The Tea Party and evangelicals

A few days ago, I wrote about the possible decline or death of the Tea Party movement, in light of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney’s rise in the polls and the sinking of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and others. While I realize that the Tea Party is probably as much about small government and what it deems as “fiscal responsibility” with public money as it is about social issues, it still represents the strongest bloc of evangelical support within the ranks of the GOP. Thus, the New York Times today appropriately asked the question today: “Have Evangelicals Lost Their Sway?

In response, David P. Gushee, the Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, wrote:

This year, after Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin decided to sit the election out, two organic evangelical candidates emerged: Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. (Herman Cain might qualify as a third.) Both Bachmann and Perry are clearly practicing conservative evangelicals. Perry, at least, had a serious chance to become the Republican nominee. But neither he nor Bachmann proved successful in sealing the deal with their own evangelical constituency, and both failed to extend their reach much beyond that constituency.

The emergence of Newt Gingrich, a thrice-married Catholic convert, and Mitt Romney, a committed Mormon, as leaders of the Republican pack does not symbolize a decline in evangelical influence. It more clearly symbolizes the failure of the two organic evangelical candidates. In the case of Gingrich, it also symbolizes the readiness of many conservative evangelicals to trade off their supposedly cherished family values for a candidate they think can win.

And Lara M. Brown, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, had this to say:

Stalwart support among white evangelical Protestants constitutes the Republican long game. Not only do these voters provide the critical momentum lifts during the nomination contest, but their enthusiastic backing could well be the key to winning the general election.

Republican presidential aspirants have gleaned this lesson over the past decade. That’s why there are three serious candidates – Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum – vying for evangelical support and two imperfect social conservatives – Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich – trying to play the part. Earlier in the race, there were two others – Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain – claiming to represent these voters.

This many candidates in the Republican field suggests that evangelicals possess formidable power, not waning influence. Their only problem is their lack of consensus.

But is that really what’s going on? Does the sheer number of evangelical candidates say something about vitality of that wing of the GOP. Quantity, after all, doesn’t at all mean quality.

The striking element in this primary – Huckabee and Palin certainly got this slow roll going back in 2008 – is the unequivocal anti-intellectualism that candidates like Perry and Bachmann represent (and Cain before he dropped out). Earlier in the primary election season, one of my first thoughts was that the Republican Party had set the bar so low that, again in the wake of Huckabee and Palin, that anyone who said mentioned “God,” “Christianity” or “wholesome American values” enough times had a legitimate chance of gaining clout in the Republican Party. Perry and Bachmann, then, were in my mind, current manifestations of Huckabee and Palin from 2008, with two noted difference: that Perry isn’t an ordained minister and that Huckabee would have actually made a more competent leader. Not that I have a dog in the hunt, but my hope in all this, given the recent successes of Romney and Gingrich, is that GOP’s ideologies are in the process of sliding more toward the center after Palin and the gang helped to nearly tip it over the edge.

That said, I don’t think the evangelical bloc of the GOP is going away any time soon since abortion, gay rights and stem cell research concerns are still very much a part of the public conversation. I would be very surprised, however, if Romney wins the nomination. His is Mormon, after all, so unless some new candidate(s) surface, Gingrich will most likely win by default as what I have been calling the “establishment” candidate.

The death of the Tea Party?

I think New York Times’ Nate Silver may be onto something when he writes that the next GOP presidential candidate may not actually be Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney or any of the Tea Party or lesser known candidates:

Republicans are dangerously close to having none of their candidates be acceptable to rank-and-file voters and the party establishment. It’s not clear what happens when this is the case; there is no good precedent for it. But since finding a nominee who is broadly acceptable to different party constituencies is the foremost goal of any party during its nomination process, it seems possible that Republicans might begin to look elsewhere.

A recent Gallup poll asked Republican voters directly about which candidates they’d consider acceptable nominees. Only two, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, were deemed acceptable by a majority of Republican voters. The other six candidates (including Herman Cain, who has since dropped out) were considered unacceptable by a majority of the party’s voters.

In fact, of the eight candidates listed in this graphic,

Credit: Gallup

six have at one time or another been associated with the Tea Party, and they are all are unacceptable candidates for 50 percent or more of those who were polled. Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann have been among the Tea Party’s most ardent flagship candidates. Bachmann formed and is the chairwoman of the Tea Party Caucus, and Paul has been called the “intellectual godfather of the Tea Party.” It is possible that the tide may be turning against the Tea Party, since the two “establishment” candidates hold the top two positions in this poll and are at the top of most other polls. Cain was third for a time until he dropped out of the race — or, “suspended his campaign” as he phrased it — after one allegation of promiscuity after another smashed his candidacy to bits.

As I have said before, I think Romney’s Mormonism will keep him out of the running, as well as his more moderate stances on gay rights and abortion. It doesn’t help, of course, that he was governor of Massachusetts when that state passed a health care bill similar to the one Barack Obama signed into law in March 2010. Romney’s faith will not win him many votes from evangelical Christians, although to his credit — and equal discredit — he has sometimes either downplayed or spoken around some of the more bizarre tenants of his religion. For instance, as in this passage from the above-linked NPR article:

Mitt Romney has a well-earned reputation as a flip-flopper. But it’s one thing to flip-flop on your politics, and quite another to flip-flop on your faith. So it came as something of a surprise when, during an interview earlier this year with George Stephanopoulos, the presidential candidate disputed the suggestion that Christ would someday return to the United States rather than the Middle East. Mormons, he said, believe “that the Messiah will come to Jerusalem. … It’s the same as the other Christian tradition.”

This was both technically correct and completely misleading: The church’s position is that, while Christ will indeed appear at the Mount of Olives, he will also build a new Jerusalem in Jackson County, Missouri, which will serve as the seat of his 1,000-year reign on Earth. Romney had conveniently neglected to mention this part of his church’s doctrine.

Yes, NPR is not making that up. Jackson County, Missouri. That said, Gingrich is, at present, the only viable GOP candidate in my mind. But even he has “personal baggage,” as Silver calls it and isn’t exactly known as a devout churchgoer either. Time will tell whether a third “establishment” candidate will emerge (Silver mentions Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Mitch Daniels, Tim Pawlenty or Chris Christie as possibilities), but if the election were to take place right now, Gingrich would most likely be the guy. Meanwhile, the Tea Party, having failed to move the center permanently to the far right, is in serious jeopardy of becoming completely irrelevant.

Gingrich all over the map

One day, he’s speaking out in support of repealing child labor laws, which would seemingly set the nation back at least 50 years, and the next in support of giving amnesty for illegal immigrants who have been in the country for decades, saying:

I’m prepared to take the heat to say let’s be humane in enforcing the law without giving them citizenship, but by finding a way to create legality so that they are not separated from their families.

during the GOP debate tonight.

I obviously agree with him about not breaking up families, but I’m against breaking up families in any situation, no matter how long a person has been illegally in the country.

Cain/Bachmann on ‘enhanced interrogation’

GOP primary presidential candidates Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann spoke in favor of “[[enhanced interrogation]] techniques” during a debate tonight in South Carolina. Cain said he was against torture but in favor of waterboarding, which he called an “enhanced interrogation” technique.

Here is the video:


Of course, politicians and others use the word “enhanced interrogation” to soften the language, but in no way can tightly holding a soaked towel on a person’s face and pouring water over their nose and mouth be considered anything but torture. Simulated drowning is torture, just as much as cutting off a person’s finger nails one by one because you run the risk of causing serious injury.

John McCain said earlier this year that he was against waterboarding. As he wrote in May, the information leading to the death of [[Osama bin Laden]] did not come from waterboarding techniques used on [[Khalid Sheik Mohammed]], as claimed by Michael Mukasey, attorney general under the Bush administration. Citing information he gathered from [[Leon Panetta]], former CIA director and current U.S. secretary of defense, Cain had this to say:

The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

I know there are different theories as to whether torture or enhanced interrogation actually work in gaining information from people who won’t willingly comply. I’m inclined to think that neither is generally effective because if you torture anyone long and hard enough, they will tell you whatever you want to hear or simply make something up to get a reprieve from the pain or drowning sensations. I supposed if an interrogator begins plucking out an enemy soldier’s eye ball or something else really ghastly, the soldier might surrender what he knows, but even then, I’m willing to bet that he would say anything to get the interrogator to stop.

Here is a 2003 account from Khalid Sheik Mohammed on his experiences being waterboarded in a 2007 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross:

“I would be strapped to a special bed, which can be rotated into a vertical position. A cloth would be placed over my face. Water was then poured onto the cloth by one of the guards so that I could not breathe. This obviously could only be done for one or two minutes at a time. The cloth was then removed and the bed was put into a vertical position. The whole process was then repeated during about 1 hour.”

[The report also said:] The procedure was applied during five different sessions during the first month of interrogation in his third place of detention. He also said that injuries to his ankles and wrists occurred during the suffocation as he struggled in the panic of not being able to breathe. As during other forms of ill-treatment he was always kept naked during the suffocation. Female interrogators were also present during this form of ill-treatment, again increasing the humiliation aspect.

And to prove my point about the ineffectiveness of waterboarding or torture in general, here is Mohammed in the final portion of the report:

During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. … I’m sure [this] wasted a lot of their time and led to several false red-alerts being placed in the U.S.

So much for Bachmann’s claim that the U.S. has obtained a lot of useful information from the practice of waterboarding. She does have something in common with Mohammed however: she likewise gives a lot of false information she believes her audience wishes to hear. Except it is we who are tortured.

Here is a more detailed look at the effectiveness of torture in bringing down al Queda.

GOP poll: Romney on top, Cain in third

If this new poll can be trusted — it does come to us from FOX News after all — Mitt Romney is in first place in the Republican primary race thus far, while Rick Perry is in second. Herman Cain, who has apparently hurled himself out of obscurity, is now in third.

Here is the condensed list. Thanks to Chris Good with The Atlantic for paring it down to the top eight:

Mitt Romney 23%
Rick Perry 19%
Herman Cain 17%
Newt Gingrich 11%
Ron Paul 6%
Jon Huntsman 4%
Michele Bachmann 3%
Rick Santorum 3%

For all her media exposure, we can be quite thankful Michele Bachmann is only at 3 percent and even more thankful that Sarah Palin isn’t in the race at all, for if she was president, I would be the first emigrate. It is also rather surprising that Mitt Romney, who will overwhelmingly carry the Mormon vote of course, leads the most right-wing group of GOP hopefuls we have seen in recent memory.

Bachmann signs pledge

Because signing your name to a document automatically makes you a better candidate and person:

(Michele) Bachmann’s latest attention-getting move came Thursday when she became the first – and thus far only – candidate to sign a pledge drawn up by a Christian conservative group in Iowa. The pledge, called “The Marriage Vow: A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family,” requires signers to promise, among other things, to keep marital fidelity, support the Defense of Marriage Act and “robust childbearing and reproduction,” and oppose gay marriage, abortion, “Sharia Islam,” “intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds” in the military, and the abuse of women and children through human trafficking, pornography and prostitution. The group, called the Family Leader, run by Bob Vander Plaats, a former Iowa gubernatorial candidate and influential conservative, promises to withhold political support from any candidate who does not sign.

Sadly, she will get votes because of this ridiculous action on an even more ridiculous document. Forcing a candidate to sign something or else withholding political support — sounds like blackmail to me. Full document here.

Bachmann’s un-revolutionary gaffe

So, it’s common knowledge by now that Tea Party proponents kind of take offense to the words “tea bagger” because of the sexual connotations of the term.

Rep. Michele Bachmann seems to be as out of touch with those sentiments as she is about American history. She stood before a group of Republican in New Hampshire literally holding a tea bag while on a stop in Manchester. Prior to speaking at a GOP fund-raiser, Bachmann made this gaffe, as reported by the Associated Press:

… the possible presidential hopeful told a group of students and conservative activists in Manchester, “You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord,” according to video posted online by WMUR-TV.

But those first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire. Though Bachmann probably wasn’t the first to confuse Concord, N.H., with Concord, Mass., her mistake was striking given her roots in the tea party movement, which takes its name from the dumping of tea into Boston Harbor by angry American colonists in December 1773, 16 months before the Battle of Lexington Green.

Some 30 miles to the north and with tea bag in hand, Bachmann was greeted with applause when she asked the crowd, “How about a United States president that gets what the American people want in 2012?” and later proclaimed, “Are you in for 2012? I’m in!”

How about elected officials who could pass a high school history exam? Guess my standards are just too high.

Our brilliant state rep

I was never more proud of my adopted state of Georgia this week upon learning that Rep. Paul Broun, who happens to represent the district in which I live, illegally returned his census form with only one portion filled out. It was the part about how many people live in his household. He stated that the Census Bureau could not ask about the other personal information. Broun said:

“The Constitution requires the federal government to count the number of people in this country every 10 years. It doesn’t require them to ask a lot of personal information. People are very concerned about an invasion of privacy, and I have those same concerns.”

I was also intrigued to learn that Salon.com’s Joe Conason declared Broun as “The New Stupidest Member of Congress” in this column. Conason says,

You see, Broun feels that any inquiry beyond the constitutional requirement to “enumerate” the number of persons living in his household is, per se, “unconstitutional.” He too has failed to notice that the Constitution empowers Congress to pass legislation in the public interest — and that, in any case, he is not empowered by the Constitution to determine for himself what is or is not constitutional. (Moreover, as the astute Greg Sargent points out, Article 1, Section 2 expressly directs that the count be performed “in such manner” as Congress “shall by law direct.” Although Broun carries the document around in his pocket, that doesn’t necessarily mean he has ever actually read the whole thing.)

For, indeed, even though we know Broun is one smart cookie, an expert in constitutional law, he still doesn’t get to decide what is and what isn’t constitutional. As to the legality of Broun’s action, or inaction, (Other great constitutional minds like Ron Paul and Michelle Bachmann also illegally returned their census forms), Think Progress notes that

What Congressman Broun did is illegal. U.S. law says that people can be fined for refusing to honestly fill out the entire Census:

§ 221. Refusal or neglect to answer questions; false answers

(a) Whoever, being over eighteen years of age, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100.

(b) Whoever, when answering questions described in subsection (a) of this section, and under the conditions or circumstances described in such subsection, willfully gives any answer that is false, shall be fined not more than $500.

Couple hours with talk radio on Friday night

Thank goodness for fringe talk radio to keep me angry enough late at night so I’m not attempted to fall asleep at the wheel while returning from a lengthy trip Lexington, Ga., to cover a football game.

I’m not sure what radio host, Mark Levin’s, obsession is with The Washington Post (Levin calls it The Washington Compost) writer, Dana Milbank, but Milbank is linked on Levin’s Web site, and Levin, in usual form, went into a 10-minute rant about this column, appearing Friday in The Post. In it, Milbank detailed some of the more unusual features of a protest held Thursday on Capitol Hill by House Republicans and Tea Party supporters, who were rallying against the health care reform bill currently under consideration. To briefly point out some of what Milbank observed:

In the front of the protest, a sign showed President Obama in white coat, his face painted to look like the Joker. The sign, visible to the lawmakers as they looked into the cameras, carried a plea to “Stop Obamunism.” A few steps farther was the guy holding a sign announcing “Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds” [sic], accusing Obama of being part of a Jewish plot to introduce the antichrist.

According to Milbank, also being displayed was a banner which read: “National Socialist Healthcare, Dachau, Germany, 1945.”

Levin on the radio show claimed he saw none of this nonsense, and was quick to point to a 90-year-old veteran he saw in a wheel chair on the front row and the numerous American flags, etc, etc. Levin seemed to indicate that among 20,000 people (He must have had a different math teacher than Milbank, who only recorded about 5,000 in attendance), there were sure to be a few crackpot, zany signs and that you could pick out fringers anywhere, like Waffle House on any given day. But the tough news for Levin is that he is a fringer. In his long rant on the air tonight, Levin accused liberals of doing everything in their power to ridicule some of the strong, female leaders of the conservative movement, like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. He awkwardly threw in the word “attractive” in his description, but I have no idea what physical appearance has to do with anything.

But the point is this. He accused some of ridiculing the intelligence and the very being of people like Palin and others, but leveled a barrage of belittling names Milbank’s way in response to the column. In his vitriol, in which by the end, Levin was for all practical purposes, screaming into the microphone, used the following choice words to describe Milbank (I wrote some of them down as I was listening): “jerk” (three times); “moron”; “propagandis,” and a “pathetic” one at that; “liar”; “coward”; “punk”; “hack”; “ass”; and “backbencher”. The liar and coward accusations begin teetering into slander territory. Regardless, what sort of person do you have to be to, in one breath, accuse someone of belittling or mocking Palin, while not more than two minutes later, to begin such a barrage of insults I just listed against another person?

I want to address one more thing. The use of the word “patriots” to describe Tea Party attendees or Republicans or anti-Obama zealots is just plain offensive to the spirit on which this country was built. One person who called in to Levin’s show described the attendees of the aforesaid rally as “citizen patriots,” whatever that means. This type of nonsense basically throws feces over the venerable graves of John Adams, Sam Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Hancock, George Washington and the thousands who fought from Massachusetts and the other colonies against the British to help us win independence. I’m not a patriot. Obama isn’t a patriot. Levin isn’t a patriot. Neither is Milbank. The New England Patriots aren’t even patriots. The dictionary definition of the word generally means anyone who loves her country, but look deeper, and the word originates from Greek root, patēr, meaning “father,” hence, as it relates to this country, Founding Fathers. Using that word so lightly after all that this country has been through in its 200-plus year history makes a mockery of what the above men worked to accomplish, and it’s personally offensive to me, and it should be to anyone else with a brain.

I’ll probably have more to say on Levin later when it’s not 2 a.m. after having worked 12 hours. …