Extremism, the Makeover, and Election 2010

Hans Johnson -- President, Progressive Victory
September 3, 2010 03:18 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hans-johnson/extremism-the-makeover-an_b_705289.html

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 GOP 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.

_____________________________________________

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