Republicans turned blind eye to the slime attacks from the religious right...

[madfloridian]

and now they are pretending to be shocked and saddened. Have you noticed that many with a conscience on the Republican side are actually speaking out against the Sarah Palin type of ugly rhetoric.

Trouble is, it's too late now. They knew it. They knew their party was using the religious right extremist groups to win elections. It was nothing new at all. They knew it was happening. They allowed it to happen, and then they catered to these groups on wedge issues and things that hurt our country.

Sarah Posner at the FundamentaList speaks of the condition of the party today. They pretend to be shocked at the Palinesque words and hatred being spewed...but they knew it was happening.

Daughters of the Religious Right Revolution.

Some elite Republicans are shocked, shocked, to discover the ugliness lurking in their party. Figures from Peggy Noonan to Colin Powell cannot believe it! The party of the shining city on the hill is turning vulgar!

The feigned surprise is laughable. After all, the only card left in the Republican deck is straight out of the religious right's 30 year-old battle plan, which the GOP has warmly embraced since Reagan. Since the mid-1970s, the Republican Party has validated the religious right's mythology of America's Christian nationhood, cowed to its authoritarian litmus tests, and made demagoguery not only fashionable but heroic.

Michele Bachmann's call for witch hunts and Sarah Palin's accusations of socialism may be anachronistic, but if you are familiar with the ideological underpinnings of the religious right, you recognize them as carefully calibrated to appeal to loyalists who have been schooled in the evils of "statism" -- the elevation of government over God. When Bachmann talks about Obama or other Democrats being "anti-American," it's a dog whistle to the base: It must be Satan trying to bring down America. When Palin calls Obama a socialist, she's really calling him godless, and therefore a danger to God's plan for America.

Elite Republicans' sudden hostility to that kind of slime, however, shows just how much they have turned a blind eye to the animating principle of the religious right, which is not at its core opposition to abortion or gay rights, but support for instituting an authoritarian, supposedly "biblical" law. The Council for National Policy -- the secretive brain trust of the conservative movement that meets quarterly to map out conservative movement (and GOP) strategy -- was based on this very idea. Since its founding in 1981, the CNP vets Republican candidates each election cycle, and, although the group never much cared for McCain, it very much approved of Palin.

It started way way back in 1993 and earlier. This is an article from Joe Conason from 1993 called With God as their Co-Pilot

Although most Americans first noticed that a strangely authoritarian tone had reentered the nation's politics during the Republican convention in Houston last August, local Republican politicos in certain key states began to realize that their party was being taken over as early as the spring of 1992.

For example, when the upright Republicans of suburban San Antonio, Texas got together to choose the delegates they would send to the 1992 Republican National Convention, they probably expected the usual staid and utterly predictable proceedings. They had gone to sleep that beautiful spring night of the Texas presidential primary confident that all was well in their neat little world. And why not? Their president, the quintessential country-club Republican George Bush, had wupped Pat Buchanan badly and that was the end, wasn't it?

Well, not quite. At the delegate selection meetings, the party regulars began to notice a lot of unfamiliar faces. After that, it took only a few hours for the new activists of the Christian right to blow away the country-club GOP in that part of Texas. With laser-beam precision, they elected new chairmen and passed resolutions against abortion, sex education, AIDS education and gay rights, and for the abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts. The rich Republicans of San Antonio's Bexar County consider themselves very conservative. And they are. But the politics of this new crowd gave them a bad scare. Not long after the Christian rightists staged their coup, the president of the Alamo City Republican Women's club just gave up and quit.

"The so-called Christian activists have finally gained control," she explained in her resignation letter, "and the Grand Old Party is more religious cult than political organization."

Of course, that was Texas, a traditional hotbed of Birchers and Bible jocks. Couldn't happen anywhere else, could it?

Next came the Pennsylvania primary, where moderate Republicans slept soundly after cheering the defeat of an ultraconservative challenger to their incumbent senator, Arlen Specter. For them, the shock came the next day, when the votes for obscure Republican state committee positions were tallied. From nowhere, conservative Christians had grabbed dozens of seats. The militant newcomers are now close to controlling the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, too.

The rest is history. The result is Sarah Palin.

The tactics of Karl Rove empowered them or vice versa. They actually empowered each other in their use of divisive tactics and hate-mongering. A perfect fit.

Karl Rove's "idiot witch hunts and dirty tricks". McCain empowers those tactics.

The hallmark of the Rove campaigning method is the political act so baldly below the belt that it literally staggers you. Even the most hardened cynics find themselves continually surprised by the ability of Rove and his minions to always hit that evasive new low, coming up with things that would shock a 60-year-old Greyhound-station hooker.

..."The first whiff of this kind of tactic in the current race came at the end of June, when the McCain campaign launched its new slogan "Country First," making McCain the first presidential candidate in history to make "My Opponent Is a Traitor" his rallying cry. Then there was the unveiling of a new ad comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Following that came a coordinated campaign to ridicule Obama for the somewhat bombastic décor of the stage for his convention speech, with the campaign issuing leaflets mocking the vertical columns as a "Temple of Obama."

Then came Sarah.

But after the surprising nomination of Palin — a move that fairly stank of Rovian thinking, with its 10-megaton brazenness, its blunt anti-intellectualism and its naked courting of Rove's beloved electoral cattle, the evangelicals — Rove seemingly let it slip in a Fox broadcast that he did have inside info, saying during the teen-pregnancy flap that Palin was "carefully vetted. . . . They knew all of it." An anonymous Republican source soon told a Washington newspaper that Rove had a consistent, "medium"-size role with the McCain campaign.

Back to The FundamentaList by Posner. This comment stands out.

Before the 2000 election, another CNP founder, Tim LaHaye -- who in 2005 was named one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America by Time -- laid out the Palin-Bachmann mindset:

"All thinking people in America realize an anti-Christian, anti-moral, and anti-American philosophy permeates this country and the world. . . . This alien philosophy does not come from the Bible, but is antithetical to it. In this country it flies under the banner of "liberalism," but in reality it is atheistic socialism at best and Marxism at worst. If those who hold this philosophy were honest and admitted publicly they were hostile to God, His Son Jesus Christ, moral values and true freedom for all individuals, they would be voted out of office in three quarters of the congressional districts and states in our country. Instead, they use the title "liberal" to define themselves. . . . and intend to destroy the Biblical principles this country was founded on and replace them with freedom from responsibility."

Reap what you sow. Palin and Bachmann are the products of this kind of mindless demagoguery, and of the Republican Party's love affair with the religious right.

McCain's choice of Palin, Bachmann's election, show that they knew and accepted what was and is happening to their party.

They will now either pay a dear price for it, or the country will suffer another four years under that kind of twisted rule.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. They did not merely turn a blind eye, they encouraged and financed them.

[realisticphish]

2. they built a political skynet

using their dark power to create something beyond their control...

[madfloridian]

14. It is beyond the control now of the very ones who allowed it.

They catered to this group too long.

It should be a lesson learned by our party as well. The Democrats must take care not to allow this group to find too much of a home in our party.....we must not let them turn women, gays, and the poor in to things to manipulate to win elections.

[Bluenorthwest]

21. Ok, that is correct

up to a point. They already have been using women and gays and the poor. Already they have made inroads within our Party. Great inroads.

[madfloridian]

3. They encouraged and used them...and now..

there will be a battle for the control of the party. Little Miss Sarah is looking to be top dog after this election.

We have seen 10 bumper stickers that say Palin and McCain...with Palin listed first. Scary stuff. Yes, they are religious people according to the rest of their stickers.

[amdezurik]

6. I was going to ask when " turning a blind eye" included

helping them script produce and distribute the slime? :P

[niceypoo]

25. They didn't just turn a blind eye, encourage and finance them...

They ARE the religious right. The religious right are the GOP BASE.

[glinda]

4. They will never go away

They are a breed that are hostile and in some cases violent. They will never ever go away or quit. There needs to be a law or laws that will reinforce our Constitution and repair it with specific additional guidelines and rules about the number of people of one religion (not exceeding a certain amount), be it in Government or on committees. This has to be nipped in the bud immediately in my opinion. Otherwise there will be energy and time waisted for the new President if it should be Obama or any progressive future President. This will force those who are violent or want to disrupt our Government to flush to the surface in other ways and most likely be arrested in some cases. Those who want to dominate our Government by using a particular Religious belief set should be seen as what they are... not as just simply a "Religious" Group or movement but rather as breakers of the law, terrorist, traitors to America or troublemakers.

[madfloridian]

7. Probably not. Unfortunately.

Here to stay.

[madfloridian]

5. From Conason's article, scary stuff.

"There may not be much chance that a majority of Americans would willingly vote to overturn the Constitution and tosurrender their freedom to a band of religious zealots. But the long-term plan of the Christian right no longer relies on the so-called moral majority. Its new strategy depends on a tiny but disciplined minority that can exploit voter apathy and ignorance to gain power incrementally -- first on school boards, then in state legislatures and finally in Washington.

Should the Christian right succeed in taking over the Republican Party, it will inherit an extremely powerful apparatus. Such a party, running against the usually fractious and disorganized Democrats, is a chilling prospect.

The irony is that if it does come to pass, it will happen because the ordinary couch potatoes did what they usually do: nothing. Most of them won't know what's happened until their favorite TV shows are censored."

This may be overcome by the GOTV machinery of the Obama campaign. I sure do hope so.

[MelissaB]

8. K&R

:kick:

[KharmaTrain]

9. Raygun's "Big Tent" Is Collapsing...

The "power base" of the GOOP for nearly 30 years was the unholy alliance between what were termed "social" conservatievs and "fiscal" conservatives. At first, that was a broad term..."social" covered many different groups that were religiously-centered, but not dominated...for example, the "Raygun Democrats" was another term for Catholics. Fiscal meant anyone who was against taxes...and in the 80s that sure sounded good to a lot of people.

Over the years and as their power grew, the definition of who fit into that tent began to shrink. "Social" conservative began to mean more and more fundamentalist and "fiscal" became rich and greedy. The more powerful the party became, the more that tent shrank and when they started to fall from power, the fall has been quick and hard.

The past 8 years proved that all the tenets of "modern conservatism"...small government, less taxes and "free market" economics are a total failure. The GOOP proved that they can't govern effectively and their "Souther Strategy" of fear and division fares poorly when a person doesn't have a job or sees their country falling apart.

The irony is many in the GOOP aren't getting the message. They didn't in '06, either. And so be it. This will make for a lot of fun times on our side as we watch the knives come out (well, they're out already) and the party breaks into a head-on civil war. My hope is to push that day to next Tuesday and sit back and watch all the fun.

Cheers...

[madfloridian]

10. These groups of radical religious folks are well funded, and get lots media attention.

I mean people like David Brody of CBN being used as a consultant...is it CNN?

They have split families through their bigoted views about women and gays. The moderate Republicans, which is what MOST of my family are, don't have the voice and airtime. That's the problem.

Colin Powell was a start, but only a start. The message needs to be pounded more loudly by them. So far they are too silent.

[KharmaTrain]

12. The Medium Is The Messge

Pat Robertson...who Brody works for...learned back in the 60's that if you mix a little preachin' with some "entertainment", you got people to pay attention. CBN was designed as a slicked up envelope with Robertson's message inside...and through slick marketing and spreading money around, it became a "credible" media outlet.

The right wing and repugnican game plan for the past 2 decades was to frame the media and then overwhelm it. "Think Tanks" like the AEI provide a non-stop one-stop shop for experts on virtually everything and hate radio was manipulated as a tool to spread the memes and re-inforce them. This game worked well when it melded the lines of religion, politics and entertainment and swamped all people saw and hear. It took the netroots to start developing a network on the Democratic side to equalize the large GOOP advantage and in the meantime, the Brodys will be considered "legitimate" media and the mantra that this is a "center/right" country will continue.

Stay tuned after the elections. Should Gramps lose, look for the knives to come out in full force and the "who lost the election" and "whose a real conservative/repugnican" games begin. The moderates don't stand a chance.

Cheers..

[madfloridian]

13. The Republican Noise Machine.

I still have the book here, I need to reread some portions.

Powerful machine has worked for decades.

[madfloridian]

11. From God as their Co-Pilot.... outlaw just about everything

"Clearly, the utopia Robertson has promised his followers will have to wait until Clinton has vacated the White House. "In the Christian America to come," says Robertson, "those who read these filthy books and engage in the filthy practices and who are out drunk and taking drugs, those people are going to be the ones who are ashamed of their conduct."

In Robertson's America, pornography (very loosely defined) would be outlawed, along with abortion, homosexuality and extramarital sex. There would be far more stringent restrictions on divorce and the sale of alcohol. The government would no longer provide public education or social welfare, both of which would be in the hands of the churches. Robertson has said that he looks forward to a time when not only "the men in the Senate and the House are spirit-filled and worship Jesus Christ," but the judges in every courthouse are speaking in tongues. Robertson's cohort includes a faction to the right of Pat himself.

http://www.theocracywatch.org/taking_over_copilot.htm

[madfloridian]

15. Bachmann and Marilyn Musgrave....the Right's Shining Stars.

The shining stars, they say, of the social conservative movement. I call it a movement to spread hate and anger.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/bachmann-and-musgrave-right%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cshining-stars%E2%80%9D

" the last several days, we’ve seen a variety of Religious Right leaders blast the National Republican Campaign Committee for pulling its advertising from the re-election campaigns of both Rep. Michelle Bachmann (MN) and Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (CO), with David Barton trying to save Musgrave himself and the Family Research Council threatening the NRCC that it will cut off its own efforts to raise money on their behalf.

Why is the Right so upset about this decision? Because, as FRC explains, when the NRCC abandons the Right’s “shining stars on the Hill,” they are abandoning the Right"

"David Nammo is executive director of FRC Action PAC. He says whether it was going to give Bachmann and Musgrave money or stop running ads for them, the NRCC sent the wrong message to social conservatives by announcing it was pulling support for the two conservative lawmakers.

Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)"What conservatives hear when they hear that is, 'Wow, the Republican Party isn't going to back people who are strong on our issues on the Hill.' And it's also going to frustrate and even confuse the people who want to support these two congresswomen," Nammo laments.

"We want people to get out and to vote for these two congresswomen," the conservative activist continues. "They are shining stars on the Hill. They stand for social conservative issues."

[madfloridian]

16. Update NYT tonight...Many see Palin as future of the party. Be very afraid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/29/us/politics/29palin.html?em

Whether the Republican presidential ticket wins or loses on Tuesday, a group of prominent conservatives are planning to meet the next day to discuss the way forward, and whatever the outcome, Gov. Sarah Palin will be high on the agenda.

If he loses, she could emerge as a standard bearer for the movement and a potential presidential candidate in 2012, albeit one who will need to address her considerable political damage.

Her prospects, in or out of government, are the subject of intensive conversations among conservative leaders, including the group that will meet next Wednesday in rural Virginia to weigh social, foreign policy and economic issues, as well as the political landscape and the next presidential election.

Ms. Palin’s aides insist that winning this time around is her sole objective. But there are signs that she, too, is making sure that she is well positioned for the future if she and Mr. McCain lose.

Oh, Dear God...they have unleashed what they can not control.

This affects all of us, not just the GOP.

[OneGrassRoot]

18. I agree. WHOLEHEARTEDLY. She needs to be neutralized NOW....

and made irrelevant in the political world.

The traditional republicans need to remove the influence of the right-wing crazies.

With Rove out of the picture (wishful thinking), maybe new blood will steer far from this strategy.

It does affect us all. Hopefully an Obama Administration in and of itself will go a long way in freezing out the Palin-type mob. Again, those of her ilk need to become irrelevant.

As I was reading in Dr. Drew Westen's blog (thank you for the NYT article introducing me to him and his work), dems need to be taking back the language. Instead of allowing the "moral majority" crowd to be shoving family values down everyone's collective throat, we need to talk about how it's un-American to force religion and values on others.

The Palin Mob is un-American...indeed, they are moral terrorists and NOT American in their approach or philosophy.

Ooooooh, I may have to make signs about them being moral terrorists. They're all around me....lol

[machI]

17. Kick

[Bette Noir]

19. These Evangelicals would give Jesus a rash.

I almost wish the mythology were true, just so I could watch them being cast into the Pit.

[Orrex]

20. I can't document any of this, but...

I lived in Austin in 1992, and I worked with a guy who was very active in local politics and who was also a local organizer for the GOP. He was born-again, and just about every conversation with him began and ended with that fact. And between bouts of evangelism, he would speak with great pride of the successes that Christian elements had scored and the great things yet to come.

He spoke at length of the party's brave new platform, elements of which would later appear in the PNAC almost verbatim. I can only imagine the orgasm he had when Dubya was appointed.

As horrifying as the overall effect of the Religious Right has always been, I'm intrigued to have been near ground zero around the time when the shit started hitting the fan.

[madfloridian]

22. You WERE at ground zero for that movement. Read the TX Republican platform

http://www.theocracywatch.org/texas_gop.htm

Here is only a part of the platform:

"Tax Cuts, p. 17 - "The Party urges the IRS be abolished," and the following taxes eliminated: "income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains, corporate income tax, payroll tax and property tax."

Tax cuts are accompanied by Downsizing the Federal Government on p. 19 -

We support the abolition of ... the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, the position of Surgeon General, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Commerce and Labor. We also call for the de-funding or abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts, and Public Broadcasting System.

Deregulation - Adherents of Dominion Theology support deregulation of industry. They use terms such as "unfettered" or "unhampered" by regulation. The first three agencies listed in the above paragraph are all regulatory agencies. The Texas GOP Platform calls for business to be "unencumbered by excessive government regulation." (p.1, preamble)

Biblical Law - Dominion theology calls for a government based on Biblical Law, relying on the Ten Commandments as its guiding source. Therefore, posting of the Ten Commandments in public buildings has great symbolic value.

On p.7 of the Platform: Ten Commandments - "We ... oppose any governmental action to restrict prohibit, or remove public display of the Ten Commandments..."

The Platform goes on to say "or any other religious symbols." The words "any other" probably mean "any other Christian symbols," for the religious right does not accept religions that aren't monotheistic. The Family Research Council, the most powerful lobbying organization of the religious right, spoke strongly against religious pluralism when a Hindu priest offered an invocation for Congress. They wrote:

"(W)hile it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred principle of religious freedom for all, that liberty was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country's heritage."

"Our Founders expected that Christianity -- and no other religion -- would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate peoples' consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference."

The "wall" of separation between church and state would need to come down to establish Biblical Law. On p.8, Free Exercise of Religion:

"Our party pledges to exert its influence to ... dispel the "myth" of the separation of church and state."

[onlyadream]

24. Hate them...

So ironic how they don't want any gov't oversight (at all) but then they want to have complete oversight on pregnant women and what they do with their bodies. I don't like abortion, and personally it is something I could never do, but to take the choice away when you know what the ramifications are, is nuts. As for the teeny tiny government; don't these religious nuts know that money is the root of all evil - how many of their own went down in flames regarding sex and money and tell me that oversight is not needed. Also, their god tells them to help the poor; just don't let the government do it - that would be flat out wrong. Please. I hate these people.

[madfloridian]

23. ."For 30 years the party has hitched itself to the wagon of a well-funded reactionary fringe"

From yesterday's FundamentaList:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_fundamentalist_102908

"The McPalin flameout isn't primarily a strategic problem for the GOP; it's an existential one. For 30 years the party has hitched itself to the wagon of a well-funded reactionary fringe of religious zealots, and this year that alliance is most certainly not paying off. It didn't pay off in the 1992 or 1996 presidential races, either, but the Republicans controlled Congress for most of those years and ran on the fuel of religious-right slime and scandal-mongering. It's harder to run a bogus investigation when you're in the minority, but they'll find a way to make some kind of noise -- they wouldn't waste all that fatuous opposition re-search, would they?

Even without a congressional majority or the White House there is a formidably organized religious-right fringe in this country with a lot of money and a lot of followers (about 10 percent of the population by most reckonings). Their zealousness, combined with their money, makes them a force, culturally and politically, and their activities are not limited to presidential politics. So no, they won't be dead, and, by the way, they won't be chastened, even in the face of evidence that they lost the race for McCain by demanding he pick a running mate like Palin. She's anointed, re-member, and the godless liberals brought her down, not the "real" Americans who really know Jesus.

Don't get me wrong -- it's a very good thing for progressivism that the religious right will probably be blamed for GOP losses this year. But looking ahead to 2012, the GOP seems poised to get right back to business as usual with its fundie friends."

[BobTheSubgenius]

26. The Awful Truth.

How can some otherwise rational (appearing) people align themselves with this kind of cultism? It's horrifying and frightening.

[madfloridian]

27. Because they hear it at church. That simple.

And what many hear at church is true, nothing else is. It is a form of brainwashing, IMO.

[Skelly]

28. YingYang

It concerns me whenever I hear "hate" in connection to any 'group' of people. We need to be careful of painting all religious people generally, Christians specifically, with the same broad brush. "Reaching across the aisle" needs to be more than a political campaign slogan. One of the reasons I have such respect for Sen Obama is his ability to see both sides of an issue, both sides of an argument and communicate an understanding to the opposition, then find common ground. Perhaps we need to learn to do the same.
I used to fear a McCain/Palin administration until I started reading of the fear right-wingers have of an Obama/Biden administration. It was the same fear. Very real. It was then that I truly understood "we have nothing to fear but fear itself". Fear is a dangerous place from which to operate, no matter on what side of the aisle.

[madfloridian]

29. Never try to bullsh** me. Don't try that stuff here.

I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church, I am intelligent, and I am educated.

I FEAR someone like Palin. I fear for the fact that McCain found it necessary to choose her to appeal to extremists who hate gays and want to strip women of their rights.

I will not reach across the aisle to people who preach hate and intolerance and bigotry.

I was raised in a real Christian family which preached loved and tolerance.

I don't "hate" anyone. I FEAR them, and I fear for the rights of those they are trying to harm.

Go to them, tell people like Palin that fear is a bad thing to use.

Don't try that on me.

[madfloridian]

30. And what's more...I see you posted this over 30 minutes ago.

And not a single person bothered to call you out on what you were really saying.

[Skelly]

31. My opinion

First, I apologize if anything I said insinuated you were less than intelligent. I have read your posts previously and found them informing and interesting. I was sharing my opinion of the fear and hate I have seen come from both sides of this election, how I have personally dealt with the fear, and my hope that others could 'take a breather' when dealing with someone who thinks differently. I really did not have any other motive so I am curious as to what you thought I "was really saying".

[madfloridian]

33. It seems you were accusing our side of the hate, which is just not true.

It is not our side that is trying to take away the rights of a woman and her doctor and family. It is not our side that is butting into the lives of the gays and trying to control what they can and can not do.

I am a firm believer in being honest. The Democrats don't suit me in many ways anymore, and I consider some of the leaders to be too corporate friendly and less friendly to the people.

However, we are not the party of hate. We just simply are not. It is McCain and Palin who are almost inciting to riot when they are on stage. Mostly Sarah Palin, McCain seems oblivious to what's going on now.

The GOP has been taken over by the groups that are under the control of Dobson, Robertson, and the Falwell sons who are all still preaching that the God I grew up knowing has turned into a God of hate and divisiveness.

They are trying to incite and anger, and no one is stopping them. A few moderates like Powell have tried, but they just attack him.

I have a feeling there are some on the way here to set me straight, but I provide too much fact and documentation to be easily argued with.

Our country suffers when any group is treated as being inferior. Put the blame in the right place.

[Skelly]

34. I agree

McCain/Palin, whether intentionally or not, are inciting their base to fear and hate. And I STRONGLY agree with your statement, "Our country suffers when any group is treated as being inferior". And, I think that is the core of their fear and hate. Let's face it, our country does not have the best record in treating any minority (race, gender, religion, etc)the same as the majority. Could it be they are fearful of becoming the minority?
If it seemed I was accusing "our side" of hate (which I really did not do), I can only say it was because I posted my comments on this blog. The reason I did so was based on the comments from just a few of the posts in this one thread (referring to those of the religious right as "unAmerican", "moral terrorists" even "I hate these people"). I don't believe hate is limited to a political party, religion, race, gender or national origin (did I cover everyone?). There are those that hate in all of these groups. If you read some of the conservative blogs, you see it a lot. I just didn't want DU to become the opposite side of the same coin.
Again, I think that Obama has the ability to bridge the gap. I just watched Rachel Maddow's interview with him. It never dawned on me until she said it that he has not come out against the Republican party. His explanation of why he hasn't is the reason *I* think he is the real thing.

[madfloridian]

36. People here are afraid of what is happening. They fear Palin's rhetoric.

Every forum gets over board, but I think it is beginning to border on hate now. Someone on the Republican side needs to say enough is enough and stop the words that are being used by the GOP candidates.

Stop using the word "terrorist". Stop calling Obama a Muslim as though it were some terrible thing to be. We have professors in our neighborhood near a college who are Muslim, and they are fine people. The students love and respect them.

Someone in a party with that much power and money can step in and stop the hate and use of buzz words to incite.

Yes, it is becoming close to that here, and it is not our side doing it. Yes, DU over reacts. But read the other forums.

I was distanced from my family for years, until they started seeing the real face of this administration. My daughter was hurt badly lately by family members she loves who asked her why would she vote for the Muslim, and they brought up race. They are pillars of the Southern Baptist Church in the Tampa area. They are telling lies and spreading fear and racism.

My daughter is taking the high road, she says, like Obama. I am proud of her. Our family has been divided too long by lies.

Someone needs to take Sarah to the woodshed and wash her mouth out with soap after. And get McCain off the national stage before more hate forms.

[mitchum]

32. The republican establishment used them as beasts of burden...

and now those beasts are slavering, hungry, and out of control

I would not shed a tear if they killed their masters

[RedLetterRev]

35. Then who will be next?

These are not the kind of people who will stop at one sort of killing. They thrive on death and destruction -- so long as they're not doing any of the dying. To wit: two wars and most of the burden is shoved off on someone else's families. It's always someone else who's bad, someone else who needs to be eliminated, someone else who needs to be hated, someone else who's the next target. They're never satisfied.

This bunch needs to be stepped on -- should have been stepped on -- hard. The divisiveness and destruction have ruined this entire country. It's visible on the landscape; it's visible in our government; it's visible abroad for everyone to see. It has cost untold trillions of dollars over decades; it has cost untold lives; it has cost reputations; it has cost the environment -- and to what end? There has been zero gain, except for lining the pockets of the fascist ultra-rich. The ultra-right haven't gotten their theocracy, they haven't stopped abortion, they haven't sent gays to concentration camps and they haven't (yet) completely destroyed public education.

They have, however, almost-but-not-quite destroyed over 200 years of constitutional democracy. For that, I cannot forgive them. They have twisted a version of Christianity into something weird, perverted, hatred-filled, spiteful, and absolutely nothing resembling what Christ set forth in the Gospels. For that, I struggle to forgive but as yet I cannot. As long as they continue to blaspheme freely, I feel no compunction to forgive.

No. Step on them now and hard, before they get a chance to swallow up another life and feed it to their hateful god of war and destruction.

I shouldn't shed a tear, either.

[madfloridian]

37. Yes. Out of control.

.

[madfloridian]

38. Get and read "The Republican Noise Machine".

It is long and boring, but shocking. It shows that this bigoted religious movement was able to rise and almost control the party because they had a huge machine that got their message.

The media they used was not religious in nature, but it was funded in large part by those in the movement with deep pockets.

They had something the Democrats did not have until the blogosphere came along...they had a huge media machine. It was written by David Brock.

"Those who understand what I mean are either members of the media itself, have read media-criticism books or Internet sites devoted to the subject, or are in the political trenches every day dealing with the media. The gap between those who recognize right-wing media power for what it is and those who don’t is wide and deep, as if they inhabit parallel universes. The gap is dangerous to democracy and needs to be closed.

When I came to Washington fresh out of college in 1986, I got a job at the Washington Times, the right-wing newspaper bankrolled by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Korean-born leader of a religious cult called the Unification Church. Though Moon’s paper was said to be read in the Reagan White House, nobody paid much attention to it. We were the proverbial voice in the wilderness. Considering that the paper was governed by a calculatedly unfair political bias and that its journalistic ethics were close to nil, this was a good thing. That was eighteen years ago. Today, the most important sectors of the political media -- most of cable TV news, the majority of popular op-ed columns, almost all of talk radio, a substantial chunk of the book market, and many of the most highly trafficked Web sites -- reflect more closely the political and journalistic values of the Washington Times than those of the New York Times.

That is, they are powerful propaganda organs of the Republican Party.

For our politics, this development in the media represents a structural change: a structural advantage for the GOP and conservatism, and, I believe, the greatest structural obstacle facing opponents of the right wing. I therefore think it is one of the most important political stories of the era. I have sought to tell this story in The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy.

I know there is a Republican Noise Machine because I was once part of it. From the Washington Times, to a stint as a "research fellow" at the Heritage Foundation (the Right’s premier think tank), to a position as an "investigative writer" at the muckraking magazine The American Spectator, and as the author of a best-selling right-wing book, I forwarded the right-wing agenda not as an open political operative or advocate but under the guise of journalism and punditry, fueled by huge sums of money from right-wing billionaires, foundations, and self-interested corporations.

By the time I said good-bye to the right wing in 1997, what was once a voice in the wilderness was drowning out competing voices across all media channels. The most influential political commentator in America, Rush Limbaugh, and his hundreds of imitators saturated every media market in the country, providing 22 percent of Americans -- not only conservatives but independent swing voters -- with their primary source of news. Conservatives had changed the face of the cable news business with the establishment of the top-rated FOX News Channel, a slicker broadcast version of the Moonie Washington Times. Pundit Ann Coulter and her fanatical ilk topped the best-seller lists, becoming superstars in the world of political punditry. The Spectator juggernaut -- which had a circulation of three hundred thousand per month at its height in the early 1990s -- had been replaced by Internet gossip Matt Drudge who gets more than 6.5 million visitors to his site every day. Although enormous subsidies were still being pumped into right-wing media that did not turn a profit, right-wing media also had become a multibillion-dollar business, a development that powerfully affected all other commercial media

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/05/con04218.html

It's quite a book, and it tells us why a group that was only 25% of the US population should gain such power.