Republicans Eat Their Own; Next They'll Eat You

This Sunday we start with President Obama's quoting Thomas Jefferson at this morning's commencement speech at Hampton University in Virginia. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,it can expect what never was and never will be."

The Republican caucus' in Utah apparently didn't get the message. Bob Bennett, a sixteen year veteran of the Senate and an eerily consistent conservative, was defeated by the teabaggers and his fellow Senate colleague Jim DeMint, who campaigned against him. Without an effective Democratic Party in the state, we are assured a teabagger Senator. In my view, a larger implication for the Republican Party is that Mitt Romney's presidential bid is DOA. He campaigned among his fellow Mormons for Bennett on the rather rational basis that Bennett actually had some knowledge of economics and had obtained seniority, which would benefit the Mormon Kingdom. With Romney-backed Scott Brown disappointing teabaggers and Romneycare mirroring Obama's program as well as his career as a hedge fund manager, the GOP can not make any mid-course corrections to be anywhere near Romney in terms of economics or policy. His recent disavowals of his past positions will convince noone as his conversion to the anti-abortion position didn't convince evangelicals during the last Presidential primaries. Besides, Mitt Romney is a Mormon, which is considered a cult by fundamentalists.

But Bennett's defeat also highlights the radical turn of the GOP. It can't really be characterized as extreme conservative since the diffuse ideology of the teabaggers is almost anarchism with a theological face. We already saw Arlen Specter drummed out of the GOP by the Club of Growth and Pat Toomey. And in Florida, a decent Govenor Charlie Crist, once considered a candidate for the vice-presidential nomination, has been driven out of the Republican party. In California, both the teabagger and Carly Fiorina are running against another consistent conservative Tom Campbell calling him a "liberal", despite his high rating by the American Conservative Union. John McCain has basically melted down during his primary challenge by J.D. Hayworth, teabagger, birther and friend of Jack Abramoff, trying to out teabag his rival. I also doubt that this will convince anyone. In Kentucky, Mitch McConnell's candidate for the Senate, Trey Grayson, is certain to be defeated by Rand Paul, Ron's son and a candidate recently endorsed by James Dobson, former creator of Focus on the Family. Here again Jim DeMint has supported Paul against his colleague's choice.

While Arizona faces an ever-growing backlash across the country for its Juan Crow law, southern states and GOP candidates for Governor are embracing the law, no matter the future damage done to the Republican Party. Tim James in Alabama, Nathan Deal in Georgia and Andre Bauer in South Carolina are embracing the law and whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment for the Republican primaries. For an excellent analysis of this read Ed Kilgore's piece in www.fivethirtyeight.com . Kilgore points out that Hispanic migration into the southern states, including Virginia, has increased but that Hispanic voters do not represent any key constituency yet. They have grown to only about 6% of the vote in some Southern states. So they are perfect to become another racial whipping boy for the neo-confederates. I believe this accounts for Lindsey Graham's recent retreat on immigration reform.

House Republicans are measuring the drapes and they are rumored to be planning to go bold if they take back the House. Even though John Boehner has a perfect record of voting against everything Barack Obama ever proposed and against anything that could benefit the American people, he will be under enormous pressure from wingnuts like Michelle Bachman, who actually gives voice to the "new republican". In the Senate, I also expect that Jim DeMint will wage a leadership challenge to Mitch McConnell, whether the GOP gains the chamber or not.

Which leaves us Sarah Palin losing thousands of facebook friends because of her endorsement of Carly Fiorina in California instead of DeVore, Jim DeMint and the teabaggers candidate. With Mitt Romney basically neutered by the teabaggers, Palin, whom I still believe is the leading candidate for 2012 despite my other posts contradicting this, faces being drummed out of the teabagger movement. Can she come back after her error? She has endorsed Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and other teabaggers. Or does her deviationist position in California mean she has to be purged from the Politburo?

The implications for the country are nasty. As I've posted before, there seemed to be a 50/50 split between the libertarian faction and the fundamentalist Christian faction of the teabaggers. I think Dobson's embrace of Rand Paul indicates that these two wings are not mutually exclusive. Of course, intellectually there are but not in real life. Sarah Palin's libertarian streak received more attention during the 2008 campaign than her Dominionist religion. Yet as this works its way through our political system, the fundamentalists can live with the total abandonment of public education and the removal of the federal government from any social welfare network. The clash comes over maintaining such a large defense budget and overseas commitments. The war against Islam and total support for a right-wing Israel are critical to the fundamentalists. Since both factions agree with total free market capitalism, the corporate funders of all the astroturf groups behind the Dick Armey teabaggers will be delighted.

Susan Jacoby in her book Freethinkers: The History of Secularism in America warns that the reason Americans don't pay attention to the fundamentalists Christians in politics is because ,by and large, Americans have been conditioned to believe that the influence of religion is almost always benign. She also recalls the moments where religion played a positive role in advancing certain reforms such as the civil rights movement. But she also reminds everyone that the fundamentalist Christians were always for segregation and always against the civil rights movement in all its dimensions. She writes that the huge expansion of the fundamentalists in America started with the civil rights movement and was propelled forward with the pro-choice decision by the Supreme Court and it has not stopped. Finally, they seized control of the Republican party and eventually the White House.

And we also forget that the Libertarians also share many of the same conspiracy theories. Ron Paul for years embraced the John Birch Society and the theories of the New World Order as did Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson had to mute his conspiracy theories because they were so anti-semitic it jeopardized the evangelicals business plans for a Bible theme park in the Sinai. Also remember that Tim LaHaye of the Left Behind series, which plays a major influence among the fundamentalists, was for years a high-ranking official of the John Birch Society.

So where the outsider sees insurmontable philosophical and policy differences, there exists a strong set of commonalities. For conservative pundits and think tanks, there doesn't seem to be anything challenging about this fusion, even though they disdain their roughness and lack of sophistication. They are perceived as useful idiots for the final dismantling of the social welfare system in the United States and the instruments of rolling back any reforms since the New Deal. In my frequent conversations with the remnant of rational conservatives, they still believe there are no enemies on the right. And they will pay a frightful price for this, just before the rest of do.

Progressives are beginning to post blogs advocating adopting some of the teabaggers strategy and technique against incumbent Democrats. Unfortunately where they are mounting primary challenges, the race will favor the Republicans such as in Colorado. While the Democratic Party is a motley crew of factions and interests, it now remains the only modern political force in the country. Fracturing it now would leave the country without any governing force.

I believe the stakes for the country could never be higher. We can debate whether the United States should remain a major power in the world. But the election of libertarian/ findamentalists would ensure--without debate--our certain demise from the world scene. I also feel that the very idea of America--the reason I voted for Obama--would be terminally challenged. And even dismissing these fears, pursuing the lack of economic policies advocated by these people would doom us to the position of a third world country within a very short time. We would be ensured even worse discrepancies in wealth, prolonged and permanent large numbers of unemployed and the final destruction of our public school system, which is being threatened daily as it is. And the chilling fact is that none of this is relevant to the worldview of these people. They simply do not care.