Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7–a concern aggravated by the president’s news conference this week.
“They aren’t even planning for if they lose,” says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush’s final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.
“The Bush White House has had no relationship with Congress,” said a Bush ally. “Beyond the Democrats, wait till they see how the Republicans–the ones that survive–treat them if they lose next month.”
I don’t want to get all tin-foily here, but this just strikes me a very, very odd. Maybe it’s the tinkerbelle strategy taken to the next level. But you do have to wonder why they are so eerily confident in the outcome of an elections that looks more and more to be a rout.
Billmon, from whom I lifted this link, points to this:
The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.
I think most of you readers will probably think of this.
I suspect it may just be something simpler: president pissypants:
The President’s Increasing Isolation: A related factor, aides and outside allies concede, is what many of them see as the President’s increasing isolation. Bush’s bubble has grown more hermetic in the second term, they say, with fewer people willing or able to bring him bad news—or tell him when he’s wrong. A youngish aide who is a Bush favorite described the perils of correcting the boss. “The first time I told him he was wrong, he started yelling at me,” the aide recalled about a session during the first term. “Then I showed him where he was wrong, and he said, ‘All right. I understand. Good job.’ He patted me on the shoulder. I went and had dry heaves in the bathroom.”
“It was a National Guard unit run amok,” Shays said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “It was torture because sex abuse is torture. It was gross and despicable … This is more about pornography than torture.”
Uhm, no it isn’t just that sex abuse is torture, although it is, which he apparently has finally discovered. But he and Rush and many on the right see this thing as pornography which is defined as “material that depicts erotic behavior and is intended to cause sexual excitement.”
LIMBAUGH:And these American prisoners of war — have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.
LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at — if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don’t know if it’s just me, but it looks just like anything you’d see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I’m — yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City — the movie. I mean, I don’t — it’s just me.
(Apparently, it isn’t just him. I always wondered why Shays stayed in the Republican party and now I know.)
Seriously, do Republicans really think those pictures of the mentally ill patient covered in excrement or the terrified man who suffered that bloody dogbite were intended to cause sexual excitement? Where does this pornography thing come from? Did it cause them sexual excitement?
Shays said Friday he wished he had more fully explained his views at the debate.
“I was maybe not as expansive as I needed to be,” he said. “Of course, the degrading of anyone is torture. We need to deal with it.”
Shays said his debate comments reflected the disturbing photos he has seen of Abu Ghraib abuses: “Naked Iraqis, naked Americans, Americans having sex … gross and despicable pictures.”
I guess he was so overwhelmed by the male nudity and the pictures of Americans having sex (which none of the rest of us have seen) that he didn’t notice this stuff:
11:15 p.m., Nov. 7, 2003. The detainees were brought into the hard site for their involvement in a riot. The seven detainees were flexi cuffed and thrown into a pile on the floor. Soldiers then jumped on the pile, stomped on their hands and feet. CPL GRANER is depicted holding and in the process of punching a detainee. [Detainee name deleted] is detainee with writing on leg wearing the white underwear.
Maybe Republicans think that’s porno, but it sure looks like torture to me.
I would become a believer myself if this happened:
Dear Dr. Dobson and Friends
I write this letter to you as an admirer, and as one who is eternally grateful for all that you have done to fight for Christian values in America. Although fine Americans such as Don Wildmon, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Tony Perkins, Phyllis Schlafly, The Arlington Group and others have fought the fight as well, you more than anyone, are the face of the pro-family movement. You have the scars to prove it and I consider you an American hero.
But Dr. Dobson, it is time to build an ark. It is time to leave the Republican Party. Jesus will not ride into town on an elephant.
I know that seems like a radical move, sir, but it has become increasingly apparent that the core values of the Republican Party are not Christian values. It is time all Christian leaders ask ourselves if it is possible for God to bless a polluted party. Make no mistake, the Republican Party is polluted.
[…]
Now is the time to form our own party. You and your friends have the influence to do it. Remember how quickly people got behind Ross Perot? Can’t our Christian leaders do the same? We have the resources and the network. It is time to stop wasting them on Republicanism.
The world has gotten smaller. The power of the internet has changed the way Americans communicate. With one click of a mouse, millions can be alerted to Truth. A network of churches and ministries already exists. We can override the lunacy of television ads, without spending a dime, if we focus now on 2008.
Here is a plan.
· Begin now to build the network of partnerships of those who espouse Christian values. Much of it is already in place.
· Draft Judge Roy Moore as the 2008 presidential candidate. He has proven his mettle. Begin working for his election now. There is no question where his loyalty lies. Work to get him on the ballot in all fifty states. Stay out of the Republican primary. Build a war-chest for the general election.
· Begin a training program for future candidates in Constitutional government as it relates to God-ordained freedoms. Train up men who will not compromise for personal gain. Courageous men who stand in the face of the anti-god establishment. Men who will restore Constitutional government. Men in the tradition of Madison and Washington. In two years we will have a group of God-fearing men to run in local races.
· Hire experts to create PAC’s that will support the candidates giving opportunities for Christians to donate to Godly candidates, rather than compromised Republicans. Thumb your nose at the IRS. Would Jesus be silent on the great moral issues of the day because he was afraid of losing His tax-exempt status?
· Give no money to Republican or Democratic candidates–only those who join the new party.
· Offer current God-fearing officials an alternative to status quo politics, and offer an alternative party for them to join.
[…]
Things are not looking good for Republicans. It is time to abandon ship, to build an ark, to raise the standard. Republicanism is making Christianity look bad.
Dr. Dobson, America needs bold new leadership. You and your friends have the influence to pull it off. Are you and your friends willing to give up your seat at the Republican table? With leadership comes responsibility and the Lord will hold us all accountable for the compromising of His standards. The wonks will tell us a third-party can’t win, that we will only divide the vote, that Hillary will be president.
I say God will do something great if we honor His name and His ways. Matthew 19:6 “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
So, Dr. Dobson, who will you choose to believe?
Praise the Lord! I think there is no doubt that Jesus would want these people to form a third party of conservative Christians with Judge Roy Moore at the top of the ticket.
I’m with them on this 100%. In fact, I’ll give money to help them make it happen. Republicans are polluted, yes they are. Long live the Conservative Christian Crusade Party. It is exactly what this country needs at a time like this.
Glenn Greenwald’s blog Unclaimed Territory sort of took the blogosphere by storm this past year or so and for good reason. He is fearless in taking on the right wing — from the crazed harpy wingnut vloggers to the Wall Street Journal editorial page. And he makes such well-reasoned yet passionate arguments they are forced to engage him. His blog is does what the best lefty blogs have to do — entertain, inform and… kick rightwing ass.
Glenn is just a great blogger and I’d hate to see Unclaimed Territory have to change or go dark. If you have the wherewithal and you value what bloggers like Glenn are doing, head on over and give him a donation. Bloggers aren’t getting any institutional or advertising support from the big money boys in the party. This is the way independent bloggers like Glenn can keep the lights on.
MJ Rosenberg over at TPM Cafe makes note of religious conservative Dennis Prager’s strong moral stand on Larry King last night. It’s quite inspiring:
KING: … Does the Foley matter bother you?
PRAGER: The matter bothers me but not politically. A congressman is given a page to nurture and take care of and not to try to have an affair with, with same-sex or opposite sex, so that bothers me. There’s no question about it and a great deal in fact but, it doesn’t bother me politically.
KING: Why?
PRAGER: Because it will have no repercussion in my opinion. Even “The New York Times” I’m sure through [sic] its great chagrin had on the front page that conservative, religious conservatives, the people most likely to be offended by such a sexual scandal, are not at all turning away from the Republicans. It was a front page article.
KING: Why aren’t they offended?
PRAGER: Oh, they are offended but they’re not going to — they’re not going to stop voting Republican as a result. That was what the article was about. They’re going to still go to the polls and they should because what is the alternative, a party that doesn’t share any of their values.
So, as much as any conservative might say, “Well, it’s not been a conservative enough administration,” when you look at the alternative, you end up voting Republican.
First of all, since when is a congressman “given a page to nurture and take care of?” This isn’t feudal Europe and these Republican perverts sure as hell aren’t knights in shining armor.
Second, are we supposed to be impressed that even though the Republicans steal billions of tax dollars, cover up for sexual deviants and demand the right to torture, moral Americans will vote for them anyway because they couldn’t possibly be as bad as liberals? That’s what’s known as moral clarity among religious conservatives like Prager.
Considering that, perhaps some of you will be surprised to learn that Prager is an “ethicist” who said back in 1999:
Five years ago, I became a Republican for one reason — aside from the religious renaissance, the Republican party was the only force in America that could stop Democrats and liberals from further eroding America’s fundamental values. I still believe that undoing and preventing liberal damage is the most noble and honest Republican agenda.
He has always had some rather unusual ideas about sexuality, some of which he shared with the congress when he testified in 1996 against same-sex marriage:
I don’t feel threatened by same-sex marriage…I perceive a different danger. It is the danger that is regarding human sexuality, which is a non-issue here. I interviewed a professor of psychiatry at UCLA before coming here to check whether my research on this was valid, and he said, and I quote, Professor Steven Marmer (ph), UCLA Medical School: “Human nature is largely bisexual. In the 18,000 word paper I wrote on homosexuality three years ago, I discovered something that I never knew. Judeo-Christian civilization is unique in human history in saying that sexuality should be exclusively channeled to the opposite sex and in monogamous marriage.” I repeat, it is unique.
Homosexuality, bisexuality have been normative throughout human history. Judeo-Christian civilization alone said, channel the polymorphous sexual urge that the human nature has into marriage with someone of the opposite sex. If we wish to dismantle that, it is not Representative Frank, a political gesture in a Republican Congress. [HEARING OF THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEESUBJECT: SAME-SEX MARRIAGES CHAIRED BY: CHARLES T. CANADY (R-FL) MAY 15, 1996]
Impressive argument, isn’t it? He thinks that religion and traditional marriage are the only things saving humans from their natural bisexual state. (Why that state would be bad, he doesn’t explain, but it’s clear the thought terrifies him.) I’d say that’s very revealing coming from a strict religious conservative like him, don’t you?
How many of these weirdos are using the excuse of religion and “values” to force the law to keep them from acting on their deepest desires? We need to figure it out because their psychological problems are starting to become problems for all of us.
By the way, Prager holds seminars on many subjects including “male sexuality.”
No subject is more perplexing than male sexuality. Dennis unravels the mysteries of the male mind with startling clarity and insight. Every man who wants to better understand his nature and every woman who wants to fully appreciate the opposite sex should listen to this tape course.
I guess I’ve been living in some sort of dreamworld here in the wholesome Hollywood heartland, but I am honestly shocked at the degree of depravity and sadism that Republicans across the board seem to find normal. I don’t consider myself a prude, but damn.
The original Limbaugh reaction to Abu Ghraib was pretty telling, but I figured he just represented the rich, S&M portion of the GOP constituency. And while I was a bit surprised that there was no outcry among the conservative moralists I figured it was just because they were being good soldiers in the GWOT. The Mark Foley thing has proven that they just don’t much give a damn about sexual depravity or morals at all if it threatens their political power. The House leadership in charge looked the other way but the moralists are lining up to blame a fictitious gay cabal they believe has infiltrated “their” party. Talk about moral relativism.
But I really thought that the northeastern moderates might be the last holdouts for sanity. They have always seemed temperamentally conservative in the old fashioned sense of relying on prudence and reason. Apparently not. Yesterday Chris Shays described the events at Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” and denied that any torture took place. A sex ring:
“Now I’ve seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture,” Shays said according to a transcript provided by Democratic challenger Diane Farrell’s campaign and confirmed by others who attended the debate. “It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked. And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn’t torture.”
Shays defended his comments yesterday, saying he doesn’t doubt that there has been torture at other prisons, but not at Abu Ghraib.
“I saw probably 600 pictures of really gross, perverted stuff,” Shays said. “The bottom line was it was sex. . . . It wasn’t primarily about torture.”
Shays defined torture as anything that could cause mental or physical pain or sleep depravation.
I don’t know what kind of sex these GOP freaks are having, but I don’t think most of these things (from the Taguba report) are normally considered “sex,” even in Rush’s wildest S&M fantasies — certainly when they are perpetrated against prisoners against their will:
a. (U) Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
b. (U) Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
c. (U) Pouring cold water on naked detainees;
d. (U) Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
e. (U) Threatening male detainees with rape;
f. (U) Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;
g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
h. (U) Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
What in the hell is wrong with these people? That’s not torture? That stuff is over and above the things we’ve all seen with the forced masturbation, simulated fellatio, smearing feces on prisoners and forcing them to wear women’s underwear while chained in stress positions to their cells or beds.
Characterizing what happened at Abu Ghraib as a “sex ring” is bizarre enough but he defends his comment the next day which means it wasn’t a slip of the tongue or a badly worded phrase. He’s thought about this and he believes it.
He said he looked at all those pictures and saw sex. Did you? I sure didn’t. But then we libertine lefties base our belief that people should be able to do whatever they like in their private lives on the bedrock principle of individual freedom, agency and rights. It’s the coercion that makes all this stuff so wrong. When somebody is coerced or forced into doing “sexual” things against their will, it can most certainly be torture. (I can’t believe I even have to make that argument.)
Furthermore, in the case of Abu Ghraib, it’s well known that what we saw in those pictures were techniques that were developed and shipped in from Guantanamo when General Geoffrey D. Miller was brought over to “straighten out” the prison and get actionable intelligence. They believed that these sexual techniques were a particularly potent way to break conservative Muslims. This stuff was common and it was pervasive — if it was a “sex ring” it was a mighty big one that went all the way to Rumsfeld and probably Bush and Cheney too.
This is exactly why you draw bright lines on torture. Chris Shays is pretty much telling the world that the only problems with what went on at Abu Ghraib were matters of inappropriate sex and, therefore, don’t violate the Geneva Conventions prohibition against torture. I’ll be anxious to hear him explain to the families of American troops in the future that they shouldn’t sweat it when their relatives are repeatedly raped or paraded around naked and forced to perform sex acts for cameras. (Hell, even being bitten by dogs or beaten with chairs isn’t torture according to him.)
Republicans apparently find these actions little more opprobrious than they find one of their friends hitting on underage boys but I would bet the families of these troops won’t see such treatment as being part of a “sex ring” and might just believe their loved one is being tortured. Shays and his pals will have to explain to them why that isn’t so.
We all know that before 9/11 the neocons didn’t give a damn about terrorism (and still don’t, really.) But what were they obsessed with? Saddam, yes. Israel, yes. But they reserved a whole bunch of their firepower for the great yellow peril, the Chi-Coms, whom they are anxious to blame for the North Korean nuclear threat today. They apparently don’t feel we have enough problems, we need to start poking China in the eye too.
In their view, Beijing has always had the power to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear arms programmes, and the fact that it has not done so demonstrates that China sees itself as a “strategic rival” of Washington, a phrase much favoured by administration hawks during Bush’s first year in office.
Indeed, in the most prominent neo-conservative reaction to the North Korean test to date, former Bush speechwriter David Frum called in a column published by the New York Times for the administration to take a series of measures designed to “punish China” for its failure to bring Pyongyang to heel.
Among them, Frum, who is also based at AEI and is sometimes credited with inventing the phrase “axis of evil”, in which North Korea, Iran, and Iraq were lumped together, for Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, urged the administration to cut off all humanitarian aid to North Korea, pressure South Korea to do the same, and thus force China to “shoulder the cost of helping to avert” North Korea’s economic collapse.
Frum, who is also based at AEI, urged that Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to be invited to join NATO and that Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, to send observers to NATO meetings.
Frum, who in 2003 co-authored “An End to Evil” with former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, also suggested that Washington “encourage Japan to renounce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and create its own nuclear deterrent.”
“A nuclear Japan is the thing China and North Korea dread most (after, perhaps, a nuclear South Korea or Taiwan),” he asserted.
Somebody has got to get the DEA to confiscate that shit these guys are smoking. What magic do these guys think we possess? Aside from the fact that China is holding all of our markers at the moment, does it seem like a good idea to be encouraging any country to renounce the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty right now? It’s an invitation to a nuclear free-for-all. Have their hare-brained schemes to destabilize the middle east failed to satisfy them enough that they have to destabilize Asia as well?
This is the nature of neocon thinking. After all we’ve seen, after everything they’ve screwed up, they still believe that they can control events on the world stage as if they were pieces in a board game. I’m not sure a simple madman would be more dangerous.
In America, it would be the equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace, saying this
The head of the Army is calling for British troops to withdraw from Iraq “soon” or risk catastophic consequences for both Iraq and British society.
In a devastating broadside at Tony Blair’s foreign policy, General Sir Richard Dannatt stated explicitly that the continuing presence of British troops “exacerbates the security problems” in Iraq.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Sir Richard also warns that a “moral and spiritual vacuum” has opened up in British society, which is allowing Muslim extremists to undermine “our accepted way of life.”
The Chief of the General Staff believes that Christian values are under threat in Britain and that continuing to fight in Iraq will only make the situation worse.
His views will send shockwaves through Government.
They are a total repudiation of the Prime Minister, who has repeatedly insisted that British presence in Iraq is morally right and has had no effect on our domestic security.
Sir Richard, who took up his post earlier this year, warned that “our presence in Iraq exacerbates” the “difficulties we are facing around the world.”
He lambasts Tony Blair’s desire to forge a “liberal democracy” in Iraq as a “naive” failure and he warns that “whatever consent we may have had in the first place” from the Iraqi people “has largely turned to intolerance.”
The grown-ups have awakened from their stupors and have decided to save us:
MATTHEWS: The real grown-ups, gentlemen, and Margaret — is that the best critics of this war are the Republicans. [Sen.] John Warner [R-VA], the chairman of the Armed Services [Committee] — it’s not the lefties, it’s not Jack Murtha out there even. It’s the smart, grown-up Republicans who are questioning this policy and calling for a change.
We’re saved!
Get prepared to go back to the future, folks. If and when we manage to take back one or both houses of congress get prepared to relive those glory days of the 90’s, when the Republicans acted like raving lunatics and braindead losers like Chris Matthews blamed it all on the Democrats.
It is going to be as if the Bush years never happened. All this unpleasantness will be disappeared and we will begin anew with a horrible fiscal situation, a terrible global situation, a hopeless military situation which will be laid squarely at the feet of the “lefties” by “smart, grown-up Republicans,” the shrieking rightwing harpies and their close relatives the robotic codpiece-worshipping pundits. Oy.
One of the most hyped tales of political wizardry in recent years is the story of how Karl Rove energized the evangelical base and created an army of Republican GOTV foot soldiers. The facts are that the targeting of the evangelicals goes back much farther than Rove and can be attributed to earlier GOP grassroots strategists:
“With Paul M. Weyrich and Richard Viguerie, Blackwell met with Jerry Falwell to found the Moral Majority. ‘Finally, on the verge of realizing his right-wing utopia, Weyrich harvested what his friend Morton Blackwell termed the greatest track of virgin timber on the political landscape: evangelicals. Out there is what you might call a moral majority, he told Jerry Falwell in Lynchburg, Pennsylvania, in 1979. That’s it, Falwell exclaimed. That’s the name of the organization.’ [David Grann, “Robespierre of the Right,” New Republic, October 27, 1997]
Rove and these other strategists knew the religious right were “new voters” which is the political promised land. Everybody dreams of dragging some of the unaffiliated, apathetic uninvolved into the political arena. Getting an entire block of voters who will vote according to what they are told by an authoritarian organization is a miracle. Hallalujah.
With the business marketing savvy of the big money boys of the GOP they were quite successful in the last decade or so at convincing the media and many of the public that the Republican party actually is more moral and more sincerely religious than the Democrats. However, the events of the last year have begun to unravel that carefully constructed image.
After Foley’s “naughty emails” were revealed, Paul Weyrich said what I think most people would expect an honest religious right leader to say:
“One of the things that people say to me all the time is, in Washington nobody takes responsibility for anything,” continued Mr. Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation. “And I think that he, having not delved into this the way he should have, has to take responsibility and therefore has to resign.”
Of course he backtracked the next day, but his first instincts, at least, were consistent with what you would expect of a cultural conservative. Dobson, Bauer and Perkins and the rest of the religious right leaders on the other hand, came out of the box sounding like slick, blow-dried PR spinners feverishly explaining away Foley’s predatory IM trail as a prank or a dirty trick. They behaved like political operatives, not religious leaders.
And this week we are also getting a glimpse into how Karl Rove and the Bush white house really view conservative Christians. The new book by David Kuo is causing quite a stir:
Kuo says, ‘National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy.’ “
So how does the Bush White House keep ‘the nuts’ turning out at the polls?
One way, regular conference calls with groups led by Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ted Haggard, and radio hosts like Michael Reagan.
Kuo says, “Participants were asked to talk to their people about whatever issue was pending. Advice was solicited [but] that advice rarely went much further than the conference call. [T]he true purpose of these calls was to keep prominent social conservatives and their groups or audiences happy.”
They do get some things from the Bush White House, like the National Day of Prayer, “another one of the eye-rolling Christian events,” Kuo says.
And “passes to be in the crowd greeting the president when he arrived on Air Force One or tickets for a speech he was giving in their hometown. Little trinkets like cufflinks or pens or pads of paper were passed out like business cards. Christian leaders could give them to their congregations or donors or friends to show just how influential they were. Making politically active Christians personally happy meant having to worry far less about the Christian political agenda.”
This sounds as though the GOP thinks that conservative Christian leaders are dupes, but I doubt that is literally true. I think they understand each other quite well and have plenty of respect for their different roles in the power structure. It’s obvious to me that both the Republicans and the leaders of the Religious Right are contemptuous of rank and file conservative Christians, not each other.
If you doubt that, take a look at the response among the evangelical elite to the fall from grace of the co-founder of the Christian Coalition, a man who got so greedy for political power he stepped out of his religious role and went for it:
Given the Reed scandal’s potential to erode evangelicals’ faith in politics, it’s no surprise that the main reaction among movement leaders has thus far been “an embarrassing silence,” to quote Ken Connor, the former head of Dobson’s Family Research Council. Even Richard Land, the normally forthcoming Southern Baptist powerhouse, has been rendered speechless. (“Dr. Land has decided to pass on this topic,” his spokeswoman told The Nation after first agreeing to an interview.) …One notable exception to the official silence has been Marvin Olasky, a longtime Texas adviser of Bush who literally wrote the book on “compassionate conservatism.” Olasky, editor of the most popular organ of the evangelical right, World magazine, has been outspoken in his view that Reed “has damaged Christian political work by confirming for some the stereotype that evangelicals are easily manipulated and that evangelical leaders use moral issues to line their pockets.” World reporter Jamie Dean has filed a series of fearless Reed exposes, causing a sensation in the evangelical community. Her dogged questioning of Christian-right leaders whom Reed dragged into his “anti-gambling” campaigns inspired sharp criticism from the most powerful of them all, Focus on the Family leaders Dobson and Tom Minnery, in a February radio broadcast. “They have a reporter who wanted me to dump on Ralph Reed,” said an exasperated Minnery, explaining why he refused to answer questions from World.
Nobody has nailed the discomfort better than Reed’s old cohort Pat Robertson. “You know that song about the Rhinestone Cowboy,” he told The New York Times last April as the Abramoff-Reed connections began to go public. “‘There’s been a load of compromising on the road to my horizon.’ The Bible says you can’t serve God and Mammon.” Robertson has subsequently fallen quiet on the matter–perhaps because he knows that a willingness to serve both God and Mammon has been indispensable to the success of evangelical politics. It’s the very glue that holds together the awkward marriage of Christian moralism and high-rolling Republicanism.
The glue that holds it together is the business of evangelism. Those followers who give their money to these churches and organizations that sell Republicanism as a religious brand might as well spend their money at WalMart. They’re buying the same thing. It’s tribal identity but it isn’t religious and it isn’t moral.
It’s time everybody recognized that so we can deal with it honestly. These so-called religious leaders (and it’s not just the national leadership, it’s the whole hierarchy) are not dupes. Sure Rove and the rest call them nuts. But the leadership and the party know they are essentail to each others’ continued status, even if they spar over who’s their daddy. The truth is that they are all elites who have the same goals — power.
The big losers are the followers who are being sold a cheap bill of goods by both the Christian Right leadership and the Republican Party. Maybe some day they’ll wise up but it’s a tall order. It means they have to lose faith in both their church and their party and I wonder how many of them have that in them. It would be a terrible disillusionment.
There’s a vacuum to be filled in the evangelical leadership by preachers and leaders who eschew worldly, political power for its own sake. It remains to be seen if anyone steps up to claim it — and whether the sincere believers are not just “red team members” but true Christians who will reject the Elmer Gantrys who have been playing them for fools.
Update:Here’s more on the same topic by Hans Johnson in In These Times:
This June, Dobson had to devote a page of the magazine to coming clean about his ties to Jack Abramoff and the other Republican corruption scandal. In classic Dobson fashion, the disclosure was wrapped in an attack on “liberal” philanthropist George Soros and titled, with the subtlety of a schoolyard taunt, “We’re calling your bluff.” So much for mea culpa.
Far from being a free-standing moral voice, Dobson and Company are part and parcel of conservative political machinery. He has used his organization’s tax-exempt status, radio network and greedy data-gathering techniques for the past 25 years to convert it into bare-knuckled political empire dressed up as a Christian ministry.
Update II: And now it is reported that Rove personally threatened Foley when he tried to retire last year. Oh what a tangled web we weave…
