, anyway. But some are at risk of flying off into the blood-red zone of wing-nuttery. One of the sessions at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) questioned whether Abraham Lincoln was "friend or foe."
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Brown came under fire from social conservatives barely a week into his new job, even though his pro-choice position was well-known, at least to readers of this column.
Now he's caught the attention of fiscal conservatives and tea partiers who, though they favored Brown for his anti-health-reform and anti-stimulus positions, now call him a traitor for supporting a cloture motion on the Democrats' $15 billion jobs bill.
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These true conservatives and RINO-hunters are, to put it mildly, a problem for any candidate or incumbent who tries to speak bipartisan, which translates into "treason." The hunt for RINOs isn't new. Ask John McCain. Or John Avlon, author of the new book "Wingnuts," who traces the mainstreaming of the hyperpartisan hunt for heretics to the George W. Bush administration. He cites, for example, Monica Goodling, the Justice Department White House liaison who imposed social conservative litmus tests on prospective employees.
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Writes Avlon: "Hunting for heretics pretends to be a principled fight for ideological purity, but behind that mask is an uglier impulse, an attempt to intimidate and insist on conformity . . . a reminder of what the Czech dissident-turned-president Václav Havel once wrote: 'Ideology offers human beings the illusion of dignity and morals while making it easier to part with them.' "
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It continues to be disturbing how a political party that once prided itself on rational thought, unobtrusive government and religious tolerance has become such a theocratic coven without any true morals or compassion.