Tom Coburn, enemy of modernity:
"I favor the death penalty," Coburn told the AP last week, "for abortionists and other people who take life."So you all read if you checked in with Josh Marshall. I only bring it up to reiterate that it seems that the Republican Party is edging toward a crisis. This kind of extremism isn't sustainable for the GOP: When a member is informed by divine will rather than the normal representative obligations, how can he stand down on anything? Compromise isn't an option, and the Party's best bet then is to stoke the culture wars and hope that the nation also holds extreme fundamentalist beliefs. But it really doesn't—certainly not like Coburn's—so it's not going to work.
No one believes the Bush administration is trying to turn the US into a theocracy. But their unmitigated efforts to cater to a truly fundamentalist margin on the right makes that margin difficult to ignore. Guys like Coburn are adamant about this stuff, and it's not going to be easy for the GOP to hide these radicals behind the public face of McCain and Scharzenegger indefinitely. (You'd think conservatives would realize there's a reason these guys are popular and go with it . . . .)
Posted by Kriston at July 14, 2004 2:16 PMThis reminds me of The Birdcage and the suggestion that mothers who seek abortions be executed.
Posted by: Dimmy Karras at July 14, 2004 3:29 PMtheir unmitigated efforts to cater to a truly fundamentalist margin on the right makes that margin difficult to ignore. Guys like Coburn are adamant about this stuff, and it's not going to be easy for the GOP to hide these radicals behind
Stem cell research maybe. Laci Peterson law maybe. Partial Birth Abortion maybe. Can you cite other examples?
Also, note criticism of Bush from some of the fundies:
http://www.bushrevealed.com/
I think you need to take anyone who advocates murder, as in the example you cited, seriously. You should condemn them. But what does that have to do with the administration ?
Posted by: j.scott barnard at July 14, 2004 4:30 PMHow 'bout a funny little thing called the FMA? That was not fielded for the centrists. In the NYT this morning, some pretty explicit proof of courting the religious:
"The [Bush Cheney]campaign has sent congregation volunteers marching orders — a schedule of 22 "duties," beginning with the submission of local church membership directories to party headquarters, the better to compare them with voter registration lists. [...] other "duties" for pro-Bush volunteers include lobbying congregation groups to talk up the Bush-Cheney ticket and producing "voters' guides" on hot issues. Ministers are being pressed to create registration drives and speak out about "all Christians needing to vote."
The IRS had to issue a warning to campaign leaders that they could cost churches their tax exempt status. I mean, christ, how many examples do we need? We're way past coincidence, far beyond trend.
Posted by: susan at July 14, 2004 5:04 PMI'd also cite the FMA, which President Bush has wholeheartedly recommended. It's a ply to the right that most of America doesn't agree with—yet Bush will have hell-to-pay from the marginal fundamentalist right now that the amendment has failed.
Posted by: Kriston at July 14, 2004 7:51 PMSusan, you think only Republicans are tacky enough to use churches for political purposes? Remember this?
Posted by: j.scott barnard at July 15, 2004 7:22 AMJAJA, UPYACHKA! UG NE PROIDET, BLYA!
Posted by: JAJA at September 12, 2008 11:53 PM