Conservative Pundits Launch Smear Campaign on Special Counsel Mueller

Perhaps expecting the worse results possible from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russiagate and most likely attempts by Der Trumpenführer, conservative pundits and perennial windbag Newt Gingrich have launched a smear campaign against Mueller.  The obvious goal is to discredit Mueller in advance in the eyes of the ignorance embracing core of Trump's supporters who whine about "wake news" and the news media even as they themselves fall for utterly fabricated and untrue stories.  Of course, Trump isn't the only one with much to lose if Mueller confirms collusion with Russia by the Trump campaign and/or that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice.  Every Republican who has been an apologist for Trump or who has turned a blind eye to his illegal and unethical actions is likewise at risk of being held accountable.  A piece in Talking Points Memo looks at the preemptive assault on Mueller.  Here are highlights:

As the special counsel in charge of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election assembled key staff, several prominent Trump supporters questioned his impartiality, and whether the appointment was necessary at all. Bloomberg first reported on June 1, citing two unnamed people, that Department of Justice fraud chief and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissman would join special counsel Robert Mueller’s so-called “murderer’s row” of prosecutors. And the National Law Journal reported Friday, citing unnamed people familiar with the arrangement, that Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben — who in 2016 argued his 100th case in front of the Supreme Court — would assist Mueller on a part-time basis.

Perhaps the biggest flip-flop among high-profile Trump supporters came from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who changed justifications multiple times for his new opposition to Mueller.

Gingrich said Mueller’s position had been compromised by fired FBI Director James Comey’s admission that he had authorized a friend to pass details of his meetings with Trump to the press in order to justify a special counsel. The next day, he said evidence that Mueller wouldn’t be fair could be found in his new hires’ political donations. Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter jumped on board Sunday, writing that Comey’s acknowledgement that he told Trump he wasn’t personally under investigation was grounds for dismissing Mueller altogether. Radio host and LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham posted a column from the Washington Examiner’s Byron York to her 1.5 million Twitter followers early Monday. York asked five unnamed Washington lawyers if they thought Comey’s reported friendship with Mueller presented a conflict. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, acting in his capacity as the then-lead of the Russia investigation at the Justice Department, chose Mueller to lead the investigation. The Hill noted Monday that four members of Mueller’s investigative team, each seasoned criminal prosecutors with extensive experience at the Justice Deparment or Washington, D.C. law firms, had donated to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton.

Expect the efforts to discredit Mueller and his team to intensify.  I suspect that the Trump apologists know or strongly suspect that Mueller will find offense committed by Trump and or his campaign. It's amazing how these supposed super patriots are now only too happy to close their eyes to possible treason and/or obstruction of justice.  The GOP has fallen  so far that it is almost unrecognizable. 

The Men Who Led The Impeachment Of Bill Clinton

In follow up to the last post and the "quote of the day," a piece in Think Progress looks at what is now known about the Republican Party leadership in the House of Representatives that led the effort to impeach Bill Clinton.  All, of course, once claimed to support "family values" and to support the "sanctity of marriage."  All turned out to be complete hypocrites.  Frankly, its to the point that when I hear a Republican blathering about "family values," I figure it's only a matter of time before they are caught having an adulterous affair or cruising for gay sex on the sly.  Of course, self-loathing closet cases Rick Santorum and Ken Cuccinelli are in a league of their own when it comes to being utterly obsessed with gay sex.  Here are article highlights:

On December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives impeached Bill Clinton on two charges related to his extramarital affair with Monica Lewinsky. (The charges were for perjury and obstruction of justice.) The historic vote, and subsequent trial in the Senate, involved the work of three men who were elected Speaker of the House Of Representatives by the Republican majority, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston and Dennis Hastert. 

Almost 17 years later, with the federal indictment of Hastert for illegally concealing up to $3.5 million in hush-money, we finally have a more complete understanding of the men who led this effort.

Newt Gingrich

Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) led the push for Bill Clinton’s impeachment. Following a disappointing election in November 1998, he announced he was stepping down as Speaker and resigning from Congress.

Gingrich later admitted that, while he was pushing for Clinton’s impeachment, he was engaged in an affair with a Congressional aide. “There were times when I was praying and when I felt I was doing things that were wrong. But I was still doing them,” Gingrich said in 2007. He later said the situation was “complex and, obviously, I wasn’t doing things to be proud of.”

Bob Livingston

After Gingrich announced his resignation, Republicans unanimously selected Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA) to succeed him. 

On the day of the impeachment vote, Livingston announced he was resigning following revelations that he had engaged in an extramarital affair. According to Hustler Magazine Publisher Larry Flint, who offered a reward for information about the sex lives of members of Congress, he “found four women who said they had been involved with Mr. Livingston over the last 10 years.”

Dennis Hastert

Following Livingston’s resignation, which occurred on the same day the House voted on impeachment, Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) quickly gained support of the Republican leadership to succeed him as Speaker-designate. He began formally serving as speaker in January 1999, and held that role while the Senate conducted their trial on the articles of impeachment.

On Thursday, Hastert was indicted on charges that he illegally structured $1.7 million in payments to an individual in an attempt to cover up prior misconduct. According to reports, the payments were allegedly intended to “conceal sexual abuse against a former male student he knew during his days as a teacher in Yorkville, Ill.” The LA Times also reported that “investigators also spoke with a second man who raised similar allegations that corroborated what the former student said.”

The bigger question, of course, is why anyone sane believes anything these  "family values" politicians have to say.

 

Quote of the Day: The GOP's Tawdry Sex Scandals

As noted frequently on this blog, today's Republican Party claims to be the party of "family values" yet when one looks at political sex scandals, its the GOP that leads the way at least three to one against Democrats.  A short quip in the Washington Post s sums it up well in the wake of Dennis Hastert's indictment:

If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy. 

You can't make stuff up this good!

When the GOP Went insane:

As I have often noted, I was once a Republican activist and served on a local city committee for the GOP before the GOP went insane - which large equates with when the Christofascists infiltrated and took over the party grass roots and threw moderation, compromise and basic sanity out the window.   A piece in Salon argues that the mid-1990's is the crucial time period when the drift to insanity became irreversible.  The timing largely coincides with what I witnessed, although in Virginia Beach, it took the Christofascist and their political prostitutes a bit longer to hijack the party in that city.  In other regions of Virginia, the takeover occurred even earlier.  Here are article highlights which, in my view, under plays the role of the Christofascists:

The Republican sweep of 1994 gave Movement Conservatives a free hand to set the terms of political debate, although reporters noted that they seemed to articulate only what they opposed, not what they favored. What they opposed was very clear: they hated what they claimed was the socialist system that was turning America into a nation of dependents. Destroying it, they thought, was simple: just get rid of the taxes that paid for it.

Rush Limbaugh, whose support had been so instrumental that the Republican revolutionaries of 1994 made him an honorary member of their incoming congressional freshman class, outlined their agenda. They must “begin an emergency dismantling of the welfare system, which is shredding the social fabric,” bankrupting the country, and “gutting the work ethic, educational performance, and moral discipline of the poor.” Next, Congress should cut capital gains taxes, which would drive economic growth, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and generate billions in federal revenue. Limbaugh kept staff in Washington to make sure the positions of the Movement Conservatives got through to voters. In exchange, every congressman knew that taking a stand against Limbaugh would earn instant condemnation on radio stations across the country.

The Gingrich revolutionaries hit the ground running. They took over control of key positions in the House—Gingrich became Speaker; Armey, House majority leader; Texas’s Tom DeLay, majority whip. In April 1995, an internal memo laid down the theme of cutting taxes, rather than paying down the national debt, as the main principle of Republicanism.
In the end, the inability of Gingrich’s revolutionaries to compromise meant they went too far. Pieces of the agenda triumphantly passed in the House were watered down in the Senate and fell to the president’s veto. Frustrated when Clinton refused to sign the Republican budget slashing funding for Medicare, public health, the environment, and education, Gingrich refused to compromise. The federal government shut down all nonessential activity for twenty-eight days between November 1995 and January 1996 . . . The crisis pushed Clinton’s poll numbers higher than they had been since his election as American blamed Republicans for the shutdown.

Disaffected Americans began to see plots everywhere: politicians were selling out America to socialism. It was imperative for regular citizens to take matters into their own hands, just as the boys in Red Dawn had done, and return the nation to the traditional values Buckley had asserted in the 1950s: religion, the free market, and a strong military.

Antigovernment extremism forced its way into American consciousness on the morning of April 19, 1995, when a bomb exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

In October 1996, the movement gained its own television network, with Roger Ailes as its founding CEO. The Fox News Channel (FNC) was the brainchild of Australian-born media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who recognized the frustration of Movement Conservatives with what they insisted was a Liberal media biased against their version of the world. . . . . presented a mythologized America based on the ideology of Movement Conservatism. Its Americans were overwhelmingly white and rural and wanted just to be independent individuals. They hated taxes and intrusive government, and they would do fine if they could just get the socialistic Democrats to leave them alone.

Movement Conservatism had always been based in ideology, not reality. As far as Movement Conservatives were concerned, Clinton was a mistaken president, an abomination, and they had finally been able to prove it.

They swung toward conspiracy theories and pure Clinton-bashing, aided by talk radio and by new websites, especially the Drudge Report. In 1997, Matt Drudge and his assistant, Andrew Breitbart—who was a fan of Limbaugh—began aggregating anti-Democratic gossip and news. They sensationalized rumor and began to build a community of likeminded right-wing radicals on the increasingly powerful Internet.

Gingrich to GOP: We’ve Got a Problem

Much of the time Newt Gingrich is a loud mouth blow hard - a demagogue even.  But every once in a while he does get it right.  Such is the case with his criticism of the GOP obsession with obstructing Obamacare while offering nothing in its place. America's health care system is very broken and the least cost effective in its delivery of medical care of any developed nation.  Doing nothing is not an option, particularly if one is serious in reining in health care costs and government spending in programs like Medicare and Medicaid.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Gingrich's condemnation of the GOP House and other Cassandras who are advising that things need to change in the GOP mindset.  Here are excerpts:

There’s been lot of chatter today about these rather blunt remarks from Newt Gingrich about the perils of the GOP’s obsession with destroying Obamacare while refusing to offer any meaningful alternative:

“I will bet you, for most of you, you go home in the next two weeks when your members of Congress are home, and you look them in the eye and you say, ‘What is your positive replacement for Obamacare?’ They will have zero answer,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich blamed the problem on Republican culture that rewards obstruction and negativity instead of innovation and “being positive.”   “We are caught up right now in a culture, and you see it every single day, where as long as we are negative and as long as we are vicious and as long as we can tear down our opponent, we don’t have to learn anything,” Gingrich said, acknowledging the “totally candid” nature of his remarks. “We have to do the homework.”

It looks to me like there are enough data points out there to suggest that Republicans now recognize that their overall posture on Obamacare — not to mention on the president himself — is deeply problematic, and are seriously grappling with it at the highest levels of the party.

Just two days ago, the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore — whom Dems believe sometimes channels the thinking of GOP leaders — floated the radical idea that Republicans should point to the sequester and the falling deficit to declare victory in the spending wars, instead of provoking a costly and destructive government shutdown fight that would only help Obama and Dems.

And earlier this week, GOP strategists with direct experience of GOP midterm losses in 1998 told the also-well-connected Byron York that Republicans are at real risk of duplicating 1998′s mistakes. The strategists noted that Republicans ran relentlessly against Bill Clinton — even though he wasn’t on the ballot — and that this didn’t work; rather than gain seats, as is customary in the off year of an oppositional president’s second term, Republicans lost seats. York concluded that a similar outcome was possible next year “if Republicans stick to being an opposition party on the attack rather than the alternative party offering an agenda.”

Will the GOP change course?  Probably not given the reality that the party is now the hostage of the Christofascists and Tea Party loons who refuse to change with objective reality.

Newt Gingrich Continues Catholic hurch Myth of Persecution

Newt Gingrich- perhaps to keep himself in the news and to hear himself speak - was on Meet the Press today promoting the Catholic Church hierarchy's lie that the Church is being persecuted and its rights being trampled upon by the recognition of gay rights and gay equality.  As is typical for both Gingrich and the Church hierarchy, the claims do not match objective reality because no one is preventing the Catholic Church from being involved in adoption/foster care services.  Rather, it is the Church which is trampling on the rights of other citizens and pushing to impose its beliefs on all.  And, like a school yard bully, once the Church can't have its own way, it grabs up its toys and stalks off feigning that it, rather than those it has persecuted for centuries, is the victim of persecution and/or censoring.  Towleroad looks at Gingrich's diarrhea of the mouth.  Here is the money quote:

On a segment on gay rights on Meet the Press today, Newt Gingrich complained about Catholic adoption agencies being "outlawed" in some states where marriage equality laws take effect. MSNBC contributor Joy-Ann Reid pointed out that it was the Church's decision to withdraw its services.

GINGRICH: "What I'm struck with is the one-sidedness of the desire for rights. There are no rights for Catholics to have adoption services in Massachusetts. They're outlawed. There are no rights in DC for Catholics to have adoption service. They're outlawed. This passing reference to religion, we sort of respect religion, sure, as long as you don't practice it. I mean I think it would be good to have a debate over, you know, beyond this question of, 'Are you able to be gay in America?' what does it mean? Does it mean that you have to actually affirmatively eliminate any institution which does not automatically accept that, and therefore, you're now going to have a secular state say to a wide range of religious groups, Catholics, Protestants, orthodox Jews, Mormons, frankly, Muslims, 'You cannot practice your religion the way you believe it, and we will outlaw your institutions.' ... Let's just start with adoption services. It's impossible for the Catholic Church to have an adoption service in Massachusetts that follows Catholic doctrine.

JOY-ANN REID: But didn't the Catholic Church, particularly Catholic Charities in Boston, they affirmatively decided to withdraw adoption services. No one said they are not allowed to provide adoption services.

GINGRICH: No, they withdrew them because they were told, "You could not follow Catholic doctrine," which is for marriage between a man and a woman.

REID: I think the point is, is that you don't have the state attempting to tell religions what to believe. People, if they oppose the idea of gay marriage within their religion, have the absolute right to do so. The question is whether or not religious institutions can make public policy, whether they can enter the public policy--

That's right, NO ONE OUTLAWED Catholic adoption services.  The Church shut the programs down.  The other fact that Gingrich conveniently ignores is the fact that in many states - Virginia is certainly one such state - foster care agencies such as Catholic Charities function as an arm of the state and receive significant amounts of state funding.  As a result, these agencies are standing in the position of the state first and for the Church secondarily.  Therefore, it is only appropriate that as recipients of state funds the agencies not be given a free hand to discriminate against taxpayers.  

GOP Smackdown: Wonks vs.Politicans

Bill Kristol, Peggy Noonan, Newt Gingrich and John Boehner

As noted any number of times on this blog, the remaining rational Republican/conservative pundits are increasingly distressed with the GOP's refusal to reform itself and face a changing political landscape.  Instead of reform and innovation, elected officials in the GOP continue to listen to the same religious extremists - e.g., the Family Research Council, the U.S. Catholic bishops, and other Christofascist groups - and anti-tax groups such as Grover Norquist's outfit that helped settle the stage for the 2012 election debacle.  A debacle that would have been complete at the national level but for the gerrymandering of Congressional districts.  A piece in Politico looks at the intra-party infighting.  Here are highlights:

The latest front in the battle for the future of the Republican Party: the wonks versus the pols.  Conservative thinkers are increasingly agitated that, four months after a second straight presidential drubbing, GOP officeholders are not taking bold steps to bring a 1980s-style Republican platform into the 21st century.

Almost daily, there is a fresh op-ed or magazine piece from the class of commentators and policy intellectuals urging Republicans to show a little intellectual leg and offer some daring and innovation beyond the old standbys of cutting income taxes and spending. It’s not that the eggheads are urging moderation — it’s more like relevance. The standard plea: The GOP will rebound only when it communicates to working-class and middle-class voters how its ideas will improve their lives.

But there is virtually no evidence that these impassioned appeals for change are being listened to by the audience that matters — Republican elected officials. With few exceptions, most of the GOP leadership in Washington is following a business-as-usual strategy. The language and tactics being used in this winter’s battles with President Barack Obama are tried-and-true Republican maxims that date back to the Reagan era or before. And that, say the wonks, spells political danger and more electoral decline.

Some of the conservative thinkers allow that the politicians are lagging indicators and have time before the next election. But the volume of the grumbling is ratcheting up as the party’s poll numbers continue to fall and the GOP’s fixation on austerity — and only austerity — appears increasingly out of tune.

“The problem with the deficit as an issue is that people care about economic growth more, and the problem with spending cuts is that people like them more in the abstract than in reality,” wrote National Review editor Rich Lowry in a POLITICO column last week, adding: “At times, it seems as if ‘we have a $16 trillion debt’ is the sum total of the party’s argumentation.”

Criticizing GOP inaction on the sequester, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol lashed Republicans in the current issue of his magazine for being “complicit in the failure of political responsibility and national seriousness we’re now witnessing.

As long as the GOP remains beholden to the Tea Party lunatics and religious extremist who have taken over the party base, the pundit and wonk class can rant and complain all they want, but no real change will occur.  Change and innovation do not occur when elected officials are pandering to those detached from objective reality and those who want to turn time back by at least a century.

Former Navy Chaplain: Newt Gingrich "Worthy of Death" for Gay Marriage Stance

As noted in the previous post, the hate and open animus towards LGBT individuals isn't unique to Scott Lively.  There are a multitude of "godly Christian" folk who seem to do nothing but preach hatred while utterly ignoring Christ's Gospel message.  And the hatred extends beyond gays to LGBT allies or now, even to politicians like Newt Gingrich who are pragmatic enough to realize that the GOP needs to get off the anti-gay bandwagon or face extinction in the long run.  One such hatemonger is former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt (pictured at right) who has a long history of anti-gay animus.  In the wake of Gingrich's admission that the GOP needs to accept gay marriage, Klingenschmitt has pronounced that Gingrich caved to "demonic voices" when he changed his stance on gay marriage, and that, therefore, Gingrich is "worthy of death" as are gays.  Klingenschmitt, Scott Lively and a host of other hate merchants are the face of today's conservative Christians.  It is little wonder that the under 30 generations are fleeing institutional Christianity in droves.  Here are highlights from Huffington Post on Klingenschmitt's batshitery:

A former Navy chaplain says that Newt Gingrich's stance on same-sex marriage was influenced by "demonic voices" and makes the former Republican presidential candidate "worthy of death."  

Gingrich spoke about the issue of same-sex marriage during an interview with The Huffington Post in December. Although he defended his belief that marriage is between a man and a woman, the former House Speaker said the GOP needs to progress with the times.

"It is in every family. It is in every community," he told HuffPost. "The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to ... accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states -- and it will be more after 2014 -- gay relationships will be legal, period."

On Thursday, Right Wing Watch posted a video response to Gingrich's same-sex marriage comments made by Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt, according to Raw Story. In the video, the chaplain says Gingrich is wholly misguided in pandering to the left and "homosexual sin." 

The chaplain cites a Bible passage from Romans, Chapter 1, which says “homosexual acts are worthy of death.”

“It’s not like Newt is personally engaging in homosexual activity, but the Bible condemns him now because he takes pleasure in those that do that sort of thing,” he explained. “When the Bible condemns his endorsement of homosexual sin then he has become one of the sinners condemned by Romans, Chapter 1.”

The chaplain, who belongs to an evangelical sect of the Episcopal Church and was disgraced in 2006 for disobeying an order, is not the only one to speak out against Gingrich's evolved view on same-sex marriage. Frank Schubert, National Political Director for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), called the politician's comments both "stupid" and "ridiculous." 

Gingrich: "I Can Accept Reality of Gay Marriage" - Meanwhile Christofascists Threaten Revolution and Civil War

In a surprising turn of events GOP extremist Newt Gingrich has stated that he can accept the reality of same sex marriage so long as it is kept separate and distinct from church marriages - something that has always been the case in states that have approved gay marriage.  Moreover, he admitted that same sex couples exist everywhere across the country and recognized that increasingly Americans outside of Kool-Aid drinking Christofascist circle support legal recognition of same sex relationships.   The reaction by the Christofascist hate merchants has been fast and furious, particularly in respect to the possibility that the U. S. Supreme Court might render a ruling next June that legalizes same sex marriage nationwide.  So what do the Christofascists predict?  A revolt by the far right and a second civil war.  So much for God favoring the meek.  First, here are highlights from Think Progress on Newt Gingrich's surprising conversion:

In a stunning reversal, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) said this week that he thinks his party needs to “accommodate and deal with reality” and get on board with legal equality for same-sex couples. Gingrich, who pushed the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) through Congress in 1996, has been one of the nation’s most consistent opponents of marriage equality.
The Huffington Post reports:

On gay marriage, meanwhile, Gingrich argued that Republicans could no longer close their eyes to the course of public opinion. While he continued to profess a belief that marriage is defined as being between a man and a woman, he suggested that the party (and he himself) could accept a distinction between a “marriage in a church from a legal document issued by the state” — the latter being acceptable.

“I think that this will be much more difficult than immigration for conservatism to come to grips with,” he said, noting that the debate’s dynamics had changed after state referenda began resulting in the legalization of same-sex marriage. “It is in every family. It is in every community. The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to … accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states — and it will be more after 2014 — gay relationships will be legal, period.”

In sum, Gingrich's conversion is an embrace of objective reality - something always distasteful to the Christofascists.  Meanwhile, the hate merchants of the Christofascist circles are going berserk and threatening a civil war should the U. S. Supreme Court make same sex marriage a nationwide legal right.  Right Wing Watch looks at the batshitery and spittle flying from the lips of Matt Staver, head of the utterly unhinged Liberty Counsel.  Here are excerpts (remember that to Staver and his fellow religious extremists, freedom of religion equals Chritofascists being able to force their beliefs on all Americans regardless of the faith tradition and/or sexual orientation):

According to Liberty Counsel head Mat Staver, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of marriage equality, America may head toward outright revolt and a second civil war. Staver told Janet Parshall that marriage equality will mean that the institution of marriage, freedom of speech and the freedom of religion will be “destroyed” and “bulldozed over.”

Like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins who last month maintained that the Supreme Court may start a “revolution” and “break this nation apart” by striking down gay marriage bans, Staver said that the court “could split the country right in two” as “this is the thing that revolutions literally are made of.”

 Staver: This is the thing that revolutions literally are made of. This would be more devastating to our freedom, to our religious freedom, to the rights of pastors and their duty to be able to speak and to Christians around the country, then anything that the revolutionaries during the American Revolution even dreamed of facing. This would be the thing that revolutions are made of. This could split the country right in two. This could cause another civil war. I’m not talking about just people protesting in the streets, this could be that level because what would ultimately happen is a direct collision would immediately happen with pastors, with churches, with Christians, with Christian ministries, with other businesses, it would be an avalanche that would go across the country.

 Staver: It’s stunning. That’s why I am very concerned that this has made its way to the United States Supreme Court because only five of those nine can make a decision and so five people, potentially, in the United States, only five out of the hundreds of millions that we have, have in their hand this opportunity to literally wreck marriage, to destroy the very foundation of our family and the biblical definition of marriage. The consequences are staggering. This could be the Roe v. Wade of marriage and family.

 The big question, of course, is why anyone listens to Staver at all.  The man may well have been a co-conspirator in the crime of Lisa Miller's kidnapping of her daughter and her flight to Central America.  And as a member of the bar, Staver thinks nothing of lying to courts and other tribunals in his quest to undermine the U. S. Constitution.  Staver lacks all legitimate credibility and constitutes a prime example of why the Christofascists and religion in general need to be driven from exerting any influence on the nation's civil laws.

Republican Extremism and the Decline of American Politics

Seemingly across the country the biggest obstacle to addressing the nations problems (and here in Virginia, Virginia's many problems including transportation) is Republican intransigence and an effort to turn the clock back to some mythical 1950's version of America that never existed in fact.   In the GOP's mythical America, white males rule supreme, women, blacks and non-Christians all know their place, and gays are invisible if they know what's good for them.  The irony is that to the extent any form of the "Ozzie and Harriet" middle class world worshiped by the GOP actually existed, much of it stemmed from the financial security that unions had brought to many families - the exact security that the GOP seeks to destroy.  A column in The New Yorker looks at the threat the GOP poses to responsible government.  Here are excerpts:

At least since President Obama’s Inauguration, political observers have been taking note of the Republican Party’s trend toward the right, and away from compromise. “After 2010, it was impossible for a fair-minded person who knew what was going on in Washington and around the country to maintain the fiction that there was an equivalent extremism, and polarization, and ugliness on both sides,” George Packer says in this week’s Political Scene podcast. But there was an impulse among pundits and citizens alike to believe that Democrats, too, bear some of the blame for the country’s polarization, an impulse only now beginning to fade.

Packer traces the polarization back to Newt Gingrich. Starting with his Speakership, Packer says, Republicans have been exhibiting a “willingness—even an eagerness—to use every tactic short of law-breaking to demonize the opponent on the way to winning power.” And that, of course, includes this election.

“With Mitt Romney, there’s the extremism about taxes and about the Catholic Church and its conflict about contraception,” Davidson says. “And then there’s the ugliness as well in things like birtherism and in Mitt Romney’s flirtation with Donald Trump.” 

Packer believes President Obama—who, he notes, “has always been skeptical of hard ideological lines,”—will have trouble in the current landscape. His lack of ideological stance “means that he’s having to start from scratch in assembling a clear argument that opposes the extremism” of the G.O.P.

Beyond this election, even if Romney loses, Packer predicts that Republicans will not relent, but will continue to bog down government and prevent a return to respectable politics. He quotes Barney Frank’s idea for a Democratic Party-wide slogan: “We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.”

I would add to the analysis of causes for the growing GOP extremism the rise of the Christofascists as the puppet masters of the party.  When those who utterly reject science and who seek to impose a far right Christian theocracy take charge, there is no compromise.   When hate filled people who claim to have God on their side steer the party, extremism is the only result that can be expected.  Unfortunately, the mainstream media remains afraid of exposing the true ugliness of conservative Christianity in this country.  This needs to change NOW.

Newt Gingrich Ends His Campaign

Yesterday, thrice married serial adulterer Newt Gingrich ended his ill advised campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.  But for Gingrich's overpowering ego and tempestuous love affair with himself, he would likely never have entered into the contest.  The man simply has too much baggage and is greatly disliked by those who served with him in Congress.  From my perspective, it's a case of good riddance, although it did provide an opportunity show the hypocrisy of "family values" conservatives who supported a man who cares nothing about the "sanctity of marriage."  His campaign also did much to expose the lunacy of today's GOP.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post on Gingrich's exit:

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Tuesday preempted his own campaign suspension, announcing in a video to supporters that he will pull out of the presidential race on Wednesday.

“I want to take this opportunity to give you an insider advance notice that on Wednesday, I’ll be officially suspending the campaign as part of a press event,” Gingrich says in the pre-announcement announcement. “I wanted you to know first because your help was vital.”  Gingrich is expected to formally end his campaign at an event in Northern Virginia.

In his farewell video, Gingrich tells supporters reelecting the president “would be a genuine disaster.”  “All of us have an obligation, I think, to do everything we can to defeat Barack Obama,”he says.  And he pledges that both he and his wife, Callista, will be “talking, campaigning, making speeches – doing everything we can to help defeat Barack Obama.”

One person Gingrich doesn’t mention in the video is Romney. Gingrich, like former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who also pulled out of his GOP primary campaign, has yet to formally pledge his support to Obama’s challenger.

If the nation is lucky, Gingrich will fade into the sunset and remain only a legend in his own mind.

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. 

The Rank Hypocrisy of Christians and Republicans Who Accept Divorce

I've addressed the hypocrisy of the Christianists and their political whores in the GOP who continually condemn gays as sinners and have a near aneurysm at the mention of same sex marriage yet close their eyes to divorce.  Under scoring this incredible hypocrisy is the release of a video in support of North Carolina's foul Amendment One by thrice married serial adulterer Newt Gingrich.  And if that's not proof enough, it is evangelical Christians in the Bible Belt who have the highest divorce rate, not supposed "liberals" in Massachusetts.   Joe Jervis aptly comments on Gingrich's disingenuous bullshit this way:

Newt Gingrich would like to remind everybody that marriage is between one man and one woman whom you abandon riddled with cancer on her hospital bed while you fuck the shit out of your mistress whom you later marry and cheat on with a third decades-younger woman while screaming with Godly moral outrage about the infidelities of the president.

Andrew Sullivan looks at the disconnect and  hypocrisy a bit more calmly, but it all comes down to the same thing: Hypocrisy and a double standard of selectively deciding which Bible passages to ignore while using others to bludgeon a minority of the population.  I suspect this hypocrisy and the general meanness displayed by "conservative Christians" is what id fueling the exodus of millenials from Christianity.  Here are excerpts from Andrew's comments directed at a Catholic defender of bans on same sex marriage:

[H]ow do you tell 2 percent of the population that in this culture they have to be chaste and invisible? In this culture? And if you cannot, what is your actual social policy toward these people? Or do you simply not have one - except to wish we did not exist?

Let me use an obvious analogy which really gets to the heart of the unfairness at the center of this. Modern America is full of divorced couples. Unlike homosexuality, Jesus spoke unequivocally about divorce. Does Ross insist that our civil laws return to banning divorce on all grounds? No. Does he back a constitutional amendment to ban civil divorce? No. His reason would be to say that it simply cannot be done democratically. But that precisely reveals the church's discriminatory position on gay people. Unlike divorcees, the gays' position is not a choice. But unlike divorcees, they alone are the target of a massive campaign by Christianists to deny them any right to marry at all - not just twice but ever! This is where the current hierarchy is.

Notice too how they are not threatening to shut down services for the poor and homeless because one of their civil employees might be re-married or divorced (and thereby violating church doctrine). And yet they apply that standard to gay people - who have not chosen any lifestyle, but are guilty purely of being as God made them. They do it because we are few in number and they can deploy the power of religion to demonize us.

This deliberate tolerance of heterosexuals and deliberate intolerance of homosexuals on the same issue is on its face discriminatory. And don't get me started on annulments. Newt Gingrich gets to marry his third wife in church, but the Vatican wants a constitutional amendment to prevent my having one civil marriage with no church involvement. What else can this be rooted in but animus? And total panic.

Is It Too Late for Mitt Romney and Republicans?

I sure the Bible beater and Tea Party factions in the GOP base will be none too happy with Meghan McCain's latest column at The Daily Beast which reflects on the Republican Party's seemingly lack luster prospects in 2012. What I like best about her piece is that she recognizes that instead of moderating the GOP agenda and appealing to a broader base of voters, the GOP has raced to the far right and pandered to not only a nasty group of voters, but a party base that reject modernity, rejects religious freedom for all but themselves, rejects science, and who represent a dwindling group of semi-racist (if not out right racist) who want a patriarchy run by white males (straight ones, of course) and who thankfully will have died off within a couple more election cycles. Here are some column highlights (I love her evaluation of Santorum):

Right now, I’m in the middle of a 2012 election hangover, where I wonder what exactly has happened to make this election cycle seem like a long journey of lambs to the slaughter. Somewhere between the frighteningly delusional Santorum campaign and Mitt Romney’s incapability of doing anything spontaneous, we are actually having a debate about if birth control should be banned or if women that use birth control are “sluts.” I’ve hit my limit here.

What happened after we lost in 2008—and why are we worse off now? It’s like the Republican Party decided to ignore calls from moderates for a more open-minded party and we’re going, full-steam ahead, in the opposite direction. For electing the next president of the United States, these are my options:

(1) Santorum, who is a lunatic, right-wing fringe candidate that is hanging on to his candidacy for no other reason than, once this election cycle is over, he knows no one will ever listen to him again. I half expect Santorum to start throwing a tantrum on stage after he loses yet another primary and scream: “If I’m not going to be the nominee, no one is!”

(2) Then, there is Newt Gingrich, the over-blown relic of the 90s, with so much baggage and anger that he really should move to a country where he can
be dictator.

(3) Finally, there’s my boy Mitt—whom, yes, I support and no matter what, will vote for but…as his wife has even admitted “needs to unzip.”

As I sit on my couch watching the commentators night after night, I am overwhelmed by a sense of panic that this election is quite possibly already over. . . . Why do Republicans continue to value “purification” and bloodletting over winning elections? What the hell is wrong with the Republican Party?!?

The right-wing conservatives are so entitled in their snobbery that no one is ever good enough for them, so the rest of us, especially moderates, must suffer. Apparently, we would still rather have a Democrat in office than a moderate Republican. We’ve botched this election cycle so badly, I’m scared it might be too late.

The GOP's real problem is that it sold its soul to the Christianist extremist and those who openly embrace ignorance years ago and the long term cost is coming home to roost. Meanwhile I and many former Republicans can only shake our heads in dismay.

Gingrich to Lay Off One-Third of Campaign Staff

It appears that the campaign of thrice married, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich - who bizarrely claims to be a champion of "traditional marriage" - may be beginning its death throes as one-third of the campaign's staff is laid off. Not that this example of the objective reality of the impossibility of Gingrich having a shot of securing the GOP nomination seems to have won out over the egomania of Gingrich. That said, it would be entertaining to see Gingrich endeavor to stay in the campaign and lobbing political hand grenades at Santorum and Romney. Here are some highlights from CBS News:

Facing the reality of plummeting poll numbers and dwindling financial resources, Newt Gingrich's presidential campaign announced Tuesday evening it would be cutting back on staff and curtailing the former House Speaker's public appearances.

Spokesman RC Hammond told CBS News the campaign would lay off around one-third of its staff. In addition, campaign manager Michael Krull has been replaced by his deputy, Vince Haley. John Fluharty will continue to lead the campaign's effort to court convention delegates.

At a press conference in Annapolis, Md., on Tuesday, Gingrich hinted at the changes, but insisted he would remain in the race until the Republican convention in Tampa this August. "Clearly we're going to have to go on a fairly tight budget to get from here to Tampa," Gingrich said. "But I think we can do it and I think we will do it."

Gingrich finished third in last Saturday's Louisiana primary with just under 16 percent of the vote. A Marquette Law School poll of Wisconsin GOP primary voters released today put the former Speaker at just 5 percent. The Badger state, which votes on Tuesday, is seen as the next big testing ground for the Republican candidates.

Catholics: Contraception Mandate Not A Threat To Religious Freedom

The Catholic Church hierarchy's continued disingenuous whining about contraception coverage in health car plans underscores the growing disconnect between the hierarchy and the lay members of the Church. The bishops oppose all sex of any kind - other than that between priests and non-consenting minors - especially if there is any enjoyment involved whatsoever. Apparently, since the hierarchy is in theory obligated to remain celibate, they want everyone else to be equally miserable. But this disconnect between what everyday Catholics and the Church leadership hasn't stopped religious extremist in the Republican Party such as Rick "Frothy Mix" Santorum and thrice married, serial adulterer Newt Gingrich from continuing to rail against the Obama administration using the false claim that "religious liberty" is under attack. A piece in the Huffington Post looks at this disconnect that may well help to be the GOP's undoing. Here are highlights:

A vocal contingent of Republican presidential candidates and church leaders are railing against the Obama administration's "war on religion," but most Americans can't seem to find the fight.

A majority (56 percent) of Americans say religious liberty is not threatened in the U.S., according to a new poll released Thursday (March 15) by the Public Religion Research Institute, which conducted the survey in partnership with Religion News Service.

Even though Catholic bishops are leading the charge that the new White House mandate requiring insurance plans to cover birth control for employees is a threat to religious liberty, Catholics reject -- by a 57 to 38 percent margin -- the idea that religious liberty is under siege.

What's more, nearly two-thirds of Catholics support the contraception requirements for publicly held corporations (65 percent), compared to 62 percent of all Americans. A strong 60 percent of Catholics say religiously affiliated colleges should have to comply, compared to 54 percent of Americans in general.

When those who perceive a threat were asked how religious liberty was being threatened, only 6 percent mentioned the new contraception mandate specifically -- a number Cox found startlingly low given how often the issue has headlined the news in recent weeks.

Who is worried about religious liberty in America? White evangelical Protestants, the only major religious group in which a majority (61 percent) believes religious liberty is in trouble, according to the study.

The poll also confirmed upward trends in attitudes toward gay Americans. . . .

Last year, surveys detected for the first time that a majority of Americans support legalizing same-sex marriage. This latest poll again pins that number above 50 percent, as well as support for gay couples adopting children.

Among the findings:

• Of the 52 percent who favor gay marriage, 22 percent strongly favor and 30 percent favor it.


• Of the 44 percent who oppose gay marriage, 19 percent oppose it and 25 percent strongly oppose it.


• Most Americans (54 percent) believe gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to adopt children, while 40 percent are opposed.

The poll also found that a slight majority of Americans (52 percent) believe birth control should be generally available to teenagers 16 or older without parental approval; 46 percent disagree.

The findings make it pretty clear that the only ones who see "religious freedom" under attack are those who are having increased difficulty forcing their religious beliefs on other members of society. The Christianists and Catholic bishops always want the special right to trample of the religious freedoms of other Americans. They, in fact, accuse others of what they themselves are seeking to do.

New Poll Proves GOP Base IS Comprised of Neanderthal Knuckle Draggers

PPP Poll of Alabama GOP Voters:

PPP Poll of Mississippi GOP Voters:

This blog looks frequently at the mental - and I would argue moral - death spiral of today's Republican Party. Logic, reason, and just simple common sense intelligence as to things of public record are mutually exclusive when aligned with the base of the Republican Party. And if we needed any proof, a new Public Policy Polling poll of Alabama and Mississippi Republican voters yielded results that Blue Virginia described as "astounding" into "horrifying," "despicable," insanity," "bigotry." Not shown in the charts above are GOP voters' views on interracial marriage: In Alabama, 21% of Republican voters say that interracial marriage should be illegal. In Mississippi, 29% of Republican voters say it should be illegal, while just a bare majority (54%) say it should be legal.

And people wonder why Alabama and Mississippi have difficulty attracting progressive, cutting edge businesses? Who would want to relocated to or open a plant in a state inhabited by morons and/or bigots? Lowell at Blue Virginia summed it up well:

I mean, this goes beyond "differences on the issues" into something else entirely. When people - large pluralities or even majorities of Mississippi and Alabama Republicans, in this case - don't "believe" in evolution (as if scientific/empirical evidence is a matter of "belief" at all), when they don't "believe" a lifelong Christian is really a Christian, when they're bigoted against Muslims, when they're not sure that blacks should be able to marry whites, I'm not sure how you even have a conversation, let alone a constructive, rational, sane one. It's just so depressing that there are significant numbers of people in this country, in the year 2012, who still think like this. And, of course, guess which party they're in? Shocker, huh?

And people ask me why I left the GOP? To have remained, I'd have had to have a lobotomy. Or be driven by overarching greed and a contempt for working people. As for Alabama and Mississippi, this poll shows the type of voter to whom Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are pandering. Frankly, I'd be ashamed to lower myself to such a debased and ignorant level.

GOP: Ghastly Out Dated Party

As the Republican Party continues to stampede back towards the 11th Century, some Americans seem to be waking up to the reality that the GOP is totally out of touch with reality. Or at least any semblance of a modern day reality. At best, the GOP seems to want to return to the 1950's with all its glory: segregation, back alley abortions, bans on interracial marriage, gays force totally into the closet and subject to rampant discrimination, and clergy sexually molesting children and youth with impunity and little likelihood of being held to accountability. Obviously, the GOP's image of a golden age wasn't so golden for many Americans. Maureen Dowd looks at the GOP in a cutting column in the New York Times. Here are some excerpts:

IT’S finally sinking in. Republicans are getting queasy at the gruesome sight of their party eating itself alive, savaging the brand in ways that will long resonate.

“Republicans being against sex is not good,” the G.O.P. strategist Alex Castellanos told me mournfully. “Sex is popular.” He said his party is “coming to grips with a weaker field than we’d all want” and going through the five stages of grief. “We’re at No. 4,” he said. (Depression.) “We’ve still got one to go.” (Acceptance.)

The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be. They pounce on any traces of sanity in the other candidates — be it humanity toward women, compassion toward immigrants or the willingness to make the rich pay a nickel more in taxes — and try to destroy them with it.

Newt Gingrich, a war wimp in Vietnam who supported W.’s trumped-up invasion of Iraq, had the gall to tell a crowd at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., that defeating Obama — “the most dangerous president in modern American history” — was “a duty of national security” because “he is incapable of defending the United States” and because he “wants to unilaterally weaken the United States.” Who killed Osama again?

“It makes the party look like it isn’t a modern party,” Rudy Giuliani told CNN’s Erin Burnett, fretting about the candidates’ Cotton Mather attitude about women and gays. “It doesn’t understand the modern world that we live in.”

After a speech in Dallas on Thursday, Jeb Bush also recoiled: “I used to be a conservative, and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I don’t think I’ve changed, but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective.”

Republicans have a growing panic at the thought of going down the drain with a loser, missing their chance at capturing the Senate and giving back all those House seats won in 2010. More and more, they openly yearn for a fresh candidate, including Jeb Bush, who does, after all, have experience at shoplifting presidential victories at the last minute.

Santorum, whose name aptly comes from the same Latin root as sanctimonious, went on Glenn Beck’s Web-based show with his family and offered this lunacy: “I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college,” because colleges are “indoctrination mills” that “harm” the country.

The barking-mad Republicans of Virginia are helping to make the party look foolish and creepy. A video went viral on Friday in which Delegate Dave Albo comically regaled his fellow lawmakers on the floor of the Statehouse with his own Old Dominion version of “Lysistrata”: he suggested that he was denied sex with his wife because of a Republican-sponsored bill that would have made ultrasounds, often with a vaginal probe, mandatory for women seeking abortions.

The Republicans, with their crazed Reagan fixation, are a last-gasp party, living posthumously, fighting battles on sex, race, immigration and public education long ago won by the other side. They’re trying to roll back the clock, but time is passing them by.

I'm glad Maureen gave the Virginia GOP its due recognition for being a leader in utter insanity and backwardness.

Republicans and the Culture Wars

Despite the ongoing damage that far right religious beliefs of all stripes continue to do and the division and discord that seem to be their principal hallmarks, the Republican Party is poised to yet again try to utilize religious based hatred for political advantage. One need look no farther than the GOP presidential nomination contest. Romney and Gingrich certainly ought to know better, but their blind ambition overrides any sense of decency and civility that they might otherwise bring to bear. Ron Paul likewise seems only too happy to use bigotry for political advantage. And Santorum? In my opinion, the man is mentally ill and frighteningly seems to truly believe all the batshitery he spouts. On the state level, the Republican Party of Virginia has taken shameless and dangerous pandering to Christianist extremists to new levels. An article in The Daily Beast contends that this year on the presidential level, using God, guns and gays may backfire on the GOP. We can only hope that such is the case. Here are some column highlights:

You know the Republican Party is going through a rough patch when it can’t even conduct a proper culture war.

Once upon a time, the GOP knew how to pick a compelling values issue, or at least demagogue one in a way that was guaranteed to make the Democrats look like a pack of sneering, godless Francophiles. Partial-birth abortion—now there was a winner. Ditto gun rights. And, man on man, did conservatives milk the gay-marriage issue for all it was worth, back when it was worth something.

But of late, the party seems to be losing its touch. Oh, sure, Republicans have enjoyed watching President Obama’s tussle with the Catholic Church over insurance coverage for contraception. Indeed, many party leaders rushed to pile on, tossing about phrases like “freedom of conscience” and “war on religion.” As a broader political proposition, however, getting labeled the party that wants to limit access to contraception is less ballsy than flat-out nuts.

On pure piety points, no one can beat Rick. We’re talking here about a guy who has said he would use the presidential bully pulpit to warn of how contraception tempts even married couples to get busy in ways contrary to God’s will. This, of course, is part of the problem. Opposing abortion is one thing. Opposing contraception even among married folks doesn’t make Rick seem like a paragon of moral virtue so much as a refugee from the 16th century.

But it’s not just that the senator’s positions are out of touch with the mainstream electorate (a mere 8 percent of Americans think birth control is immoral; 84 percent of U.S. Catholics think you can use it and still be a good Catholic). It’s that the guy is simultaneously too pious and too pathetic.

Take his views on gay rights. Plenty of people object to gay marriage, but Santorum has long come across as a bit of a clown on the entire subject of homosexuality. It’s some combination of his whiny manner and his slightly-too-colorful blatherings about how “sodomy” is kinda like polygamy or incest but not quite so bad as man-on-dog action. With that kind of commentary, small wonder Dan Savage decided to execute his devastating lexical takedown of the senator.

[T]his whole Serious Candidate business is new to Santorum. Still, this is no way to run a culture war.

Who Is Really Destoying Marriage

The illustration above needs little explanation. It speaks volumes about the hypocrisy of the opponents of marriage equality - especially white evangelicals in the South who have the highest divorce rate of any group.