"Christian Right" Resorts to Dangerous Rhetoric in Supporting Trump

As regular readers know, in my view, the "Christian Right" has sold its soul to Donald Trump in exchange for promises of special rights for Christofascists which would in essence exempt religious extremists from the laws that bind other citizens.  Now, these zealots, particularly those that I refer to as "professional Christians" who use religion as a guise for enriching themselves and seizing political power are engaging in dangerous rhetoric that could well prompt extremists and the mentally unstable to resort to violence against those being depicted as enemies in a religious war.   History is full of examples of the horrific consequences of fusing religion with a self-serving political agenda: the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris when thousands of Protestants were murdered by Catholics, the wars of religion in Tudor England, the Thirty Years War in 17th century Europe that claimed 8 million lives, the persecution of "Old Believers" in 17th century Russia, the years of religious based violence in Northern Ireland, and, of course the violence and murder done by Islamic fundamentalists and ISIS. Just as disturbing is the statements of U.S. Attorney General William Barr - a strident opponent of LGBT rights - that appear aimed at inciting religious extremists.  A piece in LGBT Nation looks at this dangerous development:  

Religious right leaders, struggling to maintain power and influence – even in the chaotic White House – have been avowing lately that anyone who opposes Donald Trump is in league with the devil—literally.

In a conversation with fellow evangelical Eric Metaxas, Franklin Graham said that resistance to Trump was “almost demonic,” to which Metaxas replied, “It’s not almost demonic. You know and I know, at the heart, it’s a spiritual battle.”

Graham and Metaxas are hardly alone. Lesser known, but just as dangerous figures like Stephen Strang and Frank Amedia are making the same claim.

It’s easy to brush these claims off as the usual hysterical claims from the religious right. But in fact they represent a new—and dangerous—escalation in rhetoric. Saying you’re waging a culture war is one thing; but to say we’re locked in a battle between the forces of heaven and hell sets the stakes at the highest possible level. It makes sense that the same people who have unequivocally worshipped Trump, are doing whatever it takes to keep his affection – even if that means mimicking his incendiary words.

Moreover, it’s not only religious right leaders who are making this argument. No less a figure than Attorney General William Barr is echoing the sentiment . . . Barr went on a tear about “militant secularists” who are destroying society by removing religion from the public square.

Even worse was a speech that he subsequently gave to the Federalist Society . . . After claiming that Trump’s opponents — which Barr calls the “Left” —are “waging a scorched earth, no-holds-barred war of ‘Resistance’ against this Administration,” Barr accuses them of essentially worshipping a false god.

Barr then goes on to say that conservatives haven’t responded in kind, which puts them “at a disadvantage when facing progressive holy war.”

When the nation’s lead attorney says that the nation is engaged in a holy war and anyone opposed to the president is on the wrong side, we have entered into frightening territory – and just to be clear, Barr likens to cite LGBTQ progress as an example of secular assault.

Barr, Graham and the other would-be warriors are essentially using their increasing influential beliefs to suggest to conservatives that the political stakes are so high that only a nuclear, violent response will suffice.  

The logic of a holy war leads to the inevitable conclusion that any means are acceptable to stop the assault on God’s side. Trump’s violations of practical every political norm is not seen as a sin. It’s a virtue. He’s trying to save the Republic (or at least the Republicans) from the heathen barbarians who are fighting on Lucifer’s side.

This apocalyptic belief is going to be the main theme of the right’s leading into the 2020 election. Instead of trying to adjust to the Modern Age so that they can recruit new members, conservative evangelicals (and their Catholic counterparts, like Barr), prefer to circle the wagons and start shooting.

It’s a losing battle, because their numbers keep shrinking,which will only make them fight harder. After all, it’s a fight to the death.

As the exodus of younger generations - and even some older age groups - from religion accelerates, expect the vitriol of these modern day Pharisees and hate merchants to increase.  Sadly, sooner or later people will lose their lives or suffer serious harm because of  this rhetoric which is really about retaining political power and not furthering Christ's gospel message.

Why You Can’t Kill the Christian Right Yet

As noted in a post yesterday, the number of Americans identifying as Christians  is falling and the numbers of the "nones" is soaring.  Long term, this should be welcomed news to anyone who supports the concept of separation of church and state and who recognizes that religion's main fruit is hate and division.  The bad news is that evangelical Christians remain a metastasizing cancer in the Republican Party and they are increasingly becoming dominionists who want their toxic brand of Christianity to set public policy for America and seem only too happy to have America remain involved in crusades against non-Christian "infidels," especially in the Middle East.  Adding to the problem is the fact that the Christian Right has a large number of parasites both in the leadership of "family values" organizations and in the pulpits who continue to whip up persecution complexes among the mentally challenged ranks of their followers who seemingly will believe every liar and bogus conspiracy theory (ignorance, of course, is celebrated with these folks).  A piece in Salon looks at why sadly, we cannot count the Christian Right dead - at least not yet.  Here are highlights: 

The news cycle has been busy lately, so I don’t know if left-leaning political observers have yet had time to plan their victory dance over the latest Pew Poll on religion. But you can be sure that when they notice some of these numbers, we will soon be seeing another round of “ding dong the religious right is dead,” accompanied by the usual patting on the back and self-congratulations that goes with it. After all, something quite significant has started to shift, and at first glance it doesn’t bode well for social conservatives: There has been an 8 percent decline in the number of Americans identifying themselves as “Christian” since 2007, along with a 6 percent increase in the number who call themselves “atheist, agnostic, and otherwise religiously unaffiliated,” to nearly 23 percent of all Americans.

[T]he left has good reason to see the growth of non-believers as a welcome addition to their coalition. After all, it’s highly unlikely that these people will be welcomed into the party that boasts candidates who say things like Zach Dasher (the nephew of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson), who ran for congress in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.

Take presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who suggested that atheist government employees should be fired:

“Some of you are frustrated and even upset and angry about America, and I get it. And I say to you, the answer is as simple as it is that the answer to the phones in our hearts that God is ringing. When we register people to vote, when we get them to the polls to vote, when we hire the people that will take our values to this city, and when we fire the ones who refuse to hear not only our hearts, but God’s heart.”

[S]ecular voters are often more scientifically based and see an activist government as a useful tool to solve problems. They are hostile to ideas such as climate change denialism and creationism and are more tolerant of social change such as civil rights and marriage equality. There is no philosophical reason that secularists could not be conservatives — indeed, history is full of them. But the modern Republican party is so closely aligned with rigid social conservatism and so dependent upon the Christian Right as an organizing institution that most secularists are not at home in the party at all.

So this is good news, right?  Unfortunately, as Sarah Posner at Religion Dispatches ably demonstrates, that’s probably not correct. While it’s true that many Catholics and mainline Protestants have apparently switched to “unaffiliated” (which could mean many things) the evangelicals haven’t missed a beat . . . 

Posner points to studies showing that they have actually evolved over many decades of political involvement into a movement based on a “narrative of Christian nationalism.” She also notes that this might be what has driven some people out of their traditional religious homes. Unfortunately, the unaffiliated don’t have a shared identity or common institutions the way the Christian conservatives do, so they may not be much of a political counterweight.

Finally, and most importantly, the difference between the unaffiliated, atheist, secularist, “nones” — whatever you want to call them — and the Christian Right is the fact that the latter are a highly organized political machine that is controlled by professional political operatives like Ralph Reed, who runs the Faith and Freedom Coalition. It gets it’s people to the polls. Posner notes the depressing numbers:

This group [of religiously non-affiliated] is simply not a coherent political faction in and of itself. And I have no idea how one might organize such a group. It may not even be possible to organize them along the lines of their religiously unaffiliated status. So perhaps it would be best to simply stow the champagne and put away the party hats for the time being, and get back to work organizing voters on political grounds. That will likely sweep up most of these folks anyway, and would be more in keeping with America’s traditional understanding of the need for separation of church and state.

Unfortunately, that happens to be one tradition conservatives have completely abandoned.

National Review: Will the Virginia GOP Civil War Keep Virginia Purple?

Jennifer Rubin isn't the only one worried that the Virginia GOP will continue on its self-inflicted suicide death spiral.  The venerable National Review also has a piece that looks at the battle between those who would try to save the Virginia GOP and the Kool-Aid drinkers who are the root of the problem.  The column notes the national implications of how the civil war in Virginia plays out.   Unfortunately, thoughtful, reality based arguments do not play well with the Christofascists, Tea Party and white supremacist elements in today's Virginia GOP.   Here are excepts from the column that underscore the problem and the difficulty that will be involved in weeding out the cancerous extreme right elements in the party:

In Virginia, it’s easy to divide state Republicans into two groups. Most would draw some sort of line between the grassroots and the establishment — say, the Tea Party versus GOP loyalists — and those types of designations are indeed helpful.

But the most useful dichotomy might be this one: One group of Virginia conservatives advocates using the primary process to choose nominees; the other advocates nominating conventions. 

That’s a fairly wonky distinction, but it helps clarify the rift in Virginia’s GOP politics that helped pave the way to a once-inconceivable outcome: Governor Terry McAuliffe. It’s a rift that is deep, persistent, and very problematic for future conservative victories in the state.

It’s a proxy war, but a messy and important one — important not only to Old Dominion politics nerds, but also to anyone who’s interested in Mark Warner’s Senate seat or the state’s Electoral College votes in 2016. Virginia is a big deal. Therefore Virginia Republicans are a big deal. And, therefore, an insurmountable rift could have national implications.

At least, that’s the view from just north of the Potomac. Not everyone sees it that way. Rick Boyer, a homeschooling father, Liberty University graduate, longtime conservative activist in the Old Dominion, and chair of the Republican party in the state’s 22nd congressional district, says he’s not especially interested in intraparty reconciliation just yet.

“If you can’t mount a statewide campaign to win the party nomination, why do you think you can mount a statewide campaign to beat the Democrats?” he [Linwood Cobb, the GOP chairman in the seventh congressional district] asks.

The brewing conflict came to a head when a coalition of tea partiers, libertarians, social conservatives, and other grassroots activists organized to take over the Republican Party of Virginia State Central Committee (usually called State Central) in 2012 and then voted to have a nominating convention instead of a primary.

The race for Republican representative Frank Wolf’s old seat in Northern Virginia should be a bellwether for whether the two sides will coalesce behind one candidate.  Bobbie Kilberg, a long-time Republican operative and president and CEO of the Northern Virginia Technology Council, expects the race to be revealing. 

“The business community and centrists have not asserted their clout, and it’s time they did so,” she says. “Once they do so, you’ll have a conversation from strength about the direction of the party that would include all sides. So it will be a very interesting year.”

Not that much on the line, just a U.S. Senate seat and the possibility of keeping Virginia purple.

Rampant "Romnesia" Infects the GOP

In the wake of Tuesday's election results it is amazing hearing various conservatives who seem to be suffering extreme cases of "Romnesia" when it comes to their sudden memory loss as to things they previously said or stood by silently on as the GOP clown car and the pitchfork carrying Christofascists drove the GOP and Mitt Romney to defeat.  Andrew Sullivan has a roster of some of the more preposterous claims to conservative pundits that looks at some of the most insane of the electoral results predictions that can be found here.   In her defense, Kathleen Parker did write some point on columns reactions to GOP insanity and an almost intentional effort to alienate all by lily white far right voters.  One Example can be found here.  But then, she soon lurched back into GOP fantasy land as evidenced by this column.  Now, she has swung back in the direction of rationality conveniently forgetting her past columns and seeking to put the blame for the GOP crash on election day to the Republican Party - .i.e., the party base - rather that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and their failed ideas.  What she says - at least for the moment - is in fact correct.  One can only ask why she failed to continue to say it when it really counted.  Here are highlights from her column in the Washington Post:

The headline was inevitable: “What went wrong?”  Seriously?

The bubble in which most politicians and their staffs live is not just a metaphor, apparently. The answer has been so obvious for so long and in so many ways, one has to wonder what these people read in their spare time. Old issues of Boys’ Life?

If nothing else, one had to look only at the two political conventions. One was colorful, vibrant, excited and happy. The other was pale, moribund, staid and restrained. If the latter sounds like something in the final stages of life, you’re not far off.


Truth is often painful, and the days since President Obama’s reelection have been a salted slugfest. Amid the writhing, I rest my case.  Some Republicans stubbornly insist, of course, that the problem was that Romney wasn’t conservative enough. Really? In his heart, this may be true.   But the real problem is the Republican Party, which would not be recognizable to its patron saint, Ronald Reagan. The party doesn’t need a poll or a focus group. It needs a mirror. 

The truth is, Romney was better than the GOP deserved. Party nitwits undermined him, and the self-righteous tried to bring him down. The nitwits are well-enough known at this point — those farthest-right social conservatives who couldn’t find it in their hearts to keep their traps shut. No abortion for rape or incest? Sit down. Legitimate rape? Put on your clown suit and go play in the street.

Equally damaging were the primary leeches who embarrassed the party and wouldn’t leave the stage. Nine-nine-nine, we’re talking about you, Herman Cain. And Gov. Oops? You, too. And then there were Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann  .  .  .  .  Did they have a right to persist in their own fantasies? Sure. But not if they were serious about getting a Republican in the White House.

More to the point, the GOP seems willfully clueless. There’s a reason there are so few minorities in the party. There’s a reason women scrambled to the other side. There’s a reason Hispanics, including even Cuban Americans this time, went for Obama. 

The way forward is about love, not war, baby. Women’s reproductive rights need to come off the table. As Haley Barbour suggested long ago, agree to disagree. Compassionate immigration reform, including a path to citizenship, should be the centerpiece of a conservative party’s agenda.

Marginalize or banish those who in any way make African Americans, gays, single women or any other human being feel unwelcome in a party that cherishes the values of limited government, low taxes and freedom. A large swath of conservative-minded Americans are Democrats and independents by default.

Mitt Romney would have been a fine president and might have won the day but for the party he had to please.

I disagree with Parker on Romney.  As I have made clear in numerous post the guy was a flawed candidate at best.  However, she is point on in terms of the sickness that plagues toe GOP.  It is too bad that she did not remain consistent in her criticisms -  especially early on in the campaign.  Or better yet, during the GOP primaries.  One thing is clear:  until rational conservatives get over their "romnesia" about their own behavior/statements, the GOP most certainly will not begin to reform itself.

Inconvenient Facts For the Kool-Aid Drinking GOP

Recent Gallup survey results do not bode well long term for the GOP.  Not only do independent voters align with Democrats far more than Republicans as demonstrated by the first chart below from the Washington Post, but on many issues, but independents also far more accepting of others and different perspectives than the Christofascist/Tea Part controlled GOP as set out in the second chart.

The associated op-ed sums things up well as follows:

Republicans were only more permissive than Democrats and independents on three measures and they all had to do with the killing of people and animals — the death penalty, buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur and medical testing on animals. Interpret that as you will.

Independents were closer to Democrats than to Republicans on 13 of the 18 issues outlined. The only exceptions were medical research using embryonic stem cells, the death penalty, suicide and human cloning. (On cloning animals, Democrats and Republicans were both less permissive than independents, and in equal measure).

When people are asked to identify themselves by political ideology, Americans may appear to be center-right, but independents look more like Democrats than Republicans on moral issues.

This does not bode well for Republicans as the composition and conscience of the country continues to change. We are slowly becoming less religious, more diverse and increasingly open-minded.  That is completely at odds with today’s Republican Party.

In short, the GOP seems to be continuing towards its own Jones Town like mass suicide  not many years down the road.    Having sold its soul to the worse and most hate filled elements of the extreme  Christian, the GOP seems to have no rip cord to pull to avoid a very, very hard landing.

The True Face of the Anti-Gay Christian Right

I've always found the absolute hysteria demonstrated by anti-gay zealots to be surprising.  Yes, there are those like the men at Concerned Women for America and other anti-gay hate groups (Robert Knight springs to mind as does Peter LaBarbera) who likely are self-loathing closet cases as further evidenced by the recent study that linked homophobia to a acting out based on conscious or unconscious same sex attractions.  But other homophobes appear to be simply a bit mentally unstable.  A case in point, a woman who gave absolutely batshit crazy (and hate ladened) testimony to the Lincoln, Nebraska city council in opposition to a proposed ordinance that would add protections for LGBT citizens.  The video clip of Ms. Jane Svoboda's testimony has gone viral as it should.  She's spouting the standard craziness disseminated by anti-gay hate groups all the time, plus adding innovations of her own.  This is what these folks are really all about.  Her views are really little different the Empress of Hate, Victoria Cobb of The Family Foundation.  Cobb is merely a bit more discrete in announcing her anti-gay bigotry. In my opinion, this video should be required viewing for all voters who don't grasp the agenda of the Christianists:

  A piece in Huffington Post looks at the batshitery. Here are some highlights:

Video footage of a surprisingly graphic, homophobic rant has gone viral in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) blogosphere in the wake of this week's non-discrimination ordinance proposal hearings in Lincoln, Neb.

Originally featured on Towleroad, the clip features a woman identified as Jane Svoboda, who offers a series of bizarre observations on gay sex, HIV/AIDS, Hillary Clinton and even Judas Iscariot as she denounces the "Fairness Ordinance," a measure that would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the city’s non-discrimination law, in her testimony.

After stating that "a huge percent of gay men in school grounds molest boys, partly because they don't have AIDS yet," she adds, "Hillary Clinton's roommate four years in college was a gay woman. To avoid going gay like Clinton did, college students need single rooms and single gender dorms...A college woman is seduced with illegal Rohypnol to go gay."

And finally, she proclaims, "Jesus was kissed by Judas, a homo, who tried to sabotage Jesus' kind ideas. Do you choose!

Seven Reasons Obama Will Beat Mitt Romney

Click image to enlarge

I don't typically read the Washington Times since the publication often requires that one take a huge gulp of Kool-Aid before reading it.  However, there is an interesting column that lays out Mitt Romney's electoral problems and why he's likely to lose to Barack Obama.  Given the Washington Times' copyright policies, I will not publish quotes from the piece which can be found here.  However, I do want to summarize the points because I believe that they are valid and because some are of Romney's own creation.  Here's the summary of some of the points (read the article for the rest):

1. Romney is a radical capitalist who has furthered some of the most ruthless characteristics of unfettered capitalism while at Bain Capital.

2. Romney is utterly out of touch with average Americans and try as he might, he just can't relate to them.  Ditto for his wife despite her "stay at home mom" image.

3. Romney is a hostage of the Christofascists - as demonstrated by the quick demise of Richard Grenell - and he will find it difficult to now Etch A Sketch himself into a moderate thanks to Bryan Fischer and others who will continue to inflame the Kool-Aid drinker set.

4. Women are turned off by Romney's policies that despite Romney's efforts to dance around the subjects, track the Christianist opposition to abortion under any circumstances, contraception, and same sex marriage.

5. Romney is a hard sell to Hispanic voters because of his anti-immigration talk which aligns with the far right's animus towards Hispanics and immigrants.

6.  The GOP primaries force Romney to the right and he will be hard pressed to escape many of his words and positions.

7. If Ron Paul hasn't left the scene and may force Romney to tale positions unpopular with independents and moderates.

Quote of the Day: The GOP Elite and Gays

I am frequently chastised by some for being vehemently against today's Republican Party and some think I'm a Democrat because of it.  What I am is someone who wants logic and reason and some shred of compassion for the less fortunate to control how government policy is formulated.  That simply no longer happens in the GOP.  Worse yet, a Romney presidency would likely see things even get worse as Andrew Sullivan summarizes very well:

The gay-inclusive elements in the elites simply do not have the balls to tackle the religious right. And this is particularly true of Romney, as this case now proves. The Christianists gave Bush a pass on social issues because of his born-again Christianity. They trust Mormon Romney not an inch. And this week demonstrates without any doubt that Romney will therefore not be able to deviate from their wishes an iota. He has no room to maneuver. The notion that he could be a moderate on social issues in office is, alas, a pipe dream.

Do we really want policy being set by the Christianists?  I for one do not and those who still cling to the vision of a Republican Party that no longer exists need to wake up and face reality.

Has Romney Stirred Storm Over Gay Aide?

Shamelessly pandering to those I deem to be Christofascists and appearing to be controlled by their puppet strings can have a serious negative impact on voters outside of the Kool-Aid drinking alternate universe.  With his less than titillating personality problems, repeated Etch A Sketch reincarnations, being perceived as the willing tool of the extreme right is not a plus in a general election.  Particularly with the GOP appearing increasingly anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-minority and outright racist.  While the worse demagogues of the far right may be rejoicing that Richard Grenell was driven to resign, they may not have the last laugh.  No matter what Grenell's many flaws may be, all that will be remembered is that he was driven off by the Christofascists and that Romney was too cowardly to stand up to them.  If that cowardice is so evident now, what would it be like if Romney were elected?  A piece in the New York Times looks at Romney's apparent self-inflicted wound.  Here are excerpts:

It was the biggest moment yet for Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team: a conference call last Thursday, dialed into by dozens of news outlets from around the globe, to dissect and denounce President’s Obama record on national security.

 But Richard Grenell, the political strategist who helped organize the call and was specifically hired to oversee such communications, was conspicuously absent, or so everyone thought.  It turned out he was at home in Los Angeles, listening in, but stone silent and seething. A few minutes earlier, a senior Romney aide had delivered an unexpected directive, according to several people involved in the call. 

“Ric,” said Alex Wong, a policy aide, “the campaign has requested that you not speak on this call.” Mr. Wong added, “It’s best to lay low for now.” For Mr. Grenell, the message was clear: he had become radioactive. 

It was the climax of an unexpectedly messy and public dispute over the role and reputation of Mr. Grenell, a foreign policy expert who is gay and known for his support of same-sex marriage, his testy relationship with the news media and his acerbic Twitter postings on everything from Rachel Maddow’s femininity to how Callista Gingrich “snaps on” her hair. 

[T]hose close to Mr. Grenell, known as Ric, insist that when he had sought forceful support from those who had entrusted him with a major role, the campaign seemed to be focused, instead, on quieting a political storm that could detract from Mr. Romney’s message and his appeal to a crucial constituency.

“It’s not that the campaign cared whether Ric Grenell was gay,” one Republican adviser said. “They believed this was a nonissue. But they didn’t want to confront the religious right.” Like many interviewed, this adviser insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. 

[A]nother, more troubling, protest that was harder to ignore was taking shape among some Christian conservatives: Mr. Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage, had betrayed them by hiring a gay man and an outspoken supporter of the cause.  The day after Mr. Grenell was hired, Bryan Fischer, a Romney critic with the American Family Association, told nearly 1,400 followers on Twitter: “If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead.” The next day, the conservative Daily Caller published an online column that summed up the anger of the Christian right, linking Mr. Grenell’s hiring to the appointment of gay judges to the New Jersey Supreme Court. 

But the final straw, for Mr. Grenell, was the conference call on April 26. After being told not to speak, he felt deeply undermined, worrying it would erode his credibility with journalists who had expected to hear from him, friends said.   .  .   .  .  The day after the call, complaints from the religious right picked up steam. In the National Review on April 27, Matthew J. Franck wrote: “Whatever fine record he compiled in the Bush administration, Grenell is more passionate about same-sex marriage than anything else.” 

 

Christopher Barron, a founder of GOProud, a gay Republican group in Washington. [said] “It is an unforced error on their part.” He added, “It doesn’t bode well for the Romney campaign going forward if they couldn’t stand up to the most outrageous attacks about him being gay.”

Jim Talent, a former senator from Missouri who is a campaign adviser, called the episode a loss for the Romney campaign. “People with the kind of expertise that Ric has don’t grow on tree,” he said. “It’s a real setback for us, I think.”

The thought that would be Romney appointees will have to apparently be first vetted through Bryan Fischer and similar extremist hate merchants ought to scare the Hell out of independents and moderates.   The GOP has made a pact with the Devil in the form of the Christian Right and I hope it bites them in the ass big time.

The Republicans Are The Problem.

I'm sure some regular readers will be near foaming at the mouth over the title of this post and some of what I'm about to say, but just because the truth hurts doesn't make it any less the truth.  And the truth is that the GOP has turned into something foul, extreme and a danger to the country.  And fueling this decline of the GOP are the ignorance embracing hate filled Christianist and their allies in the Tea Party (in fact, the two factions typically overlap each other).  Coming from a family that once was almost all Republican going back for at least 60 years, what has happened to the GOP is not only disturbing, but also an indictment of the party leaders who first made a pact with the devil - i.e., the Christian Right - and in the process jettisoned all logic, reason and, I would argue, integrity and decency.  Nowadays, the more someone talks about their religion and feigned piety, generally, the more morally reprehensible they are in my view.  They hate the poor, they hate minorities, they hate immigrants, and, of course, they hate gays.  The better question is couched in terms of who don't they hate.  Yet the party leadership continues to prostitute themselves to these nasty, ignorance worshiping people.  A lengthy piece in the Washington Post aptly looks at why the GOP is now responsible for the gridlock in Washington and much else that is wrong in America.  Here are excerpts:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
 
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.   When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

 It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

[T]he forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress.

Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators,  .  .  . 

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington.  .   .  .  The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

 In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.   The results can border on the absurd: In early 2009, several of the eight Republican co-sponsors of a bipartisan health-care reform plan dropped their support; by early 2010, the others had turned on their own proposal

Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government,  .  .  . 

The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska called his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle.

And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.

Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.  If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change.

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.  .  .  .  Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?   Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be.

If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better. 

Severe Conservative Syndrome

As I often note, things within the Republican Party have become increasingly irrational and the embracing of ignorance and outright prejudice in many forms the norm. The CPAC gathering in Washington, D.C., certainly showcased the open hate and prejudice against gays, liberals, the poor, blacks, Hispanics and minorities of every stripe. It's as if these people want to erect a sign that says that only white, conservative Christians are welcome at the table of full citizenship. I continue to believe that this mind set is but a symptom of deeper psychological problems that encourage the persecution complex on ready display. In reality, its the conservative white Christians who are doing the persecuting of others, but you'd never take away that truth from their rantings. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that looks at the increasing toxicity within the GOP. Here are some highlights:

Mitt Romney has a gift for words — self-destructive words. On Friday he did it again, telling the Conservative Political Action Conference that he was a “severely conservative governor.” As Molly Ball of The Atlantic pointed out, Mr. Romney “described conservatism as if it were a disease.”

That’s clearly not what Mr. Romney meant to convey. Yet if you look at the race for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, you have to wonder whether it was a Freudian slip. For something has clearly gone very wrong with modern American conservatism.

Start with Rick Santorum . . . . Anyone with an Internet connection is aware that Mr. Santorum is best known for 2003 remarks about homosexuality, incest and bestiality. But his strangeness runs deeper than that.


For example, last year Mr. Santorum made a point of defending the medieval Crusades against the “American left who hates Christendom.” Historical issues aside (hey, what are a few massacres of infidels and Jews among friends?), what was this doing in a 21st-century campaign?

Nor is this only about sex and religion: he has also declared that climate change is a hoax, part of a “beautifully concocted scheme” on the part of “the left” to provide “an excuse for more government control of your life.” You may say that such conspiracy-theorizing is hardly unique to Mr. Santorum, but that’s the point: tinfoil hats have become a common, if not mandatory, G.O.P. fashion accessory.

Then there’s Ron Paul, who came in a strong second in Maine’s caucuses despite widespread publicity over such matters as the racist (and conspiracy-minded) newsletters published under his name in the 1990s and his declarations that both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Act were mistakes.

Finally, there’s Mr. Romney, who will probably get the nomination despite his evident failure to make an emotional connection with, well, anyone. The truth, of course, is that he was not a “severely conservative” governor. . . . . But Mr. Romney is seeking the Republican presidential nomination, and whatever his personal beliefs may really be — if, indeed, he believes anything other than that he should be president — he needs to win over primary voters who really are severely conservative in both his intended and unintended senses. . . . . his stump speeches rely almost entirely on fantasies and fabrications designed to appeal to the delusions of the conservative base.

How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. . . . My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad. For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy . . . . Over time, however, this strategy created a base that really believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.

The point is that today’s dismal G.O.P. field — is there anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economic conservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, a party that suffers from “severe” conservatism in the worst way. And the malady may take many years to cure.

The only piece that Krugman fails to fully emphasize is the correlation between the growing power of the Christian Right and the growing overall insanity and hatred that now so dominate the GOP.

Where are the GOP Moderates?

I often disagree with much of what columnist Nicholas Kristof has to say. But in a column in the New York Times, he provides a good history of the Republican Party and makes the case that it is today's far right extremists in the GOP who are the aberration and "Republicans in Name Only" a/k/a RINO's. The far right and hate-filled "family values" crowd have perverted the GOP into something ugly and Kristof wonders if there's any chance that the party will be able to return to its moderate past. The GOP of today is certainly NOT the party that I and most of my family once belonged to. Today, its hallmarks are the embrace of ignorance, a hatred of anyone who's not a white conservative Christian, and constant attacks on the religious freedom of all but the most extreme Christianists. Here are some column highlights:

The most embarrassing moments to watch this political season have occurred as Mitt Romney has pretended to be an angry, fire-breathing true conservative. The evidence suggests that in his soul he’s a moderate pragmatist . .

Newt Gingrich, Romney’s main rival for the Republican presidential nomination, is denouncing Romney with one of the ugliest slurs in the Republican lexicon: a Massachusetts moderate. Other moderate Republicans are savaged as RINOs — Republicans in name only — as if they emerged from an ugly mutant strain.

Yet, in fact, as a new history book underscores, it is the Gingriches and Santorums who are the mutants. For most of its history, the Republican Party was dominated by those closer to Romney than to social conservatives like Rick Santorum, and it is only in the last generation that the party has lurched to the hard right.

“Much of the current conservative movement is characterized by this sort of historical amnesia and symbolic parricide, which seeks to undo key aspects of the Republican legacy such as Reagan’s elimination of corporate tax loopholes, Nixon’s environmental and labor safety programs, and a variety of G.O.P. achievements in civil rights, civil liberties, and good government reforms,” Kabaservice writes. “In the long view of history, it is really today’s conservatives who are ‘Republicans in name only.’ ”

[T]he original Massachusetts moderates were legendary figures in Republican history, like Elihu Root and Henry Cabot Lodge. Theodore Roosevelt embraced progressivism as “the highest and wisest form of conservatism.” Few did more to promote racial integration, civil rights and individual freedoms than a Republican, Earl Warren, in his years as chief justice.

Dwight Eisenhower cautioned against excess military spending as “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.” Richard Nixon proposed health care reform. Ronald Reagan endorsed the same tax rate for capital gains as for earned income. Each of these titans of Republican Party history would today risk mockery for these views.

What happened? That’s a long and gradual story beginning with Senator Joe McCarthy’s success in galvanizing working-class suspicions of government elites and continues with an angry backlash at changing mores and liberalized abortion laws. Conservative Southern whites moved into the Republican Party. Newer media voices like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck made extremism seem congenial — while making bipartisanship feel treacherous.

[S]ocial conservatives staged a grass-roots overthrow of the moderate Republican apparatus in the late 1970s and early ’80s, and focused on abortion and gay rights. “Moderates simply gave up participating after being ostracized,” Bladine remembers. “It became almost impossible to nominate a Republican for statewide office who had any chance of winning in a statewide vote.”

The question becomes one of when and how - if it's even possible at this point - the GOP can be wrenched back from the haters and ignorance worshipers of the so-called "social conservatives" and Tea Party morons who are now the core of the GOP base. The recapture of the GOP needs to happen for the best interest of the country and a positive future. The current GOP only seeks to drag the nation backward in time.

'The Enemy' is Using 'Glee' to 'Bring Us Down'

Right Wing Watch does a wonderful job of showcasing the out right insanity - and often unvarnished hate - that is the face of the so-called Christian Right in America. Many of the alleged leaders of the movement most appropriately belong in mental institutions or at a minimum under constant mental health care. A case in point? James Robison, the founder of Life Outreach International - note how they ALWAYS have a "ministry to line the pockets financially - who believes that the enemies of America are using the television show Glee to destroy the nation. Here are highlights from Right Wing Watch:

The Religious Right is firmly convinced that the television show "Glee" is part of some conspiracy intend on "glamorizing homosexual conduct" in order to idoctrinate children.

And last week, while appearing on Glenn Beck, James Robison explained that the show, like Holywood in general, are being used by "the Enemy" to bring American down and turn the nation "away from God, away from truth":

You made a tremendous comment earlier in the week, you talked about "Glee." You talked about the incredible talent; the talent is so staggeringly great and you said "why can't we take great talent and have a great message?"

You see, the enemy - and you talked about it in "The Overton Window"- the principalities and powers in the realm of darkness and deception know how to take that which is highly effective and use it to their ends to deceive and really to bring us down, away from God, away from truth. They do it highly effectively, they're committed to it.

Christian Dominionists Warn GOP Against Nominating Mitt Romney

Once again the Christian Right Frankenstein monster that the GOP leadership happily created is threatening to derail the GOP in 2012 if Mitt Romney - gasp, a Mormon - is nominated to be the GOP candidate to oppose Barack Obama. While the real reason they hate Romney is his Mormon faith, a group of leading Christianist hate merchants has cobbled together a laundry list of supposed sins Romney has committed, not the least of which is to blame him for the advent of gay marriage in Massachusetts. Never mind that the Massachusetts Supreme Court played a pivotal role in marriage equality in that state. The question for the GOP leadership is when will it stand up to these vile and nasty people and exile them back to the political wilderness where they belong. Right Wing Watch has coverage on the ultimatum delivered by this group who's principal message is fear and hatred of all others who do not drink from the same vat of poisonous Kool-Aid. Here are some highlights:

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Right-wing activist and former California legislator Steve Baldwin has organized an open letter to “Conservative, Catholic and Evangelical Leaders” asking them to refuse support for Mitt Romney’s campaign for president. Already a number of activists including failed US Senate candidate and Tea Party hero Joe Miller; Rick Scarborough of Vision America; Brian Camenker of MassResistance; Linda Harvey of Mission America; Michael Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association; Ted Beahr of WND and Movieguide; Gary Glenn of American Family Association-Michigan, Kelly Shackleford of the Liberty Institute; Gary Kreep of the United States Justice Foundation; Floyd Brown of WND; Dick and Richard Bott of Bott Family Radio, and the leaders of a number of anti-choice groups have signed the letter.
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The letter says that “a Romney candidacy would be disastrous for the conservative movement and for the country,” writing that he is insincere in his conservative beliefs and “continues to support many aspects of the homosexual agenda even today.” The activists claim that “the flatly illegal charade of ‘gay’ marriage exists solely in Massachusetts due to Governor Romney’s illegal actions,” and lists numerous other issues including abortion rights and health care reform where Romney has reversed himself: “Romney has also been both in favor and against minimum wage legislation, capital gains taxes, gun control, amnesty for illegal aliens, campaign finance reform, the Kyoto agreement, gambling, gun control, and many other issues.”
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They conclude by warning that nominating Romney “would be a disastrous mistake”: Most disturbing is the key role Mitt Romney played in accelerating two of the greatest threats to our Judeo-Christian culture and free enterprise system: Homosexual marriage and government control of health care. In both instances, the actions Romney took – or didn’t take – on homosexual marriage and RomneyCare have done lasting damage to our country. . . . . As such, Romney has done more damage to America in his four years as Governor than any Democrat officeholder we can think of.
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I have no sympathy for the GOP. The leadership knowingly and deliberately courted these people and worse yet did much to give them legitimacy. It is they, not Mitt Romney who constitute a serious threat to constitutional government in the USA.

Confessions of A Former Southern Baptist, Liberty University Trained Pastor

I've often described the Christian Taliban in America as a clear and present danger to the rule of law and the continued governance of the nation under the U. S. Constitution. The Christiaists' goal is a theocracy with themselves in charge and where everyone else must be stomped under the Christianinists jackboot. Thus, it is interesting to hear a former Southern Baptist pastor who was trained at Jerry Falwell's lunatic Liberty University echo the sentiment. After being expelled from ministry for getting a divorce, Jason Childs had a come to Jesus moment and he came to see that the version of Jesus being peddled by Falwell, et al, is a pretty foul and nasty piece of work. Unfortunately, too few in the media are brave enough to call the Christianists out for what they are. He has a piece at AlterNet that looks at his conversion story. Here are highlights:
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I was a Liberty University-trained evangelical pastor. I was sure that I was right and that every other person not of my faith was going to burn in hell forever. I was taught that we as Christians should take this nation back, only to find out later that we never had it to begin with.
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After five years of teaching this homophobic, divisive message that has hurt so many millions of people in our world, I went through a divorce. The Southern Baptist Convention will not let you remain in the ministry after a divorce, so I had to think of something else to do with my life.
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I did see America, and the country I saw was very different from the one I was taught about by Jerry Falwell and my mentors at Florida Bible College. What I found was that this nation is filled with people from all walks of life, and from every different culture. I met thousands of people, from the beautiful forests of Washington state to the bayous of Louisiana. I found that these folks are not the wicked sinners I was taught about.
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I want you to know that the fundamentalist political movement is the beginning of a cultural revolution that will take our nation to a very dark place. You have to understand that this has been methodically planned and is being carried out with the utmost vigilance. In accordance with their worldview, my old friends do not in the least care about what you think. They are against democracy, and they are seeking to end the rule of the majority in our great country.
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They truly believe that if you have not been “saved,” you are living under a curse and are incapable of knowing what is best and that because of this you should be ruled over.
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While we watch the revolutions across the Middle East, we are seeing a great truth: that people have within them the natural desire to be free. It is so sad that as the people of the world are fighting for freedom, we here in the United States are going in the opposite direction. The far right, under the control of fundamentalists, is declaring an all-out war on human progress.
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As has been the case with religious zealots over the centuries, they are a root cause of human misery and have the blood of countless millions on their hands. They need to be stopped and identified for their treasonous behavior. The ridiculous deference and special rights given to the Christian Right needs to end now. Today we honor those who gave their lives for the United States. We cannot stand by while others engage in what can only be described as sedition against the U. S. Constitution.

Iowa May Turn G.O.P.’s Focus to "Social Issues" a/k/a Gay Bashing

As the New York Times reports, evangelical Christians - this country's version of the Taliban - who dominate in GOP primaries since the party is increasingly a sectarian party, are pushing whore like would be presidential candidates to see who can out do the others in terms of open anti-gay animus. Currently, Iowa Christianists (some are pictured at left) are getting special attention and the gay bashing is intense. The bigotry runs the gamut from Haley Barbour saying that amorous gay soldiers will stop the military from killing "bad guys," to thrice married serial adulterer Newt Gingrich promising to "slow down the gay agenda" - apparently in between his adulterous affairs -, and the always hate-filled aw shucks theocrat Mike Huckabee telling moronic listeners to "fight gay marriage even if it costs you your job." Right Wing Watch has video clips of all the "Christian love." Millions of Americans are unemployed, the nation's infrastructure is falling apart, and the nation is in economic and competitive decline, and all these haters worry about is making gays third class citizens or worse. These folks give the term ignorant Bible beaters a whole new meaning. Here are highlights from the Times story:
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Here in Iowa, whose caucuses next winter will open the campaign, social and religious conservatives are pressing the likely candidates on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion rather than on jobs, the budget deficit and other economic concerns that leaders of both parties expect to dominate the general election.

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[S]ome Republicans say, it could muddle the party’s message as it seeks to defeat President Obama. “We look like Camp Christian out here,” said Doug Gross, a Republican activist and former nominee for governor. “If Iowa becomes some extraneous right-wing outpost, you have to question whether it is going to be a good place to vet your presidential candidates.”

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While social conservatives have long wielded a greater influence in Iowa than in many early-voting states, a bitter fight here over same-sex marriage and rivalries among some of the state’s conservative leaders have amplified the issues and might help define the message of Republican candidates in ways that could resonate nationally.

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No events have focused solely on the economy, job creation or even the health care law that is widely reviled among Republicans. Instead, the most prominent platforms for candidates to introduce themselves have been a number of forums — three last week alone — before socially conservative audiences in Iowa.

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For Republican candidates, social conservatives have the only established political structure in Iowa, with churches, home-schooling groups and a variety of competing organizations providing ready-made lists of voters. There is no comparable network for fiscal-minded or moderate Republicans.

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The Iowa Straw Poll, the political carnival in Ames that provides an early test of support, is only five months away, leaving little time for campaigns to build their organizations. That makes the existing network of social conservative groups even more important.

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As scary as the nutters may be in Iowa, the good news is that they may help skew the GOP field so far to the right that the chance of a GOP victory in 2012 will be all but impossible. If that happens, it will be a just reward for the GOP which sold out principle and the separation of church and state for short term victories.

Alaska Wingnut Wants Sex Outside Marriage Made Illegal

I and others have said before that the Christianist jihad against LGBT citizens is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the true Christianist agenda. Much much more would be criminalized if they had their way and inflicted a theocracy on the nation. Contraception would illegal, so would premarital sex and anything comprising "sodomy" under the far right definition. Now one nut job in Alaska - an appointee of Governor Sean Parnell to the panel that nominates state judges - has come out in the open and testified that he would like to see Alaskans prosecuted for having sex outside of marriage. The loon is Don Haase (pictured above left). Oh, an did I mention that he has held a leadership role in Eagle Forum Alaska? It certainly explains his batshit crazy insanity. Here are some highlights from Anchorage Daily News:
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Gov. Sean Parnell's appointee for the panel that nominates state judges testified Wednesday that he would like to see Alaskans prosecuted for having sex outside of marriage.
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The candidate, Don Haase of Valdez, also admitted under questioning by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that his official resume failed to disclose his leadership role in Eagle Forum Alaska, which advocates for social conservative issues. He most recently was president of the organization, but resigned when he learned of his nomination, he said.
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By the time the hearing on Haase ended -- there was some 40 minutes of questioning by the panel's three Democrats, some questions suggesting that Haase had attempted to scrub clean a record of extreme beliefs -- his nomination may turn on an issue of geography, not personal values.
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Haase would replace a member from Ketchikan, whose departure leaves the council without a public representative from Southeast Alaska's First Judicial District. Valdez is in the third district, headquartered in Anchorage. The state constitution mandates that council appointments be considered by "area representation." That has been interpreted to mean one public member from each of the state's three most populous judicial districts, . . .
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Haase -- pronounced "hays" -- has done electrical and mechanical design work at the trans-Alaska pipeline terminal in Valdez since 2000, first working for Veco, then for CH2M Hill. . . . . His resume listed such extracurricular activities as his roles in producing and starring in local plays for tourists and being a member of the Valdez Snowmachine Club.
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One blog post on the Eagle Forum Alaska site praised efforts at criminalizing adultery in Michigan, and Paskvan asked Haase if he thought it should be a felony in Alaska.
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"I don't see that that would rise to the level of a felony," Haase said.
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Paskvan: "Do you believe it should be a crime?"
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Haase: "Yeah, I think it's very harmful to have extramarital affairs. It's harmful to children, it's harmful to the spouse who entered a legally binding agreement to marry the person that's cheating on them."
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Haase said he opposed judicial activism, and cited the U.S. Supreme Court's decision legalizing abortion in Roe v. Wade as an example. In his campaign for state House last year, Haase made his opposition to abortion a central theme. Abortion is also a prominent theme on the Eagle Forum Alaska blog.
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One has to wonder how Governor Parnell came up with Haase as a nominee. He's clearly unqualified in terms of selecting judicial appointees - not to mention a religious extremist nut. I wonder if Haase is one of Sarah Palin's know nothing crowd?

The GOP's Disingenuous Anti-Union Agenda

The GOP that I once knew - e.g., where one didn't need to be ignorant, bigoted and a religious extremist - fades away into the past more and more with each passing day. The current anti-union efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere likewise show the lie of the self proclaimed party of "family values." While budget cutting is raised as the excuse for seeking to destroy public worker unions, the real agenda is to crush those who hold different political beliefs and to open the door for rapacious conduct by big business. It's no coincidence that the Koch brothers nasty finger prints can be found in what's happening in Wisconsin. Yes, the same Koch brothers whose enterprises are major polluters and who would reduce regulations that inhibit their destruction of the environment. If this GOP effort prevails, we can expect more and more of a return to the robber baron era where we will have the extremely rich and everyone else is struggling to survive. Not exactly the image of what the Gospel message preached. But then, the GOP uses God and the Bible merely to dupe the stupid and ignorant who fail to realize the agenda they support ultimately has them in the bull's eye as well. The New York Times has a editorial that looks at this increasingly distressing phenomenon. Here are some highlights:
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Like a wind-whipped brush fire, the mass union protests that began in Madison, Wis., last week have spread to the capitals of Ohio and Indiana where Republican lawmakers also are trying to cripple the bargaining power of unions — and ultimately realize a cherished partisan dream of eradicating them. In each case, Republican talk of balancing budgets is cover for the real purpose of gutting the political force of middle-class state workers, who are steady supporters of Democrats and pose a threat to a growing conservative agenda.
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Conservative leaders in most states with strong unions have in the past generally made accommodations with organized labor, often winning support on social issues in return. That changed this year after wealthy conservatives poured tens of millions of dollars into the election campaigns of hard-right candidates like Mr. Kasich and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
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As Eric Lipton reported in The Times on Tuesday, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have long been staunch union opponents, were among the biggest contributors to Mr. Walker. (Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group financed by the Kochs, will begin running anti-union broadcast ads in Wisconsin in the next few days.)
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Some public sector unions have contracts and benefits that are too rich for these times, but even when they have made concessions, Republican officials have kept up the attack. The Republicans’ claim to be acting on behalf of taxpayers is not believable.
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In Wisconsin, union leaders agreed to concessions requested by Mr. Walker: to pay nearly 6 percent of their wages for pension costs, up from nearly zero, and double payments for health insurance. At that point, most governors would declare victory and move on. Instead, Mr. Walker has rejected union concessions and won’t even negotiate. His true priority is stripping workers of collective-bargaining rights and reducing their unions to a shell. The unions would no longer be able to raise money to oppose him, as they did in last year’s election, easing the way for future Republicans as well.
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Never mind that the union workers have families, children to raise and bills to pay. Nope, it's only the agenda of nasty individuals like the Koch brothers that matter to today's GOP regardless of the bullshit they dispense to the Kool-Aid drinkers of the Christian Right and the Tea Party. Hasn't anyone figured out that when the middle class is killed off, there's going to be a vastly reduced purchasing power to revive the economy?