GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party.

[JoeB131]

Yeah, using Pat Robertson's showing in Iowa 30 years ago...that's like relevant or something.

So they didn't teach you math in Home Skule, either, Cleetus?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Yeah, using Pat Robertson's showing in Iowa 30 years ago...that's like relevant or something.

So they didn't teach you math in Home Skule, either, Cleetus?

Tell me more about how the Iowa Caucus in 1988 was so critical to the Republican Party. That's so relevant -- interesting too!

 

[JoeB131]

Yeah, using Pat Robertson's showing in Iowa 30 years ago...that's like relevant or something.

So they didn't teach you math in Home Skule, either, Cleetus?

Tell me more about how the Iowa Caucus in 1988 was so critical to the Republican Party. That's so relevant -- interesting too!

Well, it was 24 years ago, not 30... which means you are apparently bad at math.

But the very fact that Robertson came in second, and we've had at least one representative of the Crazy Religious Faction in every GOP nominating contest since, and the other "Straight" candidates have to placate them is a large part of the problem.

The thing about the primary fight is that the very fact that different factions get their voice. And either the candidatehas to reject them or assimilate them.

So 1988, it was Robertson.
In 1992, it was Pat Buchanan being angry at Bush for not being conservative enough. He got a speaking part at the convention, and started ranting about Sodomites.
In 1996- Buchanan was back, and Alan Keyes showed up because aparently Buchanan wasn't a large enough dose of crazy.
2000- Ralph Reed held aloft the Banner of Religous Batshittery.
2004- they got a pass, because the whole GOP was playing a game of "I knew what you did last election" and where the body was buried. So we got a pass from the crazy because Bush said "Jay-a-zus" enough to placate them.
2008- Mike Huckabee shocked everyone by winning Iowa.
2012 - We had Bachmann and Santorum going for the religious crazy vote, before they nominated a weird cult member.

The religious loons have taken over the asylum, guy.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

A veteran Republican says the religious right has taken over, and turned his party into anti-intellectual nuts

GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party - Salon.com


Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.

Religious cranks ceased to be a minor public nuisance in this country beginning in the 1970s and grew into a major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson’s strong showing in the 1988 Iowa presidential caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. Unfortunately, at the time I mostly underestimated the implications of what I was seeing. It did strike me as oddly humorous that a fundamentalist staff member in my congressional office was going to take time off to convert the heathen in Greece, a country that had been overwhelmingly Christian for almost two thousand years. I recall another point, in the early 1990s, when a different fundamentalist GOP staffer said that dinosaur fossils were a hoax. As a mere legislative mechanic toiling away in what I held to be a civil rather than ecclesiastical calling, I did not yet see that ideological impulses far different from mine were poised to capture the party of Lincoln.

The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.

The Constitution notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: Major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to share their feelings about their faith in a revelatory speech, or a televangelist like Rick Warren will dragoon the candidates (as he did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology, offering himself as the final arbiter. Half a century after John F. Kennedy put to rest the question of whether a candidate of a minority denomination could be president, the Republican Party has reignited the kinds of seventeenth-century religious controversies that advanced democracies are supposed to have outgrown. And some in the media seem to have internalized the GOP’s premise that the religion of a candidate is a matter for public debate.


More in article

who the hell is Mike Lofgren anyway.....some poor disgruntled capitol hill staffer out to make some book money......? seems to me he spent his life supporting and getting paid by the very people he is now criticizing....

regarding religion in politics......i'll take God-fearing individualists that believe in family values and the sanctity of life and the Constitution over anti-God Marxists any day of the week....

 

[Mac1958]

.

Mitch Daniels had it right, a truce on social issues.

Less Bachmann, less Palin, less Santorum, less Beck, more reason and logic to stop our decay.

So much for THAT one, huh?

.

 

[JoeB131]

.

Mitch Daniels had it right, a truce on social issues.

Less Bachmann, less Palin, less Santorum, less Beck, more reason and logic to stop our decay.

So much for THAT one, huh?

.

And mitch totally backed off that position, which probably put an end to any hope he had of getting the nomination this year.

 

[JoeB131]

who the hell is Mike Lofgren anyway.....some poor disgruntled capitol hill staffer out to make some book money......? seems to me he spent his life supporting and getting paid by the very people he is now criticizing....

regarding religion in politics......i'll take God-fearing individualists that believe in family values and the sanctity of life and the Constitution over anti-God Marxists any day of the week....

I don't know, I'm personally horrified that a large section of the population thinks Dinosaurs aren't around because Noah didn't have room for them on the ark...

And that the GOP feels a need to suck up to their delusions.

 

[Mac1958]

.

Mitch Daniels had it right, a truce on social issues.

Less Bachmann, less Palin, less Santorum, less Beck, more reason and logic to stop our decay.

So much for THAT one, huh?

.

And mitch totally backed off that position, which probably put an end to any hope he had of getting the nomination this year.

Yep, I guess he thought he had to. Pissed off the wrong people.

.

 

[Bfgrn]

A veteran Republican says the religious right has taken over, and turned his party into anti-intellectual nuts

GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party - Salon.com


Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.

Religious cranks ceased to be a minor public nuisance in this country beginning in the 1970s and grew into a major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson’s strong showing in the 1988 Iowa presidential caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. Unfortunately, at the time I mostly underestimated the implications of what I was seeing. It did strike me as oddly humorous that a fundamentalist staff member in my congressional office was going to take time off to convert the heathen in Greece, a country that had been overwhelmingly Christian for almost two thousand years. I recall another point, in the early 1990s, when a different fundamentalist GOP staffer said that dinosaur fossils were a hoax. As a mere legislative mechanic toiling away in what I held to be a civil rather than ecclesiastical calling, I did not yet see that ideological impulses far different from mine were poised to capture the party of Lincoln.

The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.

The Constitution notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: Major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to share their feelings about their faith in a revelatory speech, or a televangelist like Rick Warren will dragoon the candidates (as he did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology, offering himself as the final arbiter. Half a century after John F. Kennedy put to rest the question of whether a candidate of a minority denomination could be president, the Republican Party has reignited the kinds of seventeenth-century religious controversies that advanced democracies are supposed to have outgrown. And some in the media seem to have internalized the GOP’s premise that the religion of a candidate is a matter for public debate.


More in article

who the hell is Mike Lofgren anyway.....some poor disgruntled capitol hill staffer out to make some book money......? seems to me he spent his life supporting and getting paid by the very people he is now criticizing....

regarding religion in politics......i'll take God-fearing individualists that believe in family values and the sanctity of life and the Constitution over anti-God Marxists any day of the week....

Mike Lofgren is not the first, or the most prominent Republican to issue this dire warning. Barry Goldwater was the first:

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

Followed by Victor Gold, Goldwater's deputy press secretary in 1964 and later a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush:

Victor Gold, former speechwriter for George Herbert Walker Bush is a Goldwater conservative...his book explains how the GOP was hijacked away from conservatives by far right theocrats and far left neocons...starting in 1980...

Book Review:

Invasion of the Party Snatchers

By Victor Gold

After four decades as a Republican insider, Victor Gold reveals how the holy-rollers and the Neo-Cons have destroyed the GOP. Now he's fighting to get his party back.

As a man who served as press aide to Barry Goldwater and speechwriter and senior advisor to George H. W. Bush (in addition to co-authoring his autobiography), Victor Gold is absolutely furious that the Neo-Cons and their strange bedfellows, the Evangelical Right, have stolen his party from him. Now he is bringing the fight to them.

Invasion of the Party Snatchers is a blistering critique not only of the Bush-Cheney administration but also of the Republican Congress. Gold is ready to tell all about the war being waged for the soul of the GOP, including the elder Bush's opinion of his sons work domestically and abroad, the significance of the newly elected Congress, and how Goldwater would have reacted to it all. Gold reveals, among other explosive disclosures, how George W. has been manipulated by his vice president and secretary of defense to become, in Lenin's famous phrase, a "useful idiot" for Neo-Conservative warmongers and Theo-Conservative religious fanatics.

Although there have been other books by dissident Republicans attacking the Bush-Cheney administrations betrayal of conservative principles, none have been by an insider whose political credentials include inner-circle status with Barry Goldwater and George H. W. Bush.

Review:
"Make no mistake: author Gold, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and aide to Barry Goldwater, is one disgusted Republican. The GOP of the 2006 midterm election, he writes, is 'a party of pork-barrel ear-markers like Dennis Hastert, of political hatchet men like Karl Rove, and of Bible-thumping hypocrites like Tom Delay.' Gold looks to Goldwater, 'a straight-talking, freethinking maverick,' as the yardstick by which to measure just how far the party of Lincoln has fallen.

He traces the beginning of the end to the 1980 Republican National Convention and the presence of 'a militant new element...personified by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.' The other half of the equation, the neoconservatives, are embodied by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, 'two cuts from the same Machiavellian cloth.' In efficient prose, Gold scrutinizes a significant swath of recent GOP history, in particular Newt Gingrich's 104th Congress and the Bush II White House, without losing momentum.

He also has choice words for 'the Coulterization of Republican rhetoric,' the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street, and 'sideshow' legislation like the Flag Protection Amendment. Gold sees a promising future for the Republican Party, but not until they lose some major elections and are able to keep down a slice of humble pie; for those disillusioned with the state of the GOP, this quick, uncompromising polemic provides substantial support, along with a large dose of cold comfort." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:
The last real Goldwater conservative in America attacks the current state of his movement and his party.
Powell's Books - Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP by Victor Gold

Victor Gold grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he attended the public schools, and Tulane University. After working as a reporter-correspondent for the BIRMINGHAM (Alabama) NEWS, he earned his law degree (J.D.) from the University of Alabama. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, 1950-52.

In 1958 he moved to Washington, D.C., and joined the public relations firm of Selvage & Lee. Six years later he became Deputy Press Secretary to Senator Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign.

In 1965 Gold opened his own political public relations firm in Washington, listing among his clients then-Republican House leader Gerald Ford and Senator Bob Dole. At the Republican conventions of 1968 and 1976 he worked with press secretary Lyn Nofziger on behalf of the presidential candidacy of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. During the Nixon administration he served as press secretary to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew until January, 1973.

In 1980 Gold joined the staff of Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush as a speechwriter and senior advisor, a position he held during the Reagan-Bush campaigns of '80 and '84. He served on the Bush vice-presidential staff in 1981, and as a Bush advisor in the campaigns of 1988 and 1992. In 1992 he received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Political Communication from his alma mater, the University of Alabama.

In 1989 Gold served as a member of President Bush's election-oversight delegation to the first free Romanian elections.

A frequent speaker on the national political and campus circuits, Gold has also appeared on numerous network television shows. His articles, covering politics and sports, have appeared in NEWSWEEK, HARPER'S, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, PLAYBOY, CONNOISSEUR, READERS' DIGEST, NATIONAL REVIEW, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, and THE WASHINGTON POST.

 

[squeeze berry]

who the hell is Mike Lofgren anyway.....some poor disgruntled capitol hill staffer out to make some book money......? seems to me he spent his life supporting and getting paid by the very people he is now criticizing....

regarding religion in politics......i'll take God-fearing individualists that believe in family values and the sanctity of life and the Constitution over anti-God Marxists any day of the week....

I don't know, I'm personally horrified that a large section of the population thinks Dinosaurs aren't around because Noah didn't have room for them on the ark...

And that the GOP feels a need to suck up to their delusions.

the dems have groups they suck up too as well there buddy.....

PS I didn't know I worshpped war

 

[ScreamingEagle]

A veteran Republican says the religious right has taken over, and turned his party into anti-intellectual nuts

GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party - Salon.com


Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.

Religious cranks ceased to be a minor public nuisance in this country beginning in the 1970s and grew into a major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson’s strong showing in the 1988 Iowa presidential caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. Unfortunately, at the time I mostly underestimated the implications of what I was seeing. It did strike me as oddly humorous that a fundamentalist staff member in my congressional office was going to take time off to convert the heathen in Greece, a country that had been overwhelmingly Christian for almost two thousand years. I recall another point, in the early 1990s, when a different fundamentalist GOP staffer said that dinosaur fossils were a hoax. As a mere legislative mechanic toiling away in what I held to be a civil rather than ecclesiastical calling, I did not yet see that ideological impulses far different from mine were poised to capture the party of Lincoln.

The results of this takeover are all around us: If the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution, scriptural inerrancy, the presence of angels and demons, and so forth, it is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party, and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary beliefs. All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.

The Constitution notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: Major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to share their feelings about their faith in a revelatory speech, or a televangelist like Rick Warren will dragoon the candidates (as he did with Obama and McCain in 2008) to debate the finer points of Christology, offering himself as the final arbiter. Half a century after John F. Kennedy put to rest the question of whether a candidate of a minority denomination could be president, the Republican Party has reignited the kinds of seventeenth-century religious controversies that advanced democracies are supposed to have outgrown. And some in the media seem to have internalized the GOP’s premise that the religion of a candidate is a matter for public debate.


More in article

who the hell is Mike Lofgren anyway.....some poor disgruntled capitol hill staffer out to make some book money......? seems to me he spent his life supporting and getting paid by the very people he is now criticizing....

regarding religion in politics......i'll take God-fearing individualists that believe in family values and the sanctity of life and the Constitution over anti-God Marxists any day of the week....

Mike Lofgren is not the first, or the most prominent Republican to issue this dire warning. Barry Goldwater was the first:

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

Followed by Victor Gold, Goldwater's deputy press secretary in 1964 and later a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush:

Victor Gold, former speechwriter for George Herbert Walker Bush is a Goldwater conservative...his book explains how the GOP was hijacked away from conservatives by far right theocrats and far left neocons...starting in 1980...

Book Review:

Invasion of the Party Snatchers

By Victor Gold

After four decades as a Republican insider, Victor Gold reveals how the holy-rollers and the Neo-Cons have destroyed the GOP. Now he's fighting to get his party back.

As a man who served as press aide to Barry Goldwater and speechwriter and senior advisor to George H. W. Bush (in addition to co-authoring his autobiography), Victor Gold is absolutely furious that the Neo-Cons and their strange bedfellows, the Evangelical Right, have stolen his party from him. Now he is bringing the fight to them.

Invasion of the Party Snatchers is a blistering critique not only of the Bush-Cheney administration but also of the Republican Congress. Gold is ready to tell all about the war being waged for the soul of the GOP, including the elder Bush's opinion of his sons work domestically and abroad, the significance of the newly elected Congress, and how Goldwater would have reacted to it all. Gold reveals, among other explosive disclosures, how George W. has been manipulated by his vice president and secretary of defense to become, in Lenin's famous phrase, a "useful idiot" for Neo-Conservative warmongers and Theo-Conservative religious fanatics.

Although there have been other books by dissident Republicans attacking the Bush-Cheney administrations betrayal of conservative principles, none have been by an insider whose political credentials include inner-circle status with Barry Goldwater and George H. W. Bush.

Review:
"Make no mistake: author Gold, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and aide to Barry Goldwater, is one disgusted Republican. The GOP of the 2006 midterm election, he writes, is 'a party of pork-barrel ear-markers like Dennis Hastert, of political hatchet men like Karl Rove, and of Bible-thumping hypocrites like Tom Delay.' Gold looks to Goldwater, 'a straight-talking, freethinking maverick,' as the yardstick by which to measure just how far the party of Lincoln has fallen.

He traces the beginning of the end to the 1980 Republican National Convention and the presence of 'a militant new element...personified by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.' The other half of the equation, the neoconservatives, are embodied by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, 'two cuts from the same Machiavellian cloth.' In efficient prose, Gold scrutinizes a significant swath of recent GOP history, in particular Newt Gingrich's 104th Congress and the Bush II White House, without losing momentum.

He also has choice words for 'the Coulterization of Republican rhetoric,' the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street, and 'sideshow' legislation like the Flag Protection Amendment. Gold sees a promising future for the Republican Party, but not until they lose some major elections and are able to keep down a slice of humble pie; for those disillusioned with the state of the GOP, this quick, uncompromising polemic provides substantial support, along with a large dose of cold comfort." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:
The last real Goldwater conservative in America attacks the current state of his movement and his party.
Powell's Books - Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP by Victor Gold

Victor Gold grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he attended the public schools, and Tulane University. After working as a reporter-correspondent for the BIRMINGHAM (Alabama) NEWS, he earned his law degree (J.D.) from the University of Alabama. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, 1950-52.

In 1958 he moved to Washington, D.C., and joined the public relations firm of Selvage & Lee. Six years later he became Deputy Press Secretary to Senator Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign.

In 1965 Gold opened his own political public relations firm in Washington, listing among his clients then-Republican House leader Gerald Ford and Senator Bob Dole. At the Republican conventions of 1968 and 1976 he worked with press secretary Lyn Nofziger on behalf of the presidential candidacy of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. During the Nixon administration he served as press secretary to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew until January, 1973.

In 1980 Gold joined the staff of Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush as a speechwriter and senior advisor, a position he held during the Reagan-Bush campaigns of '80 and '84. He served on the Bush vice-presidential staff in 1981, and as a Bush advisor in the campaigns of 1988 and 1992. In 1992 he received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Political Communication from his alma mater, the University of Alabama.

In 1989 Gold served as a member of President Bush's election-oversight delegation to the first free Romanian elections.

A frequent speaker on the national political and campus circuits, Gold has also appeared on numerous network television shows. His articles, covering politics and sports, have appeared in NEWSWEEK, HARPER'S, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, PLAYBOY, CONNOISSEUR, READERS' DIGEST, NATIONAL REVIEW, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, and THE WASHINGTON POST.

sensible Tea Partyers are replacing the neocons and crazy holy rollers....

 

[CrusaderFrank]

So they didn't teach you math in Home Skule, either, Cleetus?

Tell me more about how the Iowa Caucus in 1988 was so critical to the Republican Party. That's so relevant -- interesting too!

Well, it was 24 years ago, not 30... which means you are apparently bad at math.

But the very fact that Robertson came in second, and we've had at least one representative of the Crazy Religious Faction in every GOP nominating contest since, and the other "Straight" candidates have to placate them is a large part of the problem.

The thing about the primary fight is that the very fact that different factions get their voice. And either the candidatehas to reject them or assimilate them.

So 1988, it was Robertson.
In 1992, it was Pat Buchanan being angry at Bush for not being conservative enough. He got a speaking part at the convention, and started ranting about Sodomites.
In 1996- Buchanan was back, and Alan Keyes showed up because aparently Buchanan wasn't a large enough dose of crazy.
2000- Ralph Reed held aloft the Banner of Religous Batshittery.
2004- they got a pass, because the whole GOP was playing a game of "I knew what you did last election" and where the body was buried. So we got a pass from the crazy because Bush said "Jay-a-zus" enough to placate them.
2008- Mike Huckabee shocked everyone by winning Iowa.
2012 - We had Bachmann and Santorum going for the religious crazy vote, before they nominated a weird cult member.

The religious loons have taken over the asylum, guy.

I see.

So Buchanan, Bush and Keyes are religious leaders.

Interesting.

Moronic, but interesting

 

[JoeB131]

I see.

So Buchanan, Bush and Keyes are religious leaders.

Interesting.

Moronic, but interesting

NO, they are religious whackjobs, though. (Except Bush, he was just playing the idiots.)

the fact these people are even given a seat at the table, that we are having national supports for homophobic chicken resturants, shows just how far the crazy has infected the GOP.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I see.

So Buchanan, Bush and Keyes are religious leaders.

Interesting.

Moronic, but interesting

NO, they are religious whackjobs, though. (Except Bush, he was just playing the idiots.)

the fact these people are even given a seat at the table, that we are having national supports for homophobic chicken resturants, shows just how far the crazy has infected the GOP.

Clearly, you have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Tell me more about how the Iowa Caucus in 1988 was so critical to the Republican Party. That's so relevant -- interesting too!

Well, it was 24 years ago, not 30... which means you are apparently bad at math.

But the very fact that Robertson came in second, and we've had at least one representative of the Crazy Religious Faction in every GOP nominating contest since, and the other "Straight" candidates have to placate them is a large part of the problem.

The thing about the primary fight is that the very fact that different factions get their voice. And either the candidatehas to reject them or assimilate them.

So 1988, it was Robertson.
In 1992, it was Pat Buchanan being angry at Bush for not being conservative enough. He got a speaking part at the convention, and started ranting about Sodomites.
In 1996- Buchanan was back, and Alan Keyes showed up because aparently Buchanan wasn't a large enough dose of crazy.
2000- Ralph Reed held aloft the Banner of Religous Batshittery.
2004- they got a pass, because the whole GOP was playing a game of "I knew what you did last election" and where the body was buried. So we got a pass from the crazy because Bush said "Jay-a-zus" enough to placate them.
2008- Mike Huckabee shocked everyone by winning Iowa.
2012 - We had Bachmann and Santorum going for the religious crazy vote, before they nominated a weird cult member.

The religious loons have taken over the asylum, guy.

I see.

So Buchanan, Bush and Keyes are religious leaders.

Interesting.

Moronic, but interesting

...and Huckabee is that crazy chicken huckster....and Bachmann and Santorum are today's "crazy" religious right 'whackjobs'....

 

[squeeze berry]

I see.

So Buchanan, Bush and Keyes are religious leaders.

Interesting.

Moronic, but interesting

NO, they are religious whackjobs, though. (Except Bush, he was just playing the idiots.)

the fact these people are even given a seat at the table, that we are having national supports for homophobic chicken resturants, shows just how far the crazy has infected the GOP.

so if someone disagrees with you they should not be given a seat at the table?


Nice...................

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Well, it was 24 years ago, not 30... which means you are apparently bad at math.

But the very fact that Robertson came in second, and we've had at least one representative of the Crazy Religious Faction in every GOP nominating contest since, and the other "Straight" candidates have to placate them is a large part of the problem.

The thing about the primary fight is that the very fact that different factions get their voice. And either the candidatehas to reject them or assimilate them.

So 1988, it was Robertson.
In 1992, it was Pat Buchanan being angry at Bush for not being conservative enough. He got a speaking part at the convention, and started ranting about Sodomites.
In 1996- Buchanan was back, and Alan Keyes showed up because aparently Buchanan wasn't a large enough dose of crazy.
2000- Ralph Reed held aloft the Banner of Religous Batshittery.
2004- they got a pass, because the whole GOP was playing a game of "I knew what you did last election" and where the body was buried. So we got a pass from the crazy because Bush said "Jay-a-zus" enough to placate them.
2008- Mike Huckabee shocked everyone by winning Iowa.
2012 - We had Bachmann and Santorum going for the religious crazy vote, before they nominated a weird cult member.

The religious loons have taken over the asylum, guy.

I see.

So Buchanan, Bush and Keyes are religious leaders.

Interesting.

Moronic, but interesting

...and Huckabee is that crazy chicken huckster....and Bachmann and Santorum are today's "crazy" religious right 'whackjobs'....

we all eat Chik a Fil because Robertson came in second in Iowa back in 1988.

I had no idea.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Jews and Christian are all homophobes.

Dem Slogam 2012: Today ChikaFil, tomorrow your Church and Synagogue you hateful motherfuckerssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

 

[Bfgrn]

who the hell is Mike Lofgren anyway.....some poor disgruntled capitol hill staffer out to make some book money......? seems to me he spent his life supporting and getting paid by the very people he is now criticizing....

regarding religion in politics......i'll take God-fearing individualists that believe in family values and the sanctity of life and the Constitution over anti-God Marxists any day of the week....

Mike Lofgren is not the first, or the most prominent Republican to issue this dire warning. Barry Goldwater was the first:

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

Followed by Victor Gold, Goldwater's deputy press secretary in 1964 and later a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush:

Victor Gold, former speechwriter for George Herbert Walker Bush is a Goldwater conservative...his book explains how the GOP was hijacked away from conservatives by far right theocrats and far left neocons...starting in 1980...

Book Review:

Invasion of the Party Snatchers

By Victor Gold

After four decades as a Republican insider, Victor Gold reveals how the holy-rollers and the Neo-Cons have destroyed the GOP. Now he's fighting to get his party back.

As a man who served as press aide to Barry Goldwater and speechwriter and senior advisor to George H. W. Bush (in addition to co-authoring his autobiography), Victor Gold is absolutely furious that the Neo-Cons and their strange bedfellows, the Evangelical Right, have stolen his party from him. Now he is bringing the fight to them.

Invasion of the Party Snatchers is a blistering critique not only of the Bush-Cheney administration but also of the Republican Congress. Gold is ready to tell all about the war being waged for the soul of the GOP, including the elder Bush's opinion of his sons work domestically and abroad, the significance of the newly elected Congress, and how Goldwater would have reacted to it all. Gold reveals, among other explosive disclosures, how George W. has been manipulated by his vice president and secretary of defense to become, in Lenin's famous phrase, a "useful idiot" for Neo-Conservative warmongers and Theo-Conservative religious fanatics.

Although there have been other books by dissident Republicans attacking the Bush-Cheney administrations betrayal of conservative principles, none have been by an insider whose political credentials include inner-circle status with Barry Goldwater and George H. W. Bush.

Review:
"Make no mistake: author Gold, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and aide to Barry Goldwater, is one disgusted Republican. The GOP of the 2006 midterm election, he writes, is 'a party of pork-barrel ear-markers like Dennis Hastert, of political hatchet men like Karl Rove, and of Bible-thumping hypocrites like Tom Delay.' Gold looks to Goldwater, 'a straight-talking, freethinking maverick,' as the yardstick by which to measure just how far the party of Lincoln has fallen.

He traces the beginning of the end to the 1980 Republican National Convention and the presence of 'a militant new element...personified by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.' The other half of the equation, the neoconservatives, are embodied by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, 'two cuts from the same Machiavellian cloth.' In efficient prose, Gold scrutinizes a significant swath of recent GOP history, in particular Newt Gingrich's 104th Congress and the Bush II White House, without losing momentum.

He also has choice words for 'the Coulterization of Republican rhetoric,' the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street, and 'sideshow' legislation like the Flag Protection Amendment. Gold sees a promising future for the Republican Party, but not until they lose some major elections and are able to keep down a slice of humble pie; for those disillusioned with the state of the GOP, this quick, uncompromising polemic provides substantial support, along with a large dose of cold comfort." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:
The last real Goldwater conservative in America attacks the current state of his movement and his party.
Powell's Books - Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP by Victor Gold

Victor Gold grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he attended the public schools, and Tulane University. After working as a reporter-correspondent for the BIRMINGHAM (Alabama) NEWS, he earned his law degree (J.D.) from the University of Alabama. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, 1950-52.

In 1958 he moved to Washington, D.C., and joined the public relations firm of Selvage & Lee. Six years later he became Deputy Press Secretary to Senator Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign.

In 1965 Gold opened his own political public relations firm in Washington, listing among his clients then-Republican House leader Gerald Ford and Senator Bob Dole. At the Republican conventions of 1968 and 1976 he worked with press secretary Lyn Nofziger on behalf of the presidential candidacy of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. During the Nixon administration he served as press secretary to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew until January, 1973.

In 1980 Gold joined the staff of Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush as a speechwriter and senior advisor, a position he held during the Reagan-Bush campaigns of '80 and '84. He served on the Bush vice-presidential staff in 1981, and as a Bush advisor in the campaigns of 1988 and 1992. In 1992 he received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Political Communication from his alma mater, the University of Alabama.

In 1989 Gold served as a member of President Bush's election-oversight delegation to the first free Romanian elections.

A frequent speaker on the national political and campus circuits, Gold has also appeared on numerous network television shows. His articles, covering politics and sports, have appeared in NEWSWEEK, HARPER'S, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, PLAYBOY, CONNOISSEUR, READERS' DIGEST, NATIONAL REVIEW, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, and THE WASHINGTON POST.

sensible Tea Partyers are replacing the neocons and crazy holy rollers....

Sensible? You mean the ones who used extortion during the debt ceiling debate? You mean the ones who pushed through an astonishing 191 votes to weaken environmental protections and endanger public health??

The Tea Party: Same Old Authoritarian Conservatives With a New Label

by John Dean - former counsel to the president Nixon

The debt-ceiling debate, better described as an extortion ploy by the Tea Party-controlled Republicans of the U.S House of Representatives, has raised a question: Who, exactly, are these largely anonymous troublemakers? When I did a little digging, I realized that I know these people all too well. Indeed, I had actually written about them before they morphed into their current form. They are, in fact, both old and new authoritarian conservatives.

These authoritarians are a notoriously nasty crew. If you have not noticed, they are delighted with what is happening in Washington, the chaos they have created. Actually, they are thrilled that they have been able to turn the Nation’s Capital upside down, as they actively work to screw up federal government in the hope of literally destroying it.

If you look closely, it is obvious that most of these Tea Party people have no real idea about the potential consequences of their actions, and they do not care to inform themselves. These are people who will pick a fight for the sake of picking a fight, refusing to compromise about anything that conflicts with their collective agenda, just because that feels to them like the right thing to do.

Who Are the Tea Party People?

They call themselves the Tea Party patriots, apparently seeing themselves in the tradition of the American colonists who resisted Parliament’s Tea Act tax in 1773 by dumping three boatloads of tea in the Boston Harbor, rather than returning it. The Tea Party’s effort to find a historical connection, however, does not work.

There is no real Tea Party, by any definition of the term “party.” This is merely a label, a colorful (albeit historically-distorted) rebranding of the GOP’s right wing. The Tea Party is really a new amalgamation of radical conservative groups who have been around a long time: evangelical bible-thumpers of the religious right; extreme anti-abortion and anti-women’s-rights groups; those who want guns (if not well-stocked arsenals) in every home and office with annual tithes to the National Rife Association; the sons and daughters, as well as a few grandchildren, of the John Birch Society loonies (who knew all along that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist); people who oppose any inter-marriage of races, and, God forbid, same-sex marriages between those they see as perverts; groups who would end the separation of church and state; and people who get most of their political information from right-wing radio, the Fox News Channel, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, their prayer groups, or a few select right-wing Internet sites. Ironically, few in this movement understand that those who provide the money that is spreading the messages that are manipulating them probably believe them to be fools for following an agenda that is not in their best interests.

The Tea Party movement is an orchestrated undertaking that is underwritten by big corporate money, with hard-right corporate conservative views. The puppeteers here are pushing a radical agenda to remove, if possible, or significantly weaken, all government influence and regulation in the marketplace. The movement seeks to disrupt the processes, by gaming the system, in order to de-legitimatize government. They believe that, by making government fail, they will ensure that Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular, will lose future elections. And the Tea Party backers and supporters utterly despise our first African-American president.

more

John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973. Before becoming White House counsel at age thirty-one, he was the chief minority counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives, an associate director of a law reform commission, and an associate deputy attorney general at the US Department of Justice.

His undergraduate studies were at Colgate University and the College of Wooster, with majors in English Literature and Political Science; then a graduate fellowship at American University to study government and the presidency before he entered Georgetown University Law Center, where he received his JD with honors in 1965.

John recounted his days at the Nixon White House and Watergate in two books: Blind Ambition (1976, with new extended afterword in 2010) and Lost Honor (1982). After retiring from a business career as a private investment banker, he returned to writing best-selling books and lecturing, not to mention being a columnist for FindLaw's Writ (from 2000 to 2010).

Other books include: The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court (2001), Warren G. Harding (2003), Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004), Conservatives Without Conscience (2006), Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches (2008), and Pure Goldwater (2009).

While working on his next book, John continues as a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications (since 2003), and he is an occasional television commentator. John is currently engaged as well in an extended continuing legal education (CLE) series that examines impact of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct on select historic events of Watergate with surprising results – The Watergate CLE.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Mike Lofgren is not the first, or the most prominent Republican to issue this dire warning. Barry Goldwater was the first:

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
Barry Goldwater

Followed by Victor Gold, Goldwater's deputy press secretary in 1964 and later a speechwriter for George H.W. Bush:

Victor Gold, former speechwriter for George Herbert Walker Bush is a Goldwater conservative...his book explains how the GOP was hijacked away from conservatives by far right theocrats and far left neocons...starting in 1980...

Book Review:

Invasion of the Party Snatchers

By Victor Gold

After four decades as a Republican insider, Victor Gold reveals how the holy-rollers and the Neo-Cons have destroyed the GOP. Now he's fighting to get his party back.

As a man who served as press aide to Barry Goldwater and speechwriter and senior advisor to George H. W. Bush (in addition to co-authoring his autobiography), Victor Gold is absolutely furious that the Neo-Cons and their strange bedfellows, the Evangelical Right, have stolen his party from him. Now he is bringing the fight to them.

Invasion of the Party Snatchers is a blistering critique not only of the Bush-Cheney administration but also of the Republican Congress. Gold is ready to tell all about the war being waged for the soul of the GOP, including the elder Bush's opinion of his sons work domestically and abroad, the significance of the newly elected Congress, and how Goldwater would have reacted to it all. Gold reveals, among other explosive disclosures, how George W. has been manipulated by his vice president and secretary of defense to become, in Lenin's famous phrase, a "useful idiot" for Neo-Conservative warmongers and Theo-Conservative religious fanatics.

Although there have been other books by dissident Republicans attacking the Bush-Cheney administrations betrayal of conservative principles, none have been by an insider whose political credentials include inner-circle status with Barry Goldwater and George H. W. Bush.

Review:
"Make no mistake: author Gold, a former speechwriter for George H.W. Bush and aide to Barry Goldwater, is one disgusted Republican. The GOP of the 2006 midterm election, he writes, is 'a party of pork-barrel ear-markers like Dennis Hastert, of political hatchet men like Karl Rove, and of Bible-thumping hypocrites like Tom Delay.' Gold looks to Goldwater, 'a straight-talking, freethinking maverick,' as the yardstick by which to measure just how far the party of Lincoln has fallen.

He traces the beginning of the end to the 1980 Republican National Convention and the presence of 'a militant new element...personified by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.' The other half of the equation, the neoconservatives, are embodied by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, 'two cuts from the same Machiavellian cloth.' In efficient prose, Gold scrutinizes a significant swath of recent GOP history, in particular Newt Gingrich's 104th Congress and the Bush II White House, without losing momentum.

He also has choice words for 'the Coulterization of Republican rhetoric,' the revolving door between Capitol Hill and K Street, and 'sideshow' legislation like the Flag Protection Amendment. Gold sees a promising future for the Republican Party, but not until they lose some major elections and are able to keep down a slice of humble pie; for those disillusioned with the state of the GOP, this quick, uncompromising polemic provides substantial support, along with a large dose of cold comfort." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Synopsis:
The last real Goldwater conservative in America attacks the current state of his movement and his party.
Powell's Books - Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP by Victor Gold

Victor Gold grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he attended the public schools, and Tulane University. After working as a reporter-correspondent for the BIRMINGHAM (Alabama) NEWS, he earned his law degree (J.D.) from the University of Alabama. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, 1950-52.

In 1958 he moved to Washington, D.C., and joined the public relations firm of Selvage & Lee. Six years later he became Deputy Press Secretary to Senator Barry Goldwater during the 1964 presidential campaign.

In 1965 Gold opened his own political public relations firm in Washington, listing among his clients then-Republican House leader Gerald Ford and Senator Bob Dole. At the Republican conventions of 1968 and 1976 he worked with press secretary Lyn Nofziger on behalf of the presidential candidacy of then-California Governor Ronald Reagan. During the Nixon administration he served as press secretary to Vice President Spiro T. Agnew until January, 1973.

In 1980 Gold joined the staff of Republican presidential candidate George H. W. Bush as a speechwriter and senior advisor, a position he held during the Reagan-Bush campaigns of '80 and '84. He served on the Bush vice-presidential staff in 1981, and as a Bush advisor in the campaigns of 1988 and 1992. In 1992 he received the Distinguished Achievement Award for Political Communication from his alma mater, the University of Alabama.

In 1989 Gold served as a member of President Bush's election-oversight delegation to the first free Romanian elections.

A frequent speaker on the national political and campus circuits, Gold has also appeared on numerous network television shows. His articles, covering politics and sports, have appeared in NEWSWEEK, HARPER'S, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, PLAYBOY, CONNOISSEUR, READERS' DIGEST, NATIONAL REVIEW, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, and THE WASHINGTON POST.

sensible Tea Partyers are replacing the neocons and crazy holy rollers....

Sensible? You mean the ones who used extortion during the debt ceiling debate? You mean the ones who pushed through an astonishing 191 votes to weaken environmental protections and endanger public health??

The Tea Party: Same Old Authoritarian Conservatives With a New Label

by John Dean - former counsel to the president Nixon

The debt-ceiling debate, better described as an extortion ploy by the Tea Party-controlled Republicans of the U.S House of Representatives, has raised a question: Who, exactly, are these largely anonymous troublemakers? When I did a little digging, I realized that I know these people all too well. Indeed, I had actually written about them before they morphed into their current form. They are, in fact, both old and new authoritarian conservatives.

These authoritarians are a notoriously nasty crew. If you have not noticed, they are delighted with what is happening in Washington, the chaos they have created. Actually, they are thrilled that they have been able to turn the Nation’s Capital upside down, as they actively work to screw up federal government in the hope of literally destroying it.

If you look closely, it is obvious that most of these Tea Party people have no real idea about the potential consequences of their actions, and they do not care to inform themselves. These are people who will pick a fight for the sake of picking a fight, refusing to compromise about anything that conflicts with their collective agenda, just because that feels to them like the right thing to do.

Who Are the Tea Party People?

They call themselves the Tea Party patriots, apparently seeing themselves in the tradition of the American colonists who resisted Parliament’s Tea Act tax in 1773 by dumping three boatloads of tea in the Boston Harbor, rather than returning it. The Tea Party’s effort to find a historical connection, however, does not work.

There is no real Tea Party, by any definition of the term “party.” This is merely a label, a colorful (albeit historically-distorted) rebranding of the GOP’s right wing. The Tea Party is really a new amalgamation of radical conservative groups who have been around a long time: evangelical bible-thumpers of the religious right; extreme anti-abortion and anti-women’s-rights groups; those who want guns (if not well-stocked arsenals) in every home and office with annual tithes to the National Rife Association; the sons and daughters, as well as a few grandchildren, of the John Birch Society loonies (who knew all along that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist); people who oppose any inter-marriage of races, and, God forbid, same-sex marriages between those they see as perverts; groups who would end the separation of church and state; and people who get most of their political information from right-wing radio, the Fox News Channel, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, their prayer groups, or a few select right-wing Internet sites. Ironically, few in this movement understand that those who provide the money that is spreading the messages that are manipulating them probably believe them to be fools for following an agenda that is not in their best interests.

The Tea Party movement is an orchestrated undertaking that is underwritten by big corporate money, with hard-right corporate conservative views. The puppeteers here are pushing a radical agenda to remove, if possible, or significantly weaken, all government influence and regulation in the marketplace. The movement seeks to disrupt the processes, by gaming the system, in order to de-legitimatize government. They believe that, by making government fail, they will ensure that Democrats in general, and Barack Obama in particular, will lose future elections. And the Tea Party backers and supporters utterly despise our first African-American president.

more

John Dean served as Counsel to the President of the United States from July 1970 to April 1973. Before becoming White House counsel at age thirty-one, he was the chief minority counsel to the Judiciary Committee of the US House of Representatives, an associate director of a law reform commission, and an associate deputy attorney general at the US Department of Justice.

His undergraduate studies were at Colgate University and the College of Wooster, with majors in English Literature and Political Science; then a graduate fellowship at American University to study government and the presidency before he entered Georgetown University Law Center, where he received his JD with honors in 1965.

John recounted his days at the Nixon White House and Watergate in two books: Blind Ambition (1976, with new extended afterword in 2010) and Lost Honor (1982). After retiring from a business career as a private investment banker, he returned to writing best-selling books and lecturing, not to mention being a columnist for FindLaw's Writ (from 2000 to 2010).

Other books include: The Rehnquist Choice: The Untold Story of the Nixon Appointment that Redefined the Supreme Court (2001), Warren G. Harding (2003), Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004), Conservatives Without Conscience (2006), Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches (2008), and Pure Goldwater (2009).

While working on his next book, John continues as a visiting scholar and lecturer at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications (since 2003), and he is an occasional television commentator. John is currently engaged as well in an extended continuing legal education (CLE) series that examines impact of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct on select historic events of Watergate with surprising results – The Watergate CLE.

yep....some damn sensible stuff.....

debt-ceiling debate.....raising the debt ceiling is just Obama's way to fund things because he doesn't have a BUDGET.....this is not right....

environmental protections.....you mean the choking regulations that prevent JOBS.....?