"How the GOP Became God's Own Party" Kevin Phillips, Wash Post

[Simeon Salus]

How the GOP Became God's Own Party
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100004.html?sub=AR

By Kevin Phillips
Sunday, April 2, 2006; Page B03

Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.

-snip-

The political corollary -- fascinating but appalling -- is the recent transformation of the Republican presidential coalition. Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street.

-snip-

Over a quarter-century of Bush presidencies and vice presidencies, the Republican Party has slowly become the vehicle of all three interests -- a fusion of petroleum-defined national security; a crusading, simplistic Christianity; and a reckless credit-feeding financial complex. The three are increasingly allied in commitment to Republican politics. On the most important front, I am beginning to think that the Southern-dominated, biblically driven Washington GOP represents a rogue coalition, like the Southern, proslavery politics that controlled Washington until Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860.

-snip-

These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system.

read more

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100004.html?sub=AR

[Arkansas Granny]

1. IMO the Republican party used the religious right to bolster their

numbers and take over the House and Senate and it worked. I don't think they planned on the religious right taking over the Republican party. They thought they were using the wingers to regain power only to find out that the wingers were using them to set national policy.

[FormerDittoHead]

5. The greedy versus the righteous: and the winner is....

The rich rule the Republican party - EVERYTHING - ***EVERYTHING*** the Republicans have done, benefit the rich or is at least neutral to the rich.

There are PLENTY of fundamentalists who have had their children die in Iraq, lost their jobs to outsourcing, seen their wages go down thanks to our open southern boarder, witnessed the Medicare pharmaceutical debacle, seen their health insurance and pensions taken away, etc..

There are NO rich who have had to sacrifice for what the fundies wanted in return...

The Republican party will *NEVER* do *ANYTHING* to appease the religious right (note: NOT the "religious") at the expense of the rich.

If we were politically savvy, we'd find the point where this division is weakest...

[ninkasi]

9. You're right Arkansas Granny

The Republican party didn't realize the strength of the beast they unleashed when they decided to use the fundamentalist religious factions. Now those fundies are demanding payment, and the financial faction of the party is nervous. It was one thing for men such as Tom Delay to declare himself a good Christian, and be against reproductive choice and gay marriage, because those issues didn't affect him.

Now, though, because they control all three branches of government, the religious faction doesn't understand why the issues the politicians ran on are not already law. The right wingers have really screwed up things for the rest of us, haven't they?

[saltpoint]

2. Strong words against the modern-day GOP, and rightly rendered.

And Phillips is hardly a progressive.

This is a red-flag alert on modern Republicanism. Too much Limbaugh and not enough Lincoln.

[C_U_L8R]

3. God's own Party.. ohhhhhh

I thought they represented the Giant Orifice of Poop

[PurpleChez]

4. One of the GOP red herrings that I always get a kick out of --

followed by a swift pain -- is their whine that "only in America could you find such liberal lunacy as (fill in the blank)." The topic could be smut, flag burning, gay pride, or any number of other RW nightmare topics. It just shows how isolated and willfully stupid the RW can be, as there is perhaps no other major, western nation where religious fundamentalism has as much influence over public life as in the US. Europeans elect porn stars to national office, for crying out loud. It's just hilarious that this minority fringe of loudmouthed idiots practically runs the country in some respects, yet continually bawls about how persecuted they are and how they must be protected from evil, predatory secularists.

[Olney Blue]

6. While reading this article, I felt physically ill.....it is one of the

most lucid and well-written descriptions of how and why Bushco et al. have hijacked the GOP.

Losing in the next election is not an option for the Democrats.

[meow2u3]

7. Does anyone know the Arabic translation of God's own party?

It's known as Hezbollah, a known terrorist organization. Now we know the repukes are terrorists :evilgrin:

[teryang]

8. Phillips is brilliant

As the leading analyst of the political and social developments in America, his critical evaluations of our current morass and how we got here are invaluable.

I hope this opinion in the WP is an indicator that he will go beyond the book signing circuit and enter the fray.

[AnnieBW]

10. Kickie-poo

For an awesome op-ed piece. :kick:

[rodeodance]

11. The US "oil and "biblical expectations" scary and deady combination!

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100004.html

How the GOP Became God's Own Party

By Kevin Phillips
Sunday, April 2, 2006; Page B03
.......

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.

Indeed, there is a potent change taking place in this country's domestic and foreign policy, driven by religion's new political prowess and its role in projecting military power in the Mideast.

The United States has organized much of its military posture since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks around the protection of oil fields, pipelines and sea lanes. But U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East has another dimension. In addition to its concerns with oil and terrorism, the White House is courting end-times theologians and electorates for whom the Holy Lands are a battleground of Christian destiny. Both pursuits -- oil and biblical expectations -- require a dissimulation in Washington that undercuts the U.S. tradition of commitment to the role of an informed electorate.

The political corollary -- fascinating but appalling -- is the recent transformation of the Republican presidential coalition. Since the election of 2000 and especially that of 2004, three pillars have become central: the oil-national security complex, with its pervasive interests; the religious right, with its doctrinal imperatives and massive electorate; and the debt-driven financial sector, which extends far beyond the old symbolism of Wall Street.

[rodeodance]

12. the intensity of religion-that is now shaping how we deal with science

Four decades ago, the new GOP coalition seemed certain to enjoy a major infusion of conservative northern Catholics and southern Protestants. This troubled me not at all. I agreed with the predominating Republican argument at the time that "secular" liberals, by badly misjudging the depth and importance of religion in the United States, had given conservatives a powerful and legitimate electoral opportunity.

Since then, my appreciation of the intensity of religion in the United States has deepened. When religion was trod upon in the 1960s and thereafter by secular advocates determined to push Christianity out of the public square, the move unleashed an evangelical, fundamentalist and Pentecostal counterreformation, with strong theocratic pressures becoming visible in the Republican national coalition and its leadership.

Besides providing critical support for invading Iraq -- widely anathematized by preachers as a second Babylon -- the Republican coalition has also seeded half a dozen controversies in the realm of science. These include Bible-based disbelief in Darwinian theories of evolution, dismissal of global warming, disagreement with geological explanations of fossil-fuel depletion, religious rejection of global population planning, derogation of women's rights and opposition to stem cell research. This suggests that U.S. society and politics may again be heading for a defining controversy such as the Scopes trial of 1925. That embarrassment chastened fundamentalism for a generation, but the outcome of the eventual 21st century test is hardly assured.

These developments have warped the Republican Party and its electoral coalition, muted Democratic voices and become a gathering threat to America's future. No leading world power in modern memory has become a captive of the sort of biblical inerrancy that dismisses modern knowledge and science. The last parallel was in the early 17th century, when the papacy, with the agreement of inquisitional Spain, disciplined the astronomer Galileo for saying that the sun, not the Earth, was the center of our solar system.

[Joey Liberal]

13. Great article! n.t