Franklin Graham: Keep Satanic Gay People Away From Your Children

Franklin Graham, a professional Christian who would be a complete no one but for his famous - or infamous, depending on one's view of those who have made themselves wealth peddling religion -  is continuing his relentless denigration and demonizing of LGBT individuals.  In his latest message of hate, Graham is urging "Christians" to keep gays away from their children and away from their churches.  Like so many of the self-anointed "godly folk," instead of furthering the Gospel message of Christ, Graham's message is one of pure hate and judgment of others.  Right Wing Watch looks at the latest poison Graham is disseminating.  Here are highlights:

Last year, Franklin Graham joined James Dobson at an event in Colorado where the two warned against allowing gay people into churches because, according to Graham, they are representatives of "the Enemy" who wants to "devour our homes" and "devour this nation." 

On his radio program today, Dobson played excerpts from his discussion with Graham at the event, in which called for Christians to keep their kids away from gay people and to take over school boards across the nation in order to remove gay-friendly programs. 

"We have allowed the Enemy to come into our churches," Graham said. "I was talking to some Christians and they were talking about how they invited these gay children to come into their home and to come into the church and that they were wanting to influence them. And I thought to myself, they're not going to influence those kids; those kids are going to influence those parent's children."

"What happens is we think we can fight by smiling and being real nice and loving," he continued. "We have to understand who the Enemy is and what he wants to do. He wants to devour our homes. He wants to devour this nation and we have to be so careful who we let our kids hang out with. We have to be so careful who we let into the churches. You have immoral people who get into the churches and it begins to effect the others in the church and it is dangerous."

Graham then went on to lament that "homosexuality is taught to be okay" in schools and "that is why I want to get the school boards back" before insisting that he loves gays and therefore feels obligated to tell them that "you cannot stay gay and call yourself a Christian."

That eventually promoted Dobson to rail against the entire LGBT agenda by once again absurdly misunderstanding bisexuality.

"You know what the 'B' stand for?" Dobson asked. "Bisexual. That's orgies! That is lots of sex with lots of people!"

Being gay is not a choice - I know this all too well having tried to deny reality and "pray away the gay" for 37 years.  However, being and ignorance embracing, bigoted asshole like Dobson and Graham IS a choice.  Sadly, these two men - and so many other professional Christians - put shaking down the ignorant and gullible for money so as to maintain their very comfortable lives ahead of truth, honesty and treating others as Christ commanded.  The Pharisees of the New Testament are exemplary individuals compared to Graham and Dobson.

 

The Case Against Bernie Sanders - and a Rebutal

The Hillary Clinton v. Bernie Sanders nomination contest is heating up as Sanders moves up in the polls against Clinton and the fall out is that opinion pieces that both make a case against Sanders and others that seek to rebut them.  Where the truth lies is likely open to debate, but it is important to try to get a handle on the competing arguments.  A piece against Sanders recently appeared in New York Magazine.  A countervailing piece appears in Commonweal that seeks to counter the New York Magazine piece.  First, here are highlights from the New York Magazine piece by Jonathan Chait:

Until very recently, nobody had any cause to regret Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Sanders is earnest and widely liked. He has tugged the terms of the political debate leftward in a way both moderates and left-wingers could appreciate.

Sanders’s rapid rise, in both early states and national polling, has made him a plausible threat to defeat Hillary Clinton. Suddenly, liberals who have used the nominating process to unilaterally vet Clinton, processing every development through its likely impact on her as the inevitable candidate, need to think anew. Do we support Sanders not just in his role as lovable Uncle Bernie, complaining about inequality, but as the actual Democratic nominee for president? My answer to that question is no.

Sanders’s core argument is that the problems of the American economy require far more drastic remedies than anything the Obama administration has done, or that Clinton proposes to build on. Clinton has put little pressure on Sanders’s fatalistic assessment, but the evidence for it is far weaker than he assumes.  

At the very least, the conclusion that Obama’s policies have failed to raise living standards for average people is premature. And the progress under Obama refutes Sanders’s corollary point, that meaningful change is impossible without a revolutionary transformation that eliminates corporate power.

Nor should his proposed remedies be considered self-evidently benign. Evidence has shown that, at low levels, raising the minimum wage does little or nothing to kill jobs. At some point, though, the government could set a minimum wage too high for employers to be willing to pay it for certain jobs.

Sanders’s worldview is not a fantasy. It is a serious critique based on ideas he has developed over many years, and it bears at least some relation to the instincts shared by all liberals. The moral urgency with which Sanders presents his ideas has helped shelter him from necessary internal criticism. Nobody on the left wants to defend Wall Street or downplay the pressure on middle- and working-class Americans. But Sanders's ideas should not be waved through as a more honest or uncorrupted version of the liberal catechism. The despairing vision he paints of contemporary America is oversimplified. 

Even those who do share Sanders’s critique of American politics and endorse his platform, though, should have serious doubts about his nomination. Sanders does bring some assets as a potential nominee — his rumpled style connotes authenticity, and his populist forays against Wall Street have appeal beyond the Democratic base. But his self-identification as a socialist poses an enormous obstacle, as Americans respond to “socialism” with overwhelming negativity. Likewise, his support for higher taxes on the middle class — while substantively sensible — also saddles him with a highly unpopular stance. 

Against these liabilities, Sanders offers the left-wing version of a hoary political fantasy: that a more pure candidate can rally the People into a righteous uprising that would unsettle the conventional laws of politics. Versions of this have circulated in both parties for years, having notably inspired the disastrous Goldwater and McGovern campaigns. The Republican Party may well fall for it again this year. 

Sanders has promised to replace Obamacare with a single-payer plan, without having any remotely plausible prospects for doing so. Many advocates of single-payer imagine that only the power of insurance companies stands in their way, but the more imposing obstacles would be reassuring suspicious voters that the change in their insurance (from private to public) would not harm them and — more difficult still — raising the taxes to pay for it. 

[H]ere is a second irony: Those areas in which a Democratic Executive branch has no power are those in which Sanders demands aggressive action, and the areas in which the Executive branch still has power now are precisely those in which Sanders has the least to say. The president retains full command of foreign affairs; can use executive authority to drive social policy change in areas like criminal justice and gender; and can, at least in theory, staff the judiciary. What the next president won’t accomplish is to increase taxes, expand social programs, or do anything to reduce inequality, given the House Republicans’ fanatically pro-inequality positions across the board.  

[I]t seems bizarre for Democrats to risk losing the presidency by embracing a politically radical doctrine that stands zero chance of enactment even if they win. 

Against this criticisms, the piece in Commonweal offers counter arguments.  Here are excerpts:

The leadership of the Democratic Party, which never took Sanders very seriously, is finally starting to worry. So are center-left pundits. In this morning’s New York Times, Paul Krugman takes a shot at Sanders’s single-payer health-care plan, while New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait has a blog post titled “The Case against Bernie Sanders.” One gets the sense that Krugman is slightly more sympathetic than Chait to Sanders’s underlying ideology, but both argue that Sanders’s leftist platform is unrealistic in the current political environment and may even threaten the important gains made by meliorist liberals in the past eight years.  

To their credit, both Krugman and Chait try to avoid condescending to Sanders and his supporters, but there is some unavoidable condescension in their claim that Sanders is naïve in imagining single-payer health care could ever get off the ground in the United States. The title of Krugman’s column, “Health Care Realities,” suggests that supporters of a single-payer system—or what Sanders often calls Medicare for all—are, well, not quite in touch with reality. Krugman reminds readers that it was all a Democratic Congress could do to push through Obamacare, which was modeled on proposals originally advanced by Republicans. 

I think it’s still too early to say how large Sanders’s grassroots campaign may yet become. But putting that point aside, I’d like to offer an answer to Chait’s question. Obama’s passionate volunteers were drawn to his personal charisma and to the general promise of change after eight years of George W. Bush. Of course, Obama ran with a set of detailed policy proposals, but it wasn’t his proposals that created most of the excitement around his candidacy; it was his image and his rhetoric. Sanders’s only charisma is a kind of anti-charisma.  

Like Trump, Sanders is an anti-establishment candidate, but unlike Trump and a lot of right-wing populists, he does not run on his personality or promise miracles of leadership that will somehow overcome structural constraints on executive power. He is always reminding his supporters that he cannot do what needs to be done alone—no president can. It will require a new movement that motivates people who have become cynical about politics to organize and to vote. 

Chait describes Sanders’s politics as “fatalistic” and “despairing,” but this gets it exactly wrong. True, Sanders despairs of any significant progress being made before we change the way political campaigns are financed (his perseveration on this point has become a joke among the Beltway commentariat). But he offers voters the hope that, even after Citizens United, such change is still possible if enough of them care enough to vote for it. It is the other candidates who are “fatalistic” about the role of corporate money in politics, which is why, unlike Sanders, they are willing to accept huge amounts of it.  

Political scientists have a word for that: oligarchy. This is the central fact of American politics today, and it is the focus of Sanders’s campaign. His dissatisfaction with this state of affairs does not amount to fatalism or despair. At least, that is not the way most voters have understood it; they have understood it as outrage or indignation—and the challenge for the Sanders campaign is to get them to understand and embrace it as righteous indignation. 

Chait is right that, in functional terms, the most a Democratic president can hope to do in the immediate future is to serve as a bulwark against Republican lawmakers. But the presidency cannot be understood only in functional terms; it is also a bully pulpit. If the next president will not be able to change the tax code or curb Wall Street unilaterally, he or she will at least be better placed than any other politician to steer the nation’s political conversation toward subjects of real importance. That is what President Obama has done with gun control and immigration, and that is what Sanders would do with wealth and income inequality. If you believe, as many Democratic voters do, that those are the issues the country ought to be most focused on, then Sanders is your candidate. As Krugman might say, it is a question of priorities. 

Which brings me to my main point about Hillary Clinton. If, as Krugman and now Chait have argued, what we need most in the White House is a dependable bulwark against Republican mischief, then we should be voting for a candidate whose record demonstrates consistent opposition to Republican policies. That candidate is Sanders, not Clinton, who has been all over the place on many issues.  

If Sanders’s campaign is less about personality than Obama’s was, it is also true that his appeal to voters who don’t trust Clinton has something to do with character. With most issues, including the ones that ought to matter most in this election, you know where Bernie stands: it’s where he’s stood all along. He may lack polish and aplomb, especially compared with Obama, but he’s solid. And that’s exactly what you want in a bulwark.  

Both arguments have some merits.  That said, I don't know which side I fall on because my number one worry is making sure that a Democrat - or someone running as a Democrat - wins in November.  That is the most important issue before us.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Marco Rubio's Frightening Religious Beliefs

Like most of the GOP clown car, Marco Rubio has been relentlessly prostituting himself to the Christofascists in the GOP base who increasingly have a stranglehold on the nomination process of the party.  As is the norm, gays have been among the favored targets of such self-prostitution efforts.  But a piece in Salon makes the case that while Rubio is acting like many of his rivals, the difference is that he believes the batshitery that he is spouting.  The last thing that America needs is another president that clings to a simpleton religious belief system who then seekd to be guided by it rather than objective reality and facts.  Here are article highlights:

One of the most annoying things about religious folks is that they just cannot keep their “good news” to themselves.

Not two weeks into the new year, the frocked and beanied capo dei capi of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, chose to impose upon humanity a book of his own authorship, “The Name of God Is Mercy.”. . . . do we really want to hear about mercy from the Pope, who, phony liberal pretensions notwithstanding, oversees an organization whose “men of the cloth” have, for so long, and so mercilessly, subjected the youngest and most vulnerable of their parishioners to rape and other varieties of sexual abuse that they may well be guilty of torture? (A United Nations committee is investigating this.)

Yet we can choose to ignore such papal dreck. Not so with the theocratic strivings of members of our own judiciary, which may, depending on who wins the White House later this year, eventually impinge on our lives through Supreme Court rulings.

[F]aith-derangement syndrome afflicts the undeniably young and intelligent, and most notably, among the Republican contenders for the White House, Senator Marco Rubio. Rubio once converted to Mormonism but currently two-times with both the Catholic Church and the extremist, anti-gay, pro-exorcist Christ Fellowship. He has just put out a television campaign ad entitled “Marco Rubio on His Christian Faith.”

He uses his campaign ad to talk only about religion. Aren’t campaign ads supposed to at least have something to do with politics? 

Anyway, let’s dissect Rubio’s message line by line. He opens with a statement that is presumptive, irrelevant to the office he seeks, theologically contentious, and tritely tautological. . . . . Whether the senator believes in such nonsensicalities is really none of our business: Article VI of the Constitution states that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” There’s no need for him to drone on about his faith to the electorate.

[M]ore to the point, though, why should “salvation” be a matter for discussion on the campaign trail? . . . .He is, after all, appealing for support to Christians alone – not Jews, not Muslims, not Buddhists or Hindus. The Founding Fathers, to thwart sectarian influence in governance, wrote the aforementioned Article VI. Sectarian pandering should play no role in running for public office. 

Next: “The purpose of our life is to cooperate with God’s plan.” . . . . Straightaway we can discount the Bible – a mishmash of texts authored during barbarous ancient times by unknown humans who knew nothing of biology, physics (Newtonian or quantum), the empirical method or a posteriori knowledge, or even why we should wash our hands after using the bathroom. We immediately reject “personal revelation” as unverifiable and subject to falsification.

The crushing banality, the overwhelming unoriginality of everything Rubio says in his commercial evokes something akin to astonishment. Absolutely any convinced Christ-worshipper could have uttered the exact same words, which are nothing but boilerplate pulpiteer’s patter. That Rubio chose to speak thus before the camera shows just how abysmally low the expectations of the faith-addled are: proffer mind-deadening insipidities and sit back and await the hosannas and hallelujahs that are sure to issue from the segment of the public that will not think for itself, but has to be told fairy tales to feel comfortable about voting for a candidate.

 

It’s time we point out a few things to the senator.

Rationalists, Senator Rubio, find themselves compelled to draw disturbing conclusions from your ad. Children eventually stop believing in fairy tales, yet you persist in accepting the veracity of a book of fables, and, more problematically, you conduct your life in accordance with them. You choose to address a similarly deluded portion of your electorate, ignoring reasonable people and discounting their sensibilities. You present your faith in said fables as buttressing your qualification for the highest office in the land, at a turbulent time in history when the United States needs a serious, clear-minded adult commander-in-chief. 

You have, Senator, a constitutional right to profess belief in whatever you want. But you have no right to do so unchallenged by those tasked with ferreting out the truth and conveying it to the public. Unfortunately, though, you can broadcast such views throughout the land with little fear of being called out by journalists, who will shy away from religion as too sensitive and personal a topic.

Times are now too perilous for such squeamishness.

Rubio, Scalia and Moore have thrown down the gauntlet. Journalists need to pick it up – and fast.

Religion, in my view, has no place in serious political discourse.  Indeed, the "deeply religious" by their own admission demonstrate that they are unfit for any elective office. We need leaders who are in touch with reality and will act and make decisions based on facts and not a belief in myths and fairy tales. Rubio seemingly cannot rise to this level.

More Republican Hand Wringing

Yesterday it was Michael Gerson in the Washington Post, today it is David Brooks in the New York Times.  All the hand wringing and lamenting from Republicans and conservatives who quietly stood by, if not secreting gloating, as the unwashed and insane elements of the Christofascist/Tea Party crowd took control of the GOP and gave it short term victories.  Now, the monster has turned on its self-appointed masters and threatens to doom the future of the GOP.  Better to have lost some elections rather than to have made hatred, bigotry, racism and religious fanaticism the hallmarks of the GOP as moderates fled the growing insanity of the party base.  In his piece, Brooks calls for a conspiracy to stop the rise of Trump and Cruz.  Here are excerpts:

Members of the Republican governing class are like cowering freshmen at halftime of a high school football game. Some are part of the Surrender Caucus, sitting sullenly on their stools resigned to the likelihood that their team is going to get crushed. Some are thinking of jumping ship to the Trump campaign with an alacrity that would make rats admire and applaud.

Rarely has a party so passively accepted its own self-destruction. Sure, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are now riding high in some meaningless head-to-head polls against Hillary Clinton, but the odds are the nomination of either would lead to a party-decimating general election.

The Tea Party, Ted Cruz’s natural vehicle, has 17 percent popular support, according to Gallup. The idea that most women, independents or mainstream order-craving suburbanites would back a guy who declares his admiration for Vladimir Putin is a mirage. The idea that the G.O.P. can march into the 21st century intentionally alienating every person of color is borderline insane.

Worse is the prospect that one of them might somehow win. Very few presidents are so terrible that they genuinely endanger their own nation, but Trump and Cruz would go there and beyond. Trump is a solipsistic branding genius whose “policies” have no contact with Planet Earth and who would be incapable of organizing a coalition, domestic or foreign.

So maybe it’s time for governing Republicans to actually do something. Yes, I’m talking to you state legislators, or local committeepersons, or members of Congress and all your networks of donors and supporters. . . . . What’s needed is a grass-roots movement that stands for governing conservatism, built both online and through rallies, and gets behind a single candidate sometime in mid- to late February. In politics, if A (Trump) and B (Cruz) savage each other then the benefits often go to Candidate C. But there has to be a C, not a C, D, E, F and G.

This new movement must come to grips with two realities. First, the electorate has changed. Less-educated voters are in the middle of a tidal wave of trauma. Labor force participation is dropping, wages are sliding, suicide rates are rising, heroin addiction is rising, faith in American institutions is dissolving.

Second, the Republican Party is not as anti-government as its elites think it is. Its members no longer fit into the same old ideological categories. Trump grabbed his lead with an ideological grab bag of gestures, some of them quite on the left. He is more Huey Long than Calvin Coolidge.

Given the current strains on middle- and working-class families, many Republican voters want a government that will help the little guy . . . .

Years ago, reform conservatives were proposing a Sam’s Club Republicanism, which would actually provide concrete policy ideas to help the working class, like wage subsidies, a higher earned-Income tax credit, increased child tax credits, subsidies for people who wanted to move in search of work and exemption of the first $20,000 in earnings from the Medicaid payroll tax. This would be a conservatism that emphasized social mobility at the bottom, not cutting taxes at the top.

Maybe it’s time a center-right movement actually offered that agenda.

And maybe it’s time some Republicans took a stand on what is emerging as the central dispute of our time — not between left and right but between open and closed. As the political scientist Matthew MacWilliams has found, the key trait that identifies Trump followers is authoritarianism. His central image is a wall. With their emphasis on anger and shutting people out, Trump and Cruz are more like European conservatives than American ones.

Governing conservatism has to offer people a secure financial base and a steady hand up so they can welcome global capitalism with hope and a sense of opportunity. That’s the true American tradition, emphasizing future dynamism not tribal walls. There’s a silent majority of hopeful, practical, programmatic Republicans. You know who you are.  Please don’t go quietly and pathetically into the night.

As noted before, where were Gerson, Brooks and many others when the so-called GOP establishment welcomed in the forces of insanity and extremism that are now threatening to kill the GOP?  

More Monday Male Beauty

Would MLK Have Supported Marriage Equality?

Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, made it clear before her death that she supported LGBT equality.  Moreover, she stated that her late husband would have supported the movement for LGBT equality.  What King himself thought we will likely never know with definitive certainty.  He was shot down in 1968 and never really expressed his views on LGBT equality, although one of his right hand men,  Bayard Rustin, was a gay man.  I believe that King would support today's movement for LGBT equality.  Today, while driving between the law firm offices today, I heard most of King's truly amazing speech when he came out against the Vietnam War (I love satellite radio). Based on his compassion for and statements about the Vietnamese people, I believe that he would have supported LGBT equality for similar reasons.  My blogger and activist friend, Rev. Irene Monroe, who I met at the 2008 LGBT blogger summit in Washington, D.C., has a piece in The Advocate that looks at this question.  Here are excerpts:

This Martin Luther King Jr. holiday reminds me how Alabama has always been a troubling state when it comes to upholding the civil rights of its denizens.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s civil rights activism began in the unwelcoming “Heart of Dixie” in 1955 when on a cold December evening, Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her seat to a white passenger, birthing the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott was the first of what would be many historic marches and protests that would catapult King onto a national stage. His acts of civil disobedience in the 1950s and 1960s helped elevate the country’s moral consciousness as Alabama struggled with theirs. Sadly, in 2016, Alabama is still struggling.

When, on January 8, the Mobile County Probate Office resumed issuance of marriage licenses, I was asked by an editor, “What would be MLK’s thoughts about the modern LGBTQ movement and the place of people of color in it?” As I comb through numerous books and essays learning more about King’s philandering, his sexist attitude about women at home and in the movement, and his relationship with Bayard Rustin, I too wonder, Would King today be a public advocate for LGBTQ rights?

King’s now-deceased wife would say yes.

In 1998, Coretta Scott King addressed the LGBT group Lambda Legal in Chicago. In her speech, she said LGBTQ equality and civil rights were the same. 

“I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King’s dream to make room at the table of brother and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people,” she said.

Speculations on what King's views would be vary within African-American LGBTQ communities. But an overwhelming number in these communities look more to Bayard Rustin — then and now — than to King as a spokesman for supporting our civil rights.

“I tend not to worry much about what MLK would do. I tend to look at someone such as Bayard Rustin as one prime driving force in civil rights and other activism. Rustin was there before World War II. And he never wavered, always looking for something new. It was Rustin who schooled King in Gandhi’s ideas. Rustin has simply said that the GLBT movement is the inheritor of civil rights activism in the U.S. I’ll stick with Bayard,” a blogger wrote me.

In the civil rights movement, Rustin was always the man behind the scenes, and a large part of that had to due with the fact that he was gay. Because of their own homophobia, many African-American ministers involved in the civil rights movement would have nothing to do with Rustin, and they intentionally spread rumors that King was gay because of his close friendship with Rustin.

We must understand King within the historical context of the homophobic black church; because of his association with it, I cannot envision him endorsing marriage equality. But I, like so many within the African-American community — straight or gay — cannot fathom King marching against same-sex marriage as his youngest daughter, Rev. Bernice King, did.

King was assassinated over a year before the Stonewall riots. Gay rights had not reached the level of being a bona fide national issue yet, and for King to have made a major public pronouncement regarding LGBTQ rights would have been historically premature. Note the flak he took even for speaking out against the Vietnam War — it was charged that he was overstepping his role and the war was not his issue.

“Had [King] lived long enough, he would have taken some form of enlightened viewpoint regarding gay/lesbian rights,” a friend told me emphatically. “Personally, I speculate that probably he and his wife had private conversations regarding this issue, and I believe that Coretta’s unwavering support of GLBT rights throughout the rest of her life reflects the direction of those discussions.”

Trump Prostitutes Himself at Liberty University

Brain washed sheeple at Liberty University

In my view, one of the biggest blights on Virginia - perhaps a putrid boil is a better analogy - is Liberty University which is starting to make Pat Robertson's Regent University look almost normal in comparison notwithstanding Robertson's regular outbursts of batshit crazy verbal diarrhea.   An appearance at Liberty University has become de rigueur among Republican candidates seeking to shamelessly prostitute themselves to ignorance embracing, racist Christofascists.  Today, Donald Trump prostituted himself at Liberty and seemingly was well received by the authoritarian loving religious extremists at the so-called university.  The Daily Beast looks at the nauseating spectacle.  Here are article highlights:

Evangelicals weren’t supposed to like Donald Trump. He’s boasted about never asking God for forgiveness, exhibited total Biblical illiteracy, and had as many wives as an Old Testament patriarch.

But none of that matters. When the billionaire mogul spoke at Liberty University this morning, he got a rapturous welcome that showed just how much Evangelicals love him—and why. The obsequiously warm reception he received may upend conventional wisdom about what conservative Christians want from their presidential candidates. And that’s great news for Trump.

The boisterous crowd—some of whom woke up at 3:30 a.m. to get good seats—proceeded to worship Trump.

Trump’s performance certainly drew some sneers, especially when an attempt to pander fell flat after Trump mispronounced a Biblical reference as “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” But despite that, his overwhelmingly warm reception confirms that he’s just as competitive as any other Republican among Evangelical Christian voters.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the university president and son of Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, introduced Trump to the crowd and left no doubt about his feelings for the golden-haired mogul.

The implication was clear as a bell: Evangelical Christians shouldn’t stress about Trump’s personal life.  But Falwell didn’t just compare Trump to Reagan; he also said Trump reminded him of his father, generous and pragmatic. And he compared Trump’s presidential campaign to the university itself.

He [Trump] spent the bulk of the speech talking about Iran, ISIS, and the sad mendacity of the national media (“Twenty-five percent are good. Two percent are great.”). Said sad national media, he argued, has failed to report on just how support Trump has won.

“You’re not getting a real picture of the silent majority, which Jerry Sr. had something to do,” he said. “And that’s a phrase you should be really cognizant of. Because it is a silent majority, but I think I’m gonna up it a little bit because it’s no longer so silent. It’s really a noisy majority.”

And Trump’s pitch was perfect.  “He spoke to the Liberty audience and culture almost as if he was a part of it,” said Johnnie Moore, former senior vice president at the school, “as if he had been a part of it – a graduate or an alumnus or someone who had had kids go there.”

Moore said that’s because -- despite his “Two Corinthians” flub -- he came off as authentic.  “Not a single person in that crowd this morning thought, I wonder if he’s lying to me,” Moore said.

He noted that Evangelical Christians have two basic approaches to politics: Some want candidates to have as much in common with them as possible -- they embrace long-shot contenders like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum because they share their identical convictions about Christianity’s role in public life. The Falwells aren’t in that school of thought. Rather, they like winners, even if that means backing candidates who used to be pro-choice and have a few divorces under their belt. That’s why Jerry Falwell Sr. made good with John McCain after the Arizonan called him an “agent of intolerance,” and it’s why their family was so undyingly loyal to the Bushes -- even as George H. W. Bush struggled to win Evangelical support.

The Falwell family hasn’t lost its single-minded interest in winning, and that’s why Jerry Jr. had such kind words for Trump.  “It was clear that he would be extremely comfortable if Trump was the candidate,” Moore said.

I find it laughable that students did not feel as if Trump was lying too them.  All they hear from the likes of Falwell and "godly folks" at Liberty University is lies and a rejection of objective reality.  These students are confronted daily with liars and falsely pious demagogues who win their ignorant respect.  They are the last people to see through Trump's manipulation.  

 

For the Good of the GOP, Trump and Cruz Must Lose

The cynical part of me is taking great enjoyment watching those who view themselves as part of the GOP establishment or among the few sane remnants left in the GOP party base reacting to the twin Frankenstein monsters that have emerged from years of refusing to confront head on the extremists and Christofascists who have become a metastasizing cancer in the GOP.  Years ago when I resigned from the GOP and then later came out as gay, all of my fact-based condemnations of what I saw happening were ignored and I was for a time drawn through the mud by former GOP colleagues.  All of my predictions have come true and belatedly remnants of the old GOP are lashing out and decrying what has happened.  Among them is Michael Gerson, a columnists for the Washington Post who for far too long closed his eyes to what was happening in in the GOP.  I a piece in the Post, he now declares that BOTH Donald Trump and Ted Cruz must lose for the good of the Republican Party. Here are excerpts:

The outbreak of hostilities between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz may not be edifying, but it is clarifying. 

Cruz represents the arrival of tea party ideology at the presidential level. He espouses a “constitutionalism” that would disqualify much of modern government, and a belief that Republican elites are badly, even mainly, at fault for accommodating cultural and economic liberalism. 

Trump has adopted an ethno-nationalism in which the constraints of “political correctness” are lifted to express frankly nativist sentiments: that many illegal immigrants are criminals and rapists who threaten American jobs, and that Muslims are foreign, suspicious and potentially dangerous. 

Cruz is attacking Trump as a “fake conservative” on gun and property rights and as a New York liberal on cultural matters. For his part, Trump defends those portions of the welfare state that benefit the working class, opposing cuts in Social Security and an increase in the retirement age. Cruz is the conservative true believer. Trump is the wrecking ball of political convention. They are not only two strong personalities; they demonstrate two different tendencies within the right. 

Trump’s attacks on Cruz have begun drawing both blood and protests from ideological conservatives.   “Either cut the crap,” warns radio host Mark Levin, . . . Levin and others registered no protest when Trump denigrated women, minorities and the disabled. Attacking a favored conservative is evidently a different matter.

 But this is Trump’s greatest political talent — exploiting weaknesses . . . . The issue is simpler: Why would voters who support the forced expulsion of 11 million undocumented people want a president born north of the border? Trump’s mention of undisclosed Wall Street contributions highlights the contrast between Cruz’s outsider brand and insider résumé. 

But Trump is proposing a massive ideological and moral revision of the Republican Party. Re-created in his image, it would be the anti-immigrant party; the party that blows up the global trading order; the party that undermines the principle of religious liberty; the party that encourages an ethnic basis for American identity and gives strength and momentum to prejudice.  . . . . But they are not acceptable. They are not normal. They are extreme, and obscene and immoral. The Republican nominee — for the sake of his party and his conscience — must draw these boundaries clearly. 

Ted Cruz is . . . .  actually more of a demagogue than an ideologue. So he has changed his views on immigration to compete with Trump — and raised the ante by promising that none of the deported 11 million will ever be allowed back in the country.

For Republicans, the only good outcome of Trump vs. Cruz is for both to lose. The future of the party as the carrier of a humane, inclusive conservatism now depends on some viable choice beyond them.

Gerson is right that both Trump and Cruz must lose, not only for the good of the GOP but also for the good of the country.  The big question I have for Gerson and those like him is this:  Where was your voice when the foul elements of the Christofascists, white supremacists and other extremists were welcomed into the GOP with open arms in the interest of short term electoral wins?  This nightmare could have been avoided had decent, sane Republicans refused to compromise principles and refused to vote these horrible people into the party's committees and governing bodies.

 

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