essential reading, after last night's victories in Republican primaries.
Ed
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http://www.inthesetimes.com/main/article/6403/
Extremism and Election 2010
By Hans Johnson
September 9, 2010
Not long ago, a passing familiarity with Bible verses, a flair for rhetoric,
and hunger for a following could be enough to land someone in a small-town
pulpit. Today, it seems, they are the right stuff for a top-tier Republican
candidacy, perhaps even for president.
This defining downward, and rightward, of conservative leadership is one
lesson from the recent rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. There
Fox commentator and Mormon convert Glenn Beck kicked off the get-out-
the-vote phase of the 2010 election with a revival aimed at the GOP base. He
immediately faced questions from the New York Times about his interest in
the Oval Office.
"Not a chance," said the grandiloquent new darling of the hard right, with a
nod to rally co-star Sarah Palin. Beck may surpass Palin in on-screen
exposure and a knack for mimicking the language and cadence of scripture,
but he is her understudy in another skill-set now prized for Republican
candidates: scapegoating.
Attacks and innuendo against immigrants and religious minorities, including
the Christian faith of President Obama himself, have joined traditional
diatribes against gay people in the script for getting votes this year.
They echo in the rally cries for Republicans now vying to take over Congress
and storm statehouses. The added power of redrawing election districts to
their long-term benefit hangs in the balance.
Leading the ranks of the gate-crashers are those responsible for the very
unemployment crisis they like to blame on Democrats while on the campaign
trail. Multimillionaire Republican Carly Fiorina, for example, sent more
than 9,000 U.S. jobs overseas prior to her ouster as Hewlett-Packard CEO and
her current Senate bid in California.
To the right of even Fiorina, who has called for overturning Roe v. Wade,
are Senate candidates Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky who
assail landmark laws against discrimination, such as the 1964 Civil Rights
Act and the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. A series of other GOP
candidates, from Florida's Marco Rubio to Alaska's Joe Miller, espouse the
extreme goals of fringe ideologues, such as ending Social Security.
They raise the stakes in this election. It's about far more than who kvells
and who concedes on Election Night, November 2. It's about the direction of
the country and whether the intolerant far-right will gain the upper hand.
Beck, despite his own status as a religious minority, prepped for his August
28 rally by playing on anti-Muslim prejudice in denouncing a mosque and
community center planned for lower Manhattan. His bid to wave the bloody
shirt of 9-11 victimhood foundered in the face of Beck's own confessions,
revealed by Cenk Uygur on MSNBC, that "It took me about a year to start
hating the 9-11 victims' families."
Palin's intolerance, by contrast, is more focused and more expert at playing
on emotion for political advantage. She said via Twitter that plans for the
community center so close to Ground Zero "stabs hearts," including her own.
Perhaps assuming that the state of Alaska has matched her own drift downward
and righward, she sought to locate herself "in the heartland." And she
mistakenly called on "peaceful Muslims" to "refudiate" the facility.
Palin isn't the only conservative dressing up appeals to intolerance in a
wardrobe of new words. Riding her coattails are a host of characters
exploiting hard times, the power vacuum among Republicans, and a scarcity of
reporters and editors well-versed in both religion and politics. The absence
of scrutiny and silence by fellow Republicans eager for electoral gain are
allowing the opportunists to remake themselves as standard- bearers for the
right.
One extremist seeking mainstream standing is charismatic preacher Lou Engle.
He likens his Kansas-City-based following to an army engaged in "radical
prayer" and has called on Christians to engage in acts of martyrdom, similar
to the 2009 murder of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller. The wife of
Tiller's killer, Scott Roeder, has said her husband wanted to be such a
martyr. Engle has touted a recent effort in Uganda to enact legislation that
would authorize the killing of gay people. Last summer he performed an
anointment of Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, both of whom have appealed to
anti-Muslim prejudice in remarks about the Manhattan mosque.
In the past, Engle claimed his followers' prayers helped George W. Bush win
reelection in 2004. To scare up votes this year, he has called for a daylong
fast starting today in Sacramento aimed at overturning a June ruling by the
U.S. Supreme Court. The 5-to-4 decision denied a group of religious
conservatives at a public law school in California the power to discriminate
against gay students while still collecting university funds for their
activities.
Engle and his ilk are fond of denouncing civil-rights protections as
"special rights." But that's exactly what they covet when it comes to
backing right- wing candidates for office through tax-exempt charities or
the authority to discriminate on the public's dime, simply by using religion
to justify bigotry or exclusion.
Another fringe figure fighting to gain stature is revisionist historian and
peddler of Christian supremacy theories David Barton. He is set to appear
with Ohio antigay and Republican activist Phil Buress at a pair of rallies
at Buckeye State mega-churches just as early voting begins in Ohio on
September 28. Barton's main target is church-state separation, a founding
principle of America whose survival he likes to blame on the court rulings
of Republican appointee and former U.S. chief justice Earl Warren.
A third extremist seeking renewed exposure is discredited anti-abortion and
antigay activist Alveda King. King actually appeared with Beck and Palin at
the D.C. rally but largely escaped scrutiny for her decades spent trying to
defeat basic human-rights protections covering sexual orientation and gender
identity. If there's a double standard afflicting news coverage of
conservatives, as some allege, it's that their history of catering to
intolerance rarely gets exposed.
Beginning in the early 90s, King took pay from anti-gay activists to travel
around the country--to Cincinnati or Idaho or Maine or my own hometown of
Kalamazoo, Michigan--to trade on the name of her late uncle, MLK, and defend
bias against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people as a legal
practice. In Traverse City, Michigan, in 2001, even former Republican
President Gerald Ford took offense at the antigay amendment that King came
into town to advocate. It would have left the city powerless in the face of
harassment, vandalism, or other forms of mistreatment against gay people.
The measure failed at the polls.
King stood to gain business from the burst of antigay ballot measures that
Republican tactician Karl Rove helped place on state ballots in 2004, with
the complicity of then-closeted, now-out former GOP chair Ken Mehlman. That
was the last good election cycle for the GOP. For Republicans this fall,
doing whatever it takes to gain a majority of seats in the U.S. House and
the Senate could entail contracts with King to play on antigay sentiment in
hopes of turning out enough votes to win tight elections.
Like the frenzy of McCarthyism that drove GOP gains in 1950 or the 1980
turnout that Jerry Falwell spiked with revivalist fervor, Republicans are
eyeing 2010 as a once-in-a-generation chance to alter the political
landscape. With the completion of the census and reapportionment now upon
us, it could also furnish them authority to remake the maps of election
districts in their favor.
Fluency in fringe ideology and appeals to intolerance now substitute for
leadership among conservatives. The impact of Republican gains or majorities
in Congress and state capitols would skew the course of decision- making
rightward and backward. That means rehashed fights about posting of the Ten
Commandments, citizenship and voting standards, enforcement of sodomy laws,
access to contraception, and the legality of the clean-water and emissions
standards, the minimum wage, and Social Security. It means a diminished
state of our democracy and our standing in the world.
Progressives perturbed at the pace of change in federal law or the stances
and statements of the Obama administration do not have the luxury of simply
holding the president's feet to the fire. A very different fire is at hand.
And there is no time to debate the temperature of the water that will put it
out.
Hans Johnson, a contributing editor of In These Times, is president of
Progressive Victory, based in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. He is a
columnist and commentator on labor, religion and trends in state and
national politics.
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