The Republican religious war

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Jimmy Zuma

Make no mistake – if Mitt Romney was a Baptist this thing would be over. But Citizen’s United unleashed a ton of Mormon money and Evangelicals are running scared.

preach my gospel flickr attrib More Good Foundation 300xWhat’s playing out in the GOP today isn’t a battle between moderates and conservatives – the party no longer has any moderates. In fact, the word “moderate” has become a pejorative. No, the current battle is between collection-plate Christians and the insular financial powerhouse that is Mormonism. They are fighting over which religion will call the shots in the R-Party going forward.

Within all the Sturm und Drangabout the Iowa caucuses, an underreported story is that Rick Perry dropped out, and then got back in. Those who live in fantasyland will parse his words and say he never literally said he was dropping out. But he clearly spoke the code words candidates speak in order to avoid saying they lost.

My guess is that James Dobson was on the phone with Perry within minutes of his televised withdrawal, glamouring him about being part of God’s plan and offering to put him back in the game.

A Saturday meeting in Texas is the likely result of this.Well known collection-plate evangelicals Don Wildmon (former chair of the American Family Association,) Gary Bauer (a famous evangelical lobbyist,) and Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family) quickly called the meeting. They, with others, are the same group that had a secret meeting with Perry in August. Wildmon and Dobson were both speakers at Perry’s prayer rally. Both have endorsed him in the past, though Wildmon has been a Gingrich supporter lately.

No word if Pastor Bill Keller will be in attendance. He’s the one who said a vote for Romney is a vote for Satan. But you can bet Perry-supporter Pastor Robert “but he is not a Chris-ti-an” Jeffress will be in attendance. Other prominent collection-platers Tony Perkins and John Hagee have also supported Perryand are sure to be invited as well.

The meeting is important. So important that Rick Santorum surrogate Ron Carey was on cable news Thursday morning trying to co-opt the agenda for Santorum. He told Chuck Todd,

“There is a bunch of faith-based conservative leaders who are getting together to talk about can they coalesce as leaders of the conservative movement to get behind Santorum.”

Santorum can only wish. Most of these kingmakers endorsed McCain in the last election. So they’d be natural Romney endorsers except for his religion. But within the group, Rick Perry seems to have the mojo. He is vain enough to glamour, faithful enough to scare, and dumb enough to manipulate. Think George W.

Why not Santorum? Even Christian zealots know that Santorum has no chance to beat President Obama. For starters, he is on video advocating (not just explaining) his opposition to birth control.

“It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be,” Santorum says. Never mind that the vast majority of married (and Christian) couples practice birth control. They also fornicate for fun, which would probably make Santorum’s head explode.

A few fringe Protestant groups oppose birth control and certainly the Roman Catholic Church teaches against it. But I can’t think of a single Catholic I know (including family and more than a few priests) who doesn’t believe in birth control. And I don’t know a single Catholic woman who would vote to outlaw birth control simply to avoid a trip to confession. Maybe the Duggars…

Being wrong on one issue isn’t a campaign killer, but being so wrong on an issue like birth control – one of the single most important issues of women – is a sign of sheer stupidity. Rank stupidity isa deal breaker.

Santorum can only run from his opposition to sexbirth control. If he runs on it – or can’t hide from it – he has no chance of being elected. The Dobsons of the world are practical politicians. Coalescing behind Santorum would be an act of utter desperation.

Rick Perry, on the other hand, offers all the malleability of Santorum without all the baggage. He’s a good Christian who’s dumb enough to follow instructions and vain enough to think they were his ideas. Sometime between dropping out Tuesday night and pretending he never did Wednesday morning, Perry seems to have gotten the word to wait until at least this weekend to plot his future. Expect the emergency Christian summit to anoint him as the true candidate of God.

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America dodges Armageddon

Posted on January 1, 2012 by Jimmy Zuma

The life-altering events that didn’t happen in 2011

MountRedoubtEruption 300x pd US Dept of Interior

 

Our brave democracy survived 2011. But our brightest conservatives warn us that it was close. According to them, the end of our democracy is (still) just around the corner. Luckily, here’s some really bad stuff that didn’t happen in 2011:

 

The imposition of Sharia Law has been stopped in its tracks

Both Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain opposed the imposition of Sharia Law in the United States. Now both are out of the race. Though there is no hard evidence, one has to wonder if all of the women who claim to have been harassed by “Horny-Herman” Cain are really Muslim activists. Just sayin’…

In any event, the Constitution survived for another year. No federal, state or local legislature – or even homeowner’s association – considered any bill promoting Sharia in any form. Whew!

The end of the USA through homosexual fornication – we’re going down, but we’re not out

Rick Santorum (he’s that guy running for president on the Gay Inquisition platform) said gay marriage would be the end of America. “Unless we protect it with the institution of marriage, our country will fall.”He is also outraged that schools might one day teach that gay people are no different from straight people. Really.

Santorum’s official donation site has an expired security certificate. But other than that, he’s a pretty savvy guy. In other news, spreadingsantorum.com is down to number two in a Google search. Rick must be pretty pleased about that. And last I checked Newt Gingrich can still get a marriage license for number four whenever he’s ready.

God didn’t end the world – as planned

Radio minister Harold Camping predicted the end of the world would come May 21, 2011. He’d used the well-regarded science of numerology to determine the exact day. When that day came and went, he acknowledged a math error and said the correct day was October 21. Of course, by then, most of his followers – who’d given away all of their stuff back in May – were clogging up Bay Area homeless shelters and food kitchens. His organization had spent $100 million promoting the end of the world, as if no one would have noticed when it happened. I bet the people who believed in his reckoning skills would have liked to have a piece of that cash.

Prior to this, Camping had calculated that the actual date of Christ’s birth was April 1, which casts the whole Christianity thing in a much different light. “April Fools!” said one prominent Jew.

The end of the military and Christmas – Santa survives!

Rick Perry, in what could only be called a pander-twofer told us there is, “something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” Uhhh… Huh?

Yet Christmas came and went, pretty much like any other Christmas. We all got fat and jolly and sucked up lots of electricity through our extra incandescent bulbs. Children prayed whenever they wanted, or at least whenever their parents made them.

The US Military also seems unaffected. But expect that to change in 2012 after two gay sailors (are Marines surprised?) were photographed kissing. Several conservatives (including some Marines) commented, “Hey, that was hot!”

It was odd that Perry chose 2011 to signal his opposition to the War on Christmas. In the past, godless liberals have only waged war on Christian holidays during election years. Maybe Perry didn’t get the memo. Was this another one of Perry’s premature ejaculations? Or is he so far ahead of the curve that he sees what other candidates won’t until just before next year’s elections?

Oh, and Santa reports being on schedule even though many of the elves were reported to have said, “Hey, that was hot!”

Religion even survived Obama, at least for now

Again it was Rick Perry, warning us that we needed to confront “Obama’s war on religion” as well as “liberal attacks on our religious heritage.” Oddly, I can’t find any information about this, even though I’m quite sure it must be an actual problem. There is probably a secret White House Office to End Religion. It’s probably run by a Czar.

Relax, God still hates (insert random group here)

But maybe not quite so much. The attention whores at Westboro Baptist Church (motto: God hates fags!) were back in the news briefly after announcing plans to picket the funeral of a Virginia Tech police officer Deriek Crouse. However they didn’t show. According to Collegiate Times, student Josh Clarkdid come, bringing with him a sign and a box of donuts. “Don’t Feed the Trolls. Instead, have a free donut. Any donations will go towards the Hokies for Crouse fund.” With Josh’s help, Hokies for Crouse went on to raise over $100,000 for the officer’s family.

Like the other harbingers of doom (look it up) Westboro continues to expand, with new websites devoted to “God hates Islam” and “God Hates the Media.” I’m not making that up. Expect God Hates Anyone Who Ignores Us.comto be a registered URL soon.

But Josh Clark’s advice is, I think, generally good. Next year, don’t feed the trolls.

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John Boehner – After the dead man walks

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Jimmy Zuma

There is finally a tax cut deal. But not before Republicans started bleeding from the eyeballs. House Speaker John Boehner is in for a good cry. Or six.

Half a year ago, no one could have imagined this newly competitive political landscape. Sure, teabag-terrorist governors like Wisconsin’s Scott Walker (another dead man boehner cry flipped flickr rights granted by flickrmail attrib soulmatic09walking) have also damaged the brand. And there is no underestimating the damage done by the Republican primary. But arguably, no one is more responsible for making Republicans look like nattering nabobs than “Weepy-John” Boehner.

Boehner has personally improved the odds for both President Obama and for every Democrat on a ballot. He has presided over the least popular congress in history, and the first one to accomplish less than the infamous Do-Nothing Congress of 1947.

This Republican-controlled House of Representatives will be remembered for made-up crises, short-term budgeting and inability to create or save a single job. It is oddly ironic that the House now hangs its hat on the idea that they won’t accept a short term solution. It is a negotiating tactic they practically invented.

Meanwhile, the Senate leaves town after that body managed to come to a bipartisan agreement, by a vote of 89-10. Who could have imagined that?

Of course, the extension was inevitable. The only remaining question is how much Republicans have damaged their brand. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even told Boehner to quit it. That’s unprecedented.

John Boehner’s flaw is being a coward while occupying a seat that requires huge cojones. Apparently, his pseudo-plebian background didn’t prepare him for arrows in the back. Pundit Bob Burns notes that many “believe Boehner has run his political gas tank down to empty in his inability to herd the cats in his party.” Of course, in a world not upside down, freshman members of Congress earn political capital by playing for the team led by the Speaker.

Boehner has also been betrayed by his own Judas, Virginia Congressman and Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Wrangling a big legislative body like the House of Representatives requires a leadership – Speaker, Majority Leader, and Majority Whip – who operate in lock step. So it doesn’t help that a simpering weasel like Cantor trying is always trying to slither into the Speaker’s chair.

Cantor’s backstabbing and pandering to freshman teabag-terrorists is, in large measure, why Boehner now faces an untenable future. From Day One, Cantor has positioned to replace Boehner. In this broken Congress, Cantor refuses to work on behalf of the Speaker, delivering his refusals under the cover of his party’s recalcitrant freshman. Through disloyalty and back-room backstabbing, Cantor is the man who orchestrated Boehner’s series of embarrassing public walk backs.

So Cantor is the man to watch in the ramp up to the next session. He is likely to replace Boehner – maybe not before the 113th Congress, but certainly by then. Or maybe he will ascend as soon as next January, if Boehner is forced into “retirement.” Right now, that seems likely.

If President Obama wins reelection, Democrats rout Republicans in the House, and Cantor is kneecapped by Nancy Pelosi. Or maybe it will be the effective Minority Whip, Steny Hoyer.

This scenario is not so unlikely, much more likely than before Boehner’s tenure. The President has outperformed his predecessor on Defense, a traditional Republican advantage. And the minority in Congress has out maneuvered Republicans on taxes, another issue they’ve owned for decades. This Republican-controlled House is the body that tried to roadblock middle class tax relief. At Christmas. You only need to watch an increasingly shrill Grover Norquist squirming on cable TV to know important these last few weeks have been.

Cantor believes he is using teabag-terrorists to depose Boehner. But they are using him. When you caucus with bomb-throwers, you’re likely to lose a few fingers. Or maybe a leg. Even if the teabag-terrorists regain lost momentum and a new Republican president drags the down-ballot along, expect Cantor to go down in short order. He will be painted as a member of the old order and deposed by a member of the 2010 freshman class.

Unbridled ambition is a cruel mistress.

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Hey Democrats, zip it!

Posted on December 22, 2011 by Jimmy Zuma

There is an old adage in sales, “When the spouse is selling your product for you, smile and nod and be quiet.” Well, “be quiet” is actually the phrase that goes by the initials, STFU. But you get the idea—the best person to make your sales pitch is a member of the family. So it goes with today’s Republican Party. Lyon-griswold-brawl wikimedia library of congress 300x

Increasingly, the GOP nominating process is serving Democrats—peeling back the layers of obfuscation and exposing the weaknesses and inadequacies of its likely nominees. That’s different from past contests. To understand why, a little history is useful.

The contemporary Republican majority—since the Reagan era—has been crafted from three distinct groups: captains of industry, evangelical-religious literalists and bitter dumbasses. These last folks are the people Reagan recruited by telling them they were smarter than actually-educated people. They are a significant group of voters but have always had little actual influence. Historically, they have been the followers, wrangled by rich guys in the same way evangelicals are herded by preachers. A pander here, a pander there and they were on board.

The rich guys have always had outsized influence in the party. They’re smart, they’re ruthless and they have the ability to buy the efforts of right wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. They hire these nonprofit marketing firms to promote economic mythology like Trickle-Down Economics and ideas like turning over the Social Security Trust Fund to Wall Street. Turns out that uneducated folks are pretty gullible.

Without the alignment of all three groups—the ruthless rich, religious literalists and the gullible—Republicans can’t craft a vote majority. Even when the three groups are in alignment, they don’t amount to more than a bare majority.

But right now, these three elements are at war. Reagan’s pact with the devil—that smart is stupid and stupid is smart—is coming home to roost.

Rich guys picked Mitt Romney and in other years that would have been enough. Until recently he (and they) have assumed he was a lock on the nomination. But they underestimated the strength of religious bigotry among the party’s evangelical wing. Remember, many of these right-wing evangelicals are literalists. They believe that voice in their head (speaking about US politics) is God. They believe that Election Day is a battle in the war with the devil. And at least some of them, those who hear these voices most loudly, will never vote for a heathen. To them, being a Mormon is the same as being a soldier for Lucifer.

Newt Gingrich is the current candidate of the angry-dumbass wing. Of course, they are a fickle bunch. In the past, they have been bought for a bit of flattery about their innate intelligence. And they’re cycled through Bachmann, Trump, and Cain already. In the end, they’ll support whoever wins the Republican nomination, but along the way, they’ll do their best to wound Romney, whose major flaws seem—to them—to be that he is neither bitter nor stupid. They’re doing a pretty good job of setting the stage for a Democratic evisceration of Romney during the general. And on the off chance that Gingrich wins, he’s a dream opponent—as polls are already showing.

If the simple-thinking wing has a more icky contingent (Is “ickier” a word) it is the people who Ron Paul attracts. Poor Ron’s biggest impediment has never been his ideas. It has always been his most ardent supporters. Everyone else finds them repulsive. Unless his biggest supporters keep their mouths shut, he doesn’t he have a chance. But in the meantime (if he can keep his fake eyebrows attached) he is pretty good at ripping the skin off of Gingrich.

In the end, most of these Republican voters will come home. But not until after they’ve presented a pretty good case why none of their candidates are presidential. And that’s the time—but not until then—for Democrats to begin efforts to point out the flaws in the eventual Republican nominee. By that point, it’ll just be reminding swing voters what Republicans think of their own guy.

So STFU and let the Republican Party do your work for you. Sure, you should continue to respond to attacks on President Obama, but otherwise, lay back, relax and let the Republicans disembowel their own. They’re doing a great job, and frankly, you can only get in the way. You can only remind them of a common enemy.

If you can’t quite sit on your hands, there is something helpful you can do. Start promoting this meme: Donald Trump is a big, sucking sissy who doesn’t have the cojones to actually run as an independent.

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Republican polls summary– it’s gettin’ ugly

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Jimmy Zuma

Here’s the latest wrap-up of the Republican primary polls.

  1. Gingrich leads—toping one third of likely “R” voters in several states.
  2. Teabaggers break for Gingrich, despite all they’ve advocated up to now.
  3. Religious intolerance is alive and well.
  4. More than half of Iowa caucus goers might change their mind.
  5. The Republican gasbag is deflating.

New polling by the Washington Post and others reveals that some of America’s most conservative voters are still conflicted about choosing a Republican nominee. Surveying probable Iowa Caucus goers, the Post confirmed other recent polls that show Newt Gingrich opening a commanding (if minority) lead in that state. Polls reveal Iowa voters see him as the “experienced” candidate, a quality they found disqualifying in the last election.

Gingrich’s trending support is because he’s willing to make outrageous and outrageously derogatory claims about the president. Republican primary voters want a candidate that effectively expresses their outrage, even if it is largely based on made up things.

It is also likely that they don’t yet know about Gingrich’s long history of con-artistry, lobbying and professional misconduct. One wonders if the typical Iowa caucus goer knows that Gingrich was run out of Congress by his own party. I’d also wonder if they know that the Obama team is trying to steer them towards Newt.

Looking inside polls from several states reveals interesting details about the current state of the Republican race. It isn’t pretty. First, Gingrich owns tea party voters. In both South Carolina and Florida, self-identified tea-party voters (or “America’s only remaining patriots” as they prefer to be called) give Gingrich 40 percent margins. In Iowa and New Hampshire, tea-partiers are breaking for Gingrich in smaller but still significant numbers. When it comes to the tea party ideology, of course, Newt is the least conforming candidate of the bunch. For this voter, anger seems to trump any belief that they may have owned in the past.

The latest CNN-Time pollprovides confirming evidence that religious intolerance plays a significant role in conservative voting patterns. While Gingrich polls among “born-again Christians” in the same percentages in his overall total, Romney gets only about half as much support from Iowa’s big evangelical community as from other Iowa Republicans. As WaPo’s Chris Cilizza notes, “Of all the different groups in the poll (old, young, rich, poor, men, women, etc.), none gives Romney a lower share of the vote than born-again Christians.” Although one can certainly argue a different cause, the differences are statistically significant. And if you don’t believe that religious bigotry plays a role in conservative ideology, just ask an atheist.

The most recent Washington Post-ABC pollof likely Iowa Republican Caucus voters pretty much confirms CNN’s findings. Likely voters break for Gingrich by nearly 2-1. Still, Gingrich’s support still tops out at one third of likely caucus goers.

And that brings us to the most interesting data in the WaPo poll. One third of likely Iowa caucus goers—an amount equal to all of Gingrich’s support—say there is a good chance they’ll change their mind by caucus day. When added to those who say that there is a less likely (but possible) chance they’d switch, over half of voters still haven’t locked in for any candidate.

Lastly, Gallup reportsthat only “half (49%) of Republicans now say they are more enthusiastic than usual about voting in next year’s presidential election, down from 58% in September.” And in Gallup’s new daily tracking poll (12/8) Gingrich is down two points (34%) while Romney is up two (25%). Paul, Bachmann, Perry and even Santorum are also up.

Sorry Democrats, Candidate Newt Gingrich is still no sure thing. But what started out as an unwinnable election for Obama is starting to look like it could become his to lose.

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