Thursday, November 02, 2006
Is The Bloom Off The Fundie-GOP Rose?
First, there was the growing unease of evangelicals -- whose ranks provide a non-trivial number of the white soldiers fighting and dying in the US armed forces -- over the war in/occupation of Iraq. Then, there was the Kansas revolt, wherein Republicans in state government, disgusted by the Frothing Fundies' takeover of their party, switched en masse to the Democratic Party. Then, there was the film Jesus Camp, which depicted an evangelical summer camp where the kids were trained to think that God is a Republican -- and which caused so much outrage that the camp shut down. Then, the Mark Foley scandal hit, demoralizing the GOP's main source of grunt workers and electoral field hands. (And just when the NRCC's chair and New York congressman Tom Reynolds thought he'd recovered from his role in the scandal and cover-up, it's revealed that he played a bigger role, far earlier, than he's been letting on. Oooops!) Then, David Kuo's book comes out on how Bush and the GOP elites are mocking the Fundies with whom they're allied. Now, one of the 'stars' of Jesus Camp, Ted Haggard -- quite possibly the most powerful evangelical preacher in America, more so even than James Dobson, and who boasts of his access to George W. Bush -- has been accused by a male prostitute of seeking him out several times for gay sex over a three-year period. The AP and Reuters articles on this story are #1 and #2 pieces on Yahoo!News as of five minutes ago If I didn't know any better, I'd say that God was punishing somebody. Or rather, a whole bunch of somebodies.
This is the working of the Holy Spirit, that mysterious force that enables truth to rise no matter how deep it is buried.
I regard this spate of exposures of the sickness and hypocrisy at the heart of right-wing politics to be an answer to my prayers over many years. Let the truth come out, for Democrats as well as Republicans and let the Republican faithful decide whether they like what they've joined themselves to.
<< Home
More blogs about politics.
