Will Virginia GOP Infighting Help Democrats in 2016?

Other than wanting to keep gays permanent 3rd class citizens, disenfranchising minorities, kicking the working poor to the curb and controlling every aspect of a woman's womb, there is little else Virginia Republicans agree on.  Internecine warfare continues between the Christofascist/Tea Party elements and those few sane - sane being a very relative term - who realize that given Virginia's changed demographics the game plan that works in highly gerrymandered distracts doesn't work in state wide votes.  A piece in the Washington Post suggests that this dysfunction could harm the GOP's White House aspirations in 2016.  Here are some highlights:

Feuding within Virginia’s state GOP is alarming prominent national Republicans who think the infighting in a crucial swing state threatens the party’s quest to recapture the White House in 2016.

The rift pits centrist conservatives against tea party and Libertarian activists, and it is playing out in divisive primaries and causing wrangling for control of the party’s state organization.

A bitter source of the conflict — one almost certain to ignite renewed debate as 2016 approaches — is whether the state GOP will select a presidential candidate in a primary or at a convention, a process likely to influence whether the winner is a centrist or a right-wing Republican.

Virginia’s GOP has not won a statewide race in six years, a streak that Republicans partly attribute to the infighting. The conflict flared in full public view last year during a rancorous Republican primary in which a largely unknown tea party activist, David Brat, vanquished then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

A statewide primary, with its higher voter turnout and prolonged exposure, is an opportunity for the eventual nominee to begin building a Virginia campaign organization. The conservative coalition that controls the party, however, is considering a convention, thinking that the activists it would draw would energize the GOP.

Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who was an adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said the GOP has “little room for error” in a “crucial” state such as Virginia.

“The last thing any presidential candidate needs is to drop into a battleground state and have the state party folks going at it like the Hatfields and McCoys,” Madden said. “Every ounce of energy used fighting internally distracts the party from the real opponent.”

“They’re like feudal lords fighting among themselves instead of a common enemy,” said Brendan Quinn, a Republican consultant and former executive director of the New York state GOP. “At some point, you’re going to have to have the national party step in. You’re going to have adult supervision and someone saying, ‘You’ll have to get along.’ ”

Establishment Republicans contend they’re losing statewide because moderate voters are wary of tea party and Libertarian candidates who espouse what they consider extreme views on issues such as climate change. Just three years ago, Virginia Republicans were ridiculed on national television for supporting a measure that would have required women to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound before obtaining an abortion.

Partly as a result of such publicity, voters have gravitated toward McAuliffe and other Democrats, who have focused more on issues such as jobs and education. “To win statewide you have to be a coalition — you can’t be a private club with an admissions committee,” Davis said.

The state GOP, [Bill] Bolling said, “has to make a fundamental choice: Do they want to be an echo chamber for the tea party and other ideologically driven groups, or do they want to actually win?”

With the extremists at The Family Foundation - an extremist "Christian" group - largely setting Virginia GOP policy at this point, do not expect any moderation or sanity anytime soon.  When the GOP leadership allowed the Christofascists to take control of the party base, they made a pact with the Devil and the cost of that bargain may soon become painfully evident. 

Hate, Homophobia and Delusion in Full View at Values Voter Summit

Image via Bilerico Project.  It captures the sex obsessed mindset of the "godly folk" perfectly

In a recent post I highlighted some of the synopsis that Right Wing Watch had compiled concerning the foul hate, homophobia and racism that was the principal take away from the so-called "Values Voter Summit" over last weekend in Washington, D.C.  John Becker, a blogger friend and fellow Bilerico Project contributor attended the Values Voter Summit to report first hand on some of the virulent hate and bigotry (and, yes, unvarnished homophobia) that dominated the gathering of haters.  Here are highlights from his post on The Bilerico Project:

Last weekend the Family Research Council, an SPLC-certified anti-gay hate group, held its annual "Values Voter Summit" here in Washington, D.C. The VVS is the nation's largest gathering of conservative activists from the religious right; over 2,200 people (mostly white middle-aged and older evangelicals) registered for the conference this year. Nowhere is the religious right's alliance with the Republican Party more readily visible: literally dozens of that movement's biggest stars turn out, along with senators, representatives, and future GOP presidential hopefuls seeking to burnish their social conservative credentials. 

The Values Voter Summit is also heavily attended by members of the media and progressive activists, both because it's important to keep tabs on one's political and ideological opponents and because the event is a veritable gold mine of insanity.

I went to the Values Voter Summit myself for the first time this year, and let me tell you: it did not disappoint in the batshittery department.

The civil war currently roiling inside the Republican Party between its rabidly extreme Tea Party wing and shrinking crowd of marginally-less-crazy political pragmatists was in full view, with open partisan bickering and speakers taking potshots at other, less conservative Republicans. It was clear right from the beginning whose side these so-called "values voters" were on: the first person to speak after FRC president Tony Perkins delivered his opening remarks was Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee, one of the primary architects of the Republican shutdown of the federal government. 

And then came the shutdown's chief proponent and public face: Texas Senator Ted Cruz. . . . Cruz was introduced by Fox News pundit, conservative activist, and Catholic League board member Brent Bozell, who whipped the crowd into a frenzy by repeatedly slamming Sen. John McCain (an outspoken critic of Cruz and his shutdown strategy) as intellectually dishonest, a "whiner," and a "faux conservative." "Will you stand with Ted Cruz?" Bozell asked. The crowd roared its approval.

Cruz fed the crowd the red meat they wanted, rattling off talking points peppered with Biblical references, and nearly every sentence he uttered met with shouts of affirmation. When pro-immigration reform activists from the group United We Dream interrupted him, Cruz didn't miss a beat, suggesting that President Obama had sent "paid political operatives" to derail his speech. At least half a dozen other hecklers interrupted Cruz, but the crowd drowned them out with shouts of "shut up!" and chants of "USA! USA!"

By the time Cruz's speech was finished, it was clear that the religious right had found its new golden boy. If he survives this shutdown fiasco, expect him to be the Michele Bachmann/Rick Santorum crowd's choice for president in 2016.

Perhaps no two speakers personify the delusional world in which the GOP's insurgent right flank operates than Michele Bachmann and Glenn Beck. Both spoke at the Values Voter Summit, and both spewed out all kinds of crazy.

[Bachmann's] peech was mostly devoted to attacking health care reform, which she called "Deathcare." She said she was "weeping" the night the Affordable Care Act passed the House, and she wondered if in a future shutdown, our horrible socialist president would stop C-sections and kidney transplants in progress or "place padlocks on a private clinic" like the ones she and her husband Marcus owned.

Did Bachmann's allegations have any factual basis whatsoever? Nope, but as usual, that didn't stop her.

Perhaps the most revealing moment of Beck's 50-minute rant -- and for this listener, certainly the most disgusting -- came when he whipped out a binder full of concentration camp badges from his extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia. (Yes, Glenn Beck has an extensive collection of Nazi memorabilia. Let that sink in for a minute.) Beck flipped through page after page of these gruesome artifacts, explaining which group wore which symbol.

He then asked the crowd if anyone knew what group wore purple triangles. (The correct answer is Jehovah's Witnesses.) One member of the audience guessed gays, to which Beck replied that no, gays' concentration camp badges were pink. And how did the crowd of so-called "values voters" respond? With laughter.

The world these Tea Party, religious-right, mostly white, middle-aged and elderly conservatives thought they knew is evolving all around them and rapidly morphing into something they no longer recognize -- and it scares the hell out of them. But instead of challenging their preconceptions and growing along with the rest of America, they've chosen to dig in their heels, wrap themselves in the Gadsden flag, climb up onto crosses of their own making, and fight desperately to cling to their prejudices for as long as possible.

And yes, that includes anti-LGBT bigotry. Stay tuned for my second and final report, where I'll go into detail about homophobia and transphobia at the Values Voter Summit.

Let's be honest.  These are NOT nice or decent people.  They are racists, bigots, homophobes and anti-Semites who wrap themselves in religion as an excuse for their vile evilness.  They deserve no respect and no deference whatsoever.  The majority of Americans need to figure this out and expedite the marginalization of these people from both politics and polite society.