“Wacko Birds Of A Feather”: Right Wing Obligatory Chores Essential To Maintaining Good Relations With The GOP Base
Those who marveled at my earlier post about David Barton’s belief that legalized abortion is the cause of climate change should be aware that the “historian” is not only the chief inspiration for the whole “Christian Nation” meme that has largely been accepted as a truism by much of the American Right, but swims in some of the same waters as regular old Republican pols.
This becomes apparent if you look at one of ol’ David’s favorite organizations, the American Renewal Project, the very insider Christian Right group closely aligned with the aggressively homophobic American Family Association, and run by the famously influential David Lane, whose main vehicle is the “Pastor’s Policy Briefings” that bring pols in on the carpet to be instructed by clergy in an off-the-record context.
Barton was present at the first such event of the 2014 electoral cycle in Iowa back in July. So, too, were Rand Paul, and the man who stole the show, Ted Cruz (per this account from the Des Moines Register‘s Jennifer Jacobs:
This morning, Cruz spoke for nearly an hour at the Iowa Renewal Project, a two-day, all-expenses-paid forum organized by David Lane, a political activist from California who has been quietly mobilizing evangelicals in Iowa for six years. Two top-name GOP politicians who are likely 2016 presidential candidates – Cruz and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, both born-again Christians – are the stars of today’s sessions.
Cruz lectured for 30 minutes, his voice at times rising to a shout. He answered questions for another 20 minutes, then stood at the center of a circle as pastors laid their hands on him and the whole audience – a predominantly white group with about 20 black pastors – bowed heads to pray for him.
Then there was this tidbit, which is even more interesting now that David Corn has drawn attention to a certain reverend close to the junior senator from Texas:
Cruz, who told The Des Moines Register he has never been to Iowa before, laid out his social conservative credentials in some detail, explaining all the religious issues he defended in court cases he worked on as a private lawyer and as solicitor general in Texas. He introduced his Cuban immigrant father, Rafael Cruz, who sat in the audience.
That was then. This is now, today, per Andrew Shain of The State:
Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is reaching out Monday to the same audience of South Carolina pastors that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited twice before his surprise victory in the state’s 2012 presidential primary.
Cruz, an expected White House hopeful who was the lightning rod during last month’s 16-day partial federal government shutdown, will speak at a Columbia hotel. It is one of many events that evangelical political operative David Lane has organized in key battleground states since 2005.
Lane’s American Renewal Project is financed by the American Family Association, the Mississippi-based Christian organization that advocates on social issues. Lane’s goal is to get more evangelicals to the polls via the “pastors’ policy briefings’’ that he has held over the years, including a half-dozen in South Carolina.
SC Sen. Tim Scott is also on the agenda for this event, entitled “Rediscovering God in America.” The preachers and pols will also hear from “historian” William Federer, who argues, among other things, that Benghazi! was an Alinskyite plot by Hillary Clinton to impose “global Sharia law.” Seriously:
I could go on and on (another speaker at the SC event, Dr. Laurence White, delivered a blood-curdling speech I happened to hear in Iowa last year attacking Christians who tolerate “the perverted standards of the ungodly who live around us” and damned anyone who would in any way compromise with baby-killing pro-choicers). But you get the point. Pundits who casually talk about pols in both parties pandering to “extremists” or “interest groups” clearly don’t get it. There is no analog among Democratic politicians–certainly those considered possible serious candidates for president–consorting with people as “out there” as Barton and Federer and White and AFA founder Don Wildmon (another speaker in Columbia) and Lane and Lord knows who else. For Republicans, it’s not only business as usual, but essential to good relations with “the base” and an obligatory chore on the road to the presidential nomination.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, November 4, 2013
“Scaring Normal People”: For Ted Cruz, Crazy Is A Family Business
Be careful what you wish for. The Republican Party sought a crop of new leaders with the vitality and ideological fire both Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney lacked heading into 2016. Now they’ve got them, most notably Sen. Ted Cruz, who’s leading the charge to either “defund” Obamacare or shut down the government, to the horror of McCain and other so-called “establishment Republicans” (as if there were any such thing.) Even Tea Party Sen. Rand Paul has maybe kinda sorta suggested that shutting down the government to defund Obamacare is a bad idea — even though he signed Sen. Mike Lee’s letter threatening to do so.
Cruz has no such qualms. Headlining former Sen. Jim DeMint and the Heritage Foundation’s “Defund Obamacare” rally last night in Dallas, he fired up the crowd with his Obama attacks. (Of course, I can’t help but note the irony of Heritage sponsoring Cruz’s “Defund Obamacare” tour when Heritage was the source of one of the plan’s key provisions: the individual mandate to carry health insurance.) Even though some Obama defenders showed up and heckled Cruz, the junior Texas senator and his father were the stars of the night.
“We’ve all seen this movie before,” Cruz told the audience. “President Obama and Harry Reid are gonna scream and yell ‘those mean, nasty Republicans are threatening to shut down the government.’” He went on: “One side or the other has to blink. How do we win this fight? Don’t blink!” Only squishes blink.
“Now is the best time we have to defund Obamacare,” Cruz told the crowd of 1,000. “We’re seeing bipartisan agreement that the wheels are coming off.”
The wheels came off the Heritage event, though, when Cruz’s father, minister Rafael Cruz, took the stage to close it out. When it comes to red meat and red-baiting, Ted is a piker compared to his Cuban refugee father, who talks of Castro’s tyranny but never mentions the fact that he supported the Cuban communist leader’s revolution against Batista. Again we heard Cruz Sr. warn that Barack Obama is leading us toward socialism. This time, though, he didn’t merely exaggerate, he outright lied, insisting “Sarah Palin was right” about death panels in Obamacare.
Cruz was oddly specific, as though he’d had a very vivid hallucination: There is a 16-member death panel, he told the rapt crowd, that “will be implemented next year.” Those “16 bureaucrats will decide” not only whether you get life saving treatment, but even knee surgery, Cruz warned the audience, farcically. Instead of a “knee operation,” maybe you’ll just get “a wheelchair” and pain medication instead. Cruz also predicted shortages of aspirin and a hike in staph infections under Obamacare, just like in his native Cuba (although many of Cuba’s medical shortages are due to the U.S. embargo.) Essentially, according to Cruz, the death panel will tell many of us “Go home and die!” And to think Republicans complained about Rep. Alan Grayson’s rhetoric back in the day.
The Cruz and Son roadshow would scare normal voters, but it seems ideal for a GOP primary. Even in Texas, Cruz is the state’s GOP voters’ top pick for a presidential nominee, above Gov. Rick Perry, who is hoping to ride off into the sunset away from the statehouse and toward another primary run. Not so fast, Governor. Cruz had a solid lead even before Perry reversed himself and asked for at least some Medicaid funding for Obamacare, making himself obviously a “squish.”
At what point might Cruz Sr. become a drawback for his son? Can you say “never?” In the important Tea Party primary within the GOP primary, he is leaving Marco Rubio and Rick Perry in the dust, and is neck and neck with Rand Paul nationally. (That’s why Cruz allies are accusing Paul allies of pushing questions about Cruz’s eligibility to be president especially in Iowa, although the two men profess to be friends.) It looks increasingly like Ted Cruz (and his father) dream of him as the 2016 nominee. But so do Democrats.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, August 21, 2013
“Rodeo Of Racism”: GOP Content To Play To An Increasingly Shrill And Xenophobic Primary Base
It’s been quite a week for anti-Obama racism. At the Missouri State Fair Sunday, rodeo fans cheered to see a “clown” in an Obama mask get run down by a bull. On Friday in Florida the president faced a gaggle of protesters on the way to address a disabled veterans’ group; one carried a sign reading “Kenyan Go Home.” Three days earlier, Arizonans protested Obama’s visit by singing “Bye Bye Black Sheep.” One man mocked him by calling him “47 percent Negro;” another held a sign that read, “Impeach the Half-White Muslim!”
Also on Sunday, the same day as the Missouri State Fair incident, ABC’s “This Week” hosted the birther-in-chief, Donald Trump, who was fresh from a visit to the right-wing Family Leadership Summit in Iowa and a golf outing with GOP House Speaker John Boehner. When Jon Karl asked him, “You don’t still question [Barack Obama] was born in the United States, do you?” Trump let loose his tiresome birther spew. “I have no idea,” Trump replied. “Was there a birth certificate? You tell me. You know, some people say that was not his birth certificate. I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows and you don’t know either, Jonathan.”
With Republicans like Boehner and Iowa’s Family Leader embracing Trump as a loyal and treasured party figure, and mainstream media figures like Karl treating him like a legitimate newsmaker, it’s clear that the party, and some of the media, learned nothing from its 2012 drubbing. Reince Priebus’ infamous “autopsy” has itself gone wherever it is that fraudulent ideas go to die. Calling for more “inclusion,” the report didn’t outline policy change but rather better communication strategies to avoid repelling young voters, women, African-Americans and Latinos. “Our policies are sound, but I think in many ways the way we communicate can be a real problem,” Priebus said in March.
But now they’ve given up even on changing the way they communicate.
It’s not just Trump; one candidate after another in Iowa demonized Obama, and/or his electoral coalition. Rep. Steve King, he of the “calves the size of cantaloupes” remark, told the audience to ignore guidelines on what churches can do politically and “go ahead and defy the IRS.” King is said to be mulling his own 2016 presidential run; we can only dream. Sen. Ted Cruz got big ovations for advocating the repeal of not just Obamacare but the IRS.
But the scary demagogue award has to go to Cruz’s father, Rafael, an immigrant from Cuba who accused Obama of trying to eliminate God and impose socialism on the U.S. After all, he’d seen it happen before. “A young charismatic leader rose up, talking about ‘hope’ and ‘change,’” Cruz yelled, as the crowd booed. “His name was Fidel Castro.” Got it? Obama = Castro. Cruz doesn’t mention that he actually supported Fidel Castro’s revolution against Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, then turned against him. Now we know where the Texas senator got his penchant for demagoguery and distortion. (Imagine replacing Marion Robinson in the White House with Rafael Cruz.)
Although the Iowa convening didn’t feature anyone in an Obama mask being chased by bulls, or “Kenyan Go Home” signs, and nobody sang “Bye Bye Black Sheep” to the president, it made clear that the GOP project of inclusion is a farce. Judging from Iowa, the 2016 primary field is set to be every bit as extreme as in 2012 but without even the patina of diversity provided by Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann. And it will play to an increasingly shrill and xenophobic primary base where three nasty racist anti-Obama events can take place in one week, with near-complete silence from Republican leaders.
I should note that the Missouri State Fair rodeo was so sickening that Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder had to denounce it as “disrespectful” to the president, adding, “We are better than this.” Fairgoer Perry Beam told the Associated Press that “everybody screamed” and “just went wild” when an announcer asked if they’d like to see “Obama run down by a bull.”
“It was at that point I began to feel a sense of fear. It was that level of enthusiasm,” the 48-year-old white musician said. Another clown approached and began to play with the lips of the Obama mask. “There would have been no reason to play with his lips if he were a white president,” Beam said. “They mentioned the president’s name, I don’t know, 100 times. It was sickening. It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you’d see on TV. I’ve never seen anything so blatantly racist in my life,” he added. “If an old country boy picks up on something like that, imagine what a person of color would think.”
Meanwhile, John Boehner golfs with birther-in-chief Trump, while he headlines ABC’s respected Sunday news show. The GOP seems content to live on the fumes of Obama-hatred. It’s not a strategy for a post-Obama politics, but they seem to reckon there are enough rodeo clowns out there to get them through 2014.
By: Joan Walsh, Editor at Large, Salon, August 12, 2013
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