What Plantation Is Jim DeMint Living On?

Lunacy seems to be the main attribute of Republicans.  Here in Virginia we have Bob Marshall and Ken Cuccinelli and at the national level there's former - thank god it's "former - U.S. Senator Jim DeMint who now heads up the Heritage Foundation.  DeMint recently caused controversy through utterly insane statements he made about slavery and who brought freedom to American blacks.  Once upon a time the Heritage Foundation had some credibility - it came up with the blue print for Romneycare and ultimately, Obamacare - but now it has moved off into "La La Land" under DeMint.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at DeMint's batshitery.  Here are highlights:

I once had this idea for a play about God, a comedy, in which the audience would be introduced to a series of casuists and charlatans and braggarts and bloviators, and they’d be carrying on, lecturing away on topics large and small with serene self-confidence. There’d be the sound of thunder and perhaps a puff of smoke, and from the wings, God would appear. He or She would, over the course of the three acts, take on numerous corporeal forms—white man, black woman, Asian man, Arab woman, et cetera—but in each guise would admonish the speaker: “No, asshole. You’re totally wrong. How do I know? Because I’m God, and you’re wrong.” 

I don’t know if I’ve ever wished it more than I did two days ago, when Jim DeMint, the ex-senator and Heritage Foundation head who defines the words casuist and charlatan and braggart and bloviator and about 262 others that are worse, said that the federal government of the United States did nothing to end slavery. The salient words:

Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately, there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God. But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government.

I beg of you, don’t do DeMint the honor of thinking him merely stupid. He’s probably that, in some way. Certainly those sentences add up to a mountain of stupid, a Himalayan range of it. Yet at the same time, a statement this insane can’t be propelled merely by stupidity. A denial of reality this whole, this pure, requires, I think, some thought, some premeditation. Dwell with me on this for the moment.

Today’s radical conservatives like DeMint want to destroy government. This means in the first instance discrediting everything government does in the present. That, we’re all plenty familiar with. It’s a lot of what we fight about all the time.

But the project also includes history—proving that nothing good that ever happened in history was done by the government.
How, as a radical conservative today, and especially a Southern one, and especially one from the state (South Carolina) that started the Civil War (first to advance nullification, first to secede, first shots fired), are you supposed to explain that war? And how are you supposed to explain slavery? Tough ones. If you ever visit any of those crackpot websites I look at sometimes, you’ve seen, for example, the commonly advanced idea that the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery, it was about states’ rights and economics and so on. I guarantee you that notion will show up pretty quickly in this very comment thread.

DeMint’s “conscience of the American people” x’s out of history the Emancipation Proclamation, which strikes me as an act of the federal government (a presidential order); also the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery and, as an amendment to the Constitution, was surely an action of the government. It also x’s out the war itself, fought to the end, no matter what today’s Confederate revisionists say, to wipe out slavery once and for all.

DeMint doesn’t have a legitimate difference of opinion. He has a wholly ideological one, designed not to spur historical debate but to justify his miserly posture toward contemporary politics.And so every sentence that came out of his mouth was just utter nonsense. But not just that--premeditated, pernicious, and malicious nonsense, spun to serve contemporary ends like fighting the delivery of health coverage to millions.

As I have said before, I increasingly do not see how decent people can remain Republicans.  As for DeMint, he conveniently ignores how the Southern Baptist Convention came into being - to protect and maintain slavery.

Cuccinelli: The First Shutdown Casualty?

Self-styled conservative columnist is at it again and calling out the Republican Party for its batshitery in a new column in the Washington Post.  Sadly, she fails to sufficiently recognize the fact that Ken Cuccinelli is simply not a palatable candidate for anyone out side of The Family Foundation and extremist circles.  She is correct, however, that the GOP forced government shutdown did noting to help Cuccinelli in Northern Virginia, the home region of nearly a third of Virginia voters.  Hampton Roads, the second most populous region also suffered from the shutdown.  Here are column excerpts:

Cuccinelli trails in voter-rich Northern Virginia by 18 points (McDonnell won in the D.C. suburbs). Without the Libertarian Robert Sarvis in the race, Cuccinelli still trails by 11 points. Cuccinelli is too conservative, according to 54 percent of the voters. 

This surprises no one who lives in Northern Virginia — where the anti-Cuccinelli ads are prominent and where women, business people and moderate Republicans are more likely to roll their eyes or respond with utter disdain when asked what they think of Cuccinelli. People who have never in their lives voted against a Republican at the top of the ticket will tell you in essence, ”I have my limits.” They use words like “extreme” or even “nut” to describe him. It’s not merely that they won’t vote for him; they in effect want you to know he’s not their kind of governor. (“I’m a conservative, but. . . ” they often begin.)

The problem is not Cuccinelli personally or his campaign more generally; it is that he embodies the traits non-conservatives and some conservatives dislike about the GOP these days. If “he ran a rotten campaign” means “he ran as himself,” well then, yes, it has been a rotten campaign. If nothing else, voters know Cuccinelli is a rock-ribbed conservative. (If they had any doubt, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is campaigning for him around the state.) That’s currently a bad thing. By a 53 to 36 percent margin, people have  a negative view of the tea party, and by a 51 to 30 percent margin they blame the GOP for the shutdown. 

[T]his is a repudiation of the essence of Cuccinelli — the mentality that brought us the government shutdown, that decries fellow Republicans as disloyal for objecting to misguided tactics and that obsesses on social issues and sides with anti-immigrant groups. Rather than blame the Cuccinelli campaign, conservatives should acknowledge his candidacy is the first causality of the Cruz/DeMint shutdown and the revival of the far right. In once-Republican Virginia, that sort of candidate can’t win. Conservative pundits, third-party groups and GOP fundraisers would be wise to wake up and face reality — a double-digit deficit in a swing state means people don’t like what the hard right is offering. Maybe it’s time to stop making excuses for the political antics and approach that will drive the GOP over the cliff unless there is a serious course correction.

The problem the GOP faces is that its base despises reality and prefers to live in its own alternate universe.  There is no way the religious extremists at The Family Foundation can or will moderate their positions.  Likewise, the white supremacist will not suddenly change their views.  Rather, these elements must be driven from positions of influence in the GOP.  Never again should a designated hate group like Family Research Council be allowed to draft the social issues portion of the GOP national platform. 

GOP Senate Candidate Addresses Neo-Confederate Group That Promotes Secessionism

Only in today's Republican Party and in the Deep South will one find a candidate for the United States Senate appearing at a conference of Neo-Confederates who advocate secession.  Welcome to GOP dysfunction writ large.   Seemingly, there is no limit to what is acceptable in today's GOP.  The crazier and more extreme, the more welcome batshitery is within the party base.  All of which, in my view relates back to the rise of the Christofascists in the Republican Party.  Only the broad influence of those who deny science, deny objective reality and oppose all forms of modernity can explain Chris McDaniel who is in the words of Mother Jones, taking the "GOP Civil War" to a new level.  Here are highlights from the Mother Jones piece:

Chris McDaniel is taking the "GOP Civil War" to a new level. Two months ago, the tea party-backed Mississippi Senate candidate addressed a neo-Confederate conference and costume ball hosted by a group that promotes the work of present-day secessionists and contends the wrong side won the "war of southern independence." Other speakers at the event included a historian who believes Lincoln was a Marxist and Ryan Walters, a PhD candidate who worked on McDaniel's first political campaign and wrote recently that the "controversy" over President Barack Obama's birth certificate "hasn't really been solved." 

McDaniel, a state senator, is challenging incumbent Republican Sen. Thad Cochran in next summer's GOP Senate primary. After announcing his run last week, McDaniel quickly picked up endorsements from the Club for Growth and the Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a prominent backer of the tea party. Both groups are key players in the internal GOP battle between establishment-minded Republicans and tea party insurgents and are backing right-wing challenges to incumbent Republicans whom they deem insufficiently conservative.  


With their endorsements of McDaniel, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Club for Growth have shown just how far they are willing to go in terms of embracing the far right to prosecute their war for the soul of the party. In August, McDaniel addressed a neo-Confederate conference in Laurel, Miss., near his hometown of Ellisville. A local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), the Jones County Rosin Heels, hosted the two-day event, which the group described in invitations as a "Southern Heritage Conference" for "politically incorrect folks."

The Rosin Heels does more than regret the outcome of the Civil War. Its monthly newsletter routinely features articles and essays advocating for present-day secession. Its August newsletter highlighted the seven-year-old "Burlington Declaration" from the First North American Secession Convention, which stated that the right of secession was a "[truth] of natural law and the human experience."  . . . .A note from the editor stated that "we are living in the times that Jefferson Davis predicted would one day come," in which the conflicts that presaged the Civil War would flare up again. The June issue compared Obama's policies to the ravages of Reconstruction: "Our people have had to put up with for the last FIFTEEN DECADES!!!"

McDaniel was joined at the Southern Heritage Conference by Al Benson, a historian from Louisiana, who talked about his book Red Republicans & Lincoln Marxists, which speculates that Lincoln's actions during the Civil War were influenced by the writings of Karl Marx.

Hobnobbing with birthers and Lost Causers may not be an impediment for McDaniel as he tries to dethrone Cochran—he is, after all, in Mississippi. According a 2011 survey from Public Policy Polling, only 47 percent of Mississippians—and 21 percent of Mississippi Republicans—were satisfied with the outcome of the Civil War.

Again, only in today's insane GOP would folks like McDaniel be taken seriously.

Meet The Press 6/30/13 - The Disingenuous Lies of Gay Marriage Opponents

Watching Meet the Press this morning where a discussion of this week's SCOTUS rulings on gay marriage took place, there were times when I wanted to throw something at the television as Ralph Reed (who I met years ago at a political event and who candidly sent my Gaydar into overdrive), Jim DeMint and other Christofascist puppets spouted the usually anti-gay lies and untruths.  They likewise made it clear that they believe that minorities should have no rights unless and until the majority deems to allow them to have them.   

The irony, of course, is filled with examples of where the majority was wrong, especially morally, in the way that minorities have been persecuted and deprived of rights: slavery, segregation, the treatment of women as chattel, hatred towards Jews,, etc.  The list is too long to enumerate, although I will point out two things.  First, in 1938, despite knowledge that atrocities against and the persecution of Jews was occurring in Germany, a Fortune poll found that two-thirds of the American public favored barring Jewish refugees from coming to America.  And when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling in Loving v. Virgina, interracial marriage had a lower approval level with the American public than gay marriage enjoys today.  Rather than being right, the majority is all too often wrong.  Dead wrong in the case of opposing entrance of Jewish refugees in the 1930;s.

The other thing that became abundantly clear from the interviews is that religious based animus towards gays and our families is the primary motivation of the "godly Christian" crowd.  Ralph Reed tried to float the canard that gay couples make inferior parents and without naming it by name relied on the fraudulent Christian Right funded Regnerus "study."  When confronted by David Gregory with he fact that the study only had relevance on broken homes, Reed refused to answer.  The same thing happened when Rachel Madow asked Jim DeMint to explain how same sex marriage harmed heterosexual marriage.  He could not give one concrete response and only reverted back to the usual blather about children needing a mother and father.

The sad reality is that these "godly folks" truly care nothing about the lives they damage or ruin.  When it comes to divorce, no one has a higher divorce rate than Evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt.   And banning gay marriage does nothing to (i) reduce the heterosexual divorce rate, or (ii) make gay and lesbian headed families miraculously disappear.  All it does is harm our children and deprive us of rights and benefits so that assholes like DeMint and Reed can feel superior.  It's sickening and it is diametrically opposed to the Gospel message.

Anti-Hispanic Racist Resigns from Hertitage Foundation

As noted before, the Heritage Foundation's first big venture under Jim DeMint - a homophobic racist in my estimation - on immigration reform continues to be a disaster for the organization.  Now, as damage control continues Jason Richwine, one of the authors of the much attacked report, has resigned.   Making the situation even more damaging for the Heritage Foundation is new information that Richwine also wrote pieces for a white "nationalist" website where he tried to depict Hispanics as more prone to committing crimes and criminal conduct.  Combined with his previously announced views that Hispanics will never have the intellect and intelligence of white American, the new revelations paint a telling picture.  Sadly, Richwine seems to have worked to put forth a mindset that would be popular with the racists and white supremacists who populate much of the GOP base.  Here are highlights from two Washington Post stories:

Jason Richwine, the co-author of a controversial immigration study released this week by the Heritage Foundation, tells Post Politics that he has resigned his position with the organization.

“Yes, that’s right,” Richwine wrote in a brief e-mail. Heritage confirmed that he resigned.

Complicating matters were a series of revelations about Richwine, including that he had written a doctoral thesis at Harvard University arguing that the United States should focus its immigration efforts on those with high IQs and that he had written for a Web site that describes itself as “nationalist.”

Yahoo’s Chris Moody has the story:

Heritage Foundation Analyst Jason Richwine, the co-author of a study claiming the immigration reform bill pending in the Senate would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, wrote two articles in 2010 for a website founded by Richard Spencer, a self-described “nationalist” who writes frequently about race and against “the abstract notion of human equality.”

Spencer is now the chairman of the Montana-based National Policy Institute, an organization that describes itself as a think tank for “White Americans.”

Richwine’s articles for AlternativeRight.com, “Model Minority,” published on March 3, 2010, and “More on Hispanics and Crime,” published the next day, push back on an American Conservative essay that argued that some conservatives have over-hyped the crime rate among Hispanics.

 

Far Right Heritage Foundation Report Distorts Immigration Reform

While I am glad he's out of the United States Senate, Jim DeMint is still busy peddling his lies and insanity from the pulpit of the Heritage Foundation - an organization that seems Hell bent on losing all credibility outside of Kool-Aid drinking circles.   How else to explain its new position paper on the consequences of immigration reform and looks more like the work of the KKK or other white supremacists groups.  The truth is that the far right wants no immigration reform because its spittle flecked angry white base cannot abide the fact that whites are headed toward losing majority status in America and with that change many of the privileges that they have enjoyed for centuries.   Both the Washington Post editorial board and an op-ed slam the factual flaws in the report. Here are excerpts from the Post editorial:

FORMER SENATOR Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), now leader of the Heritage Foundation, knows that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is likely to judge that immigration reform — including eventual citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants — will be a shot in the arm for the U.S. economy. After all, the CBO has done so with previous such legislation. That explains why Mr. DeMint, a bitter opponent of legalization, has launched a preemptive attack on the CBO — “puppets of the Congress,” he called the office the other day — and why Heritage has issued a study slamming amnesty for unauthorized immigrants as a drain on taxpayers.

The Heritage paper, chock-full of assumptions that most economists dispute, is a blatant attempt to twist the immigration debate.  .  .  .  .   Influential Republicans, including Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, rolled their eyes at the Heritage report with varying degrees of politeness.

The far right elements in the GOP are becoming uglier and uglier in their racism and bigotry.  It's something that certainly will not help the GOP win over Hispanic voters.  Here are some highlights from the op-ed column:

“There’s a statement at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty,” said the former Republican senator who just took over as chief of the powerful think tank. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses . . . ”    He and his colleagues then went on to outline their version of immigration reform: No poor and huddled need apply.

“We feel that the best immigration system is one that focuses on bringing high school [graduate] immigrants in,” said Robert Rector, the Heritage scholar seated beside DeMint for the rollout of a new study on the costs of immigration.

Latinos have been suspicious of Republicans in part because they assume that conservatives’ desire to crack down on illegal immigration may extend to legal immigration as well. Republicans invariably proclaim that they are big fans of legal immigration. But the Heritage doctrine undermines that, because it would sharply curtail Hispanic immigration — legal and illegal alike. 

Of the Mexican-born people in the United States age 25 and older, nearly 60 percent didn’t graduate from high school, according to a Pew Hispanic Center compilation of census data. Among Central Americans, the figure is 50 percent. To shun those without high school diplomas would dramatically reduce eligibility among Latinos.

When I asked at Monday’s news conference whether his [Robert Rector] conclusions would apply to legal immigrants, he answered “yes” even before I could get the whole question out. 

If Republicans don’t find a way to deal with illegal immigrants in the country, they risk political oblivion as the swelling ranks of Latino voters turn against them. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recognized this in reaching a bipartisan agreement to allow legalization — a proposal being denounced by the right.

Never mind the rest of that Lazarus inscription DeMint cited, the bit about accepting “the wretched refuse” and the “homeless, tempest-tossed.” Now they’ll need a diploma.  

What truly sickens me about folks like DeMint is that they constantly pat themselves on the back for the piety and religiosity.  Meanwhile, if Christ were suddenly to reappear his attacks on the biblical Pharisees would probably seem mild compared to his judgment of the "godly Christian" crowd of today.  As I have said many times before, these folks are NOT nice people and they comprise the best argument around for why one would want to walk away from Christianity.