http://www.4religious-right.info/taking_over.htm#Their


WITH GOD AS THEIR CO-PILOT


under cover of a devastating republican defeat, pat
robertson's operatives hope to hijack the ship of state.


article by Joe Conason


A wide range of Americans celebrated lustily the night the
Republicans lost the White House. Breaking out the champagne
after 12 years of GOP rule were the old left, the new
Democrats, the pro-choicers, the environmentalists, women,
minorities and gays. But those corks may have been popped in
vain, or at least prematurely. The defeat of George Bush may
mark only the true takeoff point for the increasingly
powerful religious right, a movement far more ominous than
any represented by Bush or Ronald Reagan. It is a movement
whose intolerance and fanaticism have been festering for
years, but which America has glimpsed only in recent months.


Two weeks after Election Day, it reared into view at, of all
places, a Republican governor's meeting in Wisconsin. Having
gathered to nurse their wounds, the governors held a brief
press conference at the end of their two-day confab. It
should have been a dull affair. Mississippi Governor Kirk
Fordice unexpectedly livened it up when he took the
microphone and declared that America is a "Christian
nation."


Such sentiments are anathema to most Republican politicians,
including Carroll Campbell, the conservative governor of
South Carolina, who is one of former Republican National
Committee chairman Lee Atwater's great success stories.
Governor Campbell leapt to the microphone to explain that of
course the nation's values come from our
"Judeo-Christian heritage. I just wanted to add the
Judeo part." Fordice glared at his Dixie colleague and
retorted sharply, "If I wanted to do that, I would have
done it."


The following day, as people lined up to denounce his
exclusionary rhetoric, the Mississippi governor's statement
blew up in his face. He swiftly apologized. But it seems
reasonable to note--as he himself did at first blush--that
Kirk Fordice meant what he said the first time. After all,
he was a political novice when he was elected in 1991, and he
gained his high office with the help of the nation's
wealthiest, fastest-growing, most powerful and best organized
grassroots political movement; the resurgent Christian right.
No group is more important to that movement than the
little-known 300,000-member Christian Coalition, which is led
by televangelist Pat Robertson.


It was one more example of why moderates and even many
conservatives in the Republican Party are running scared. A
few of them, including former Senator Warren Rudman and
former Representative Tom Campbell, are now organizing to
keep their party from being taken over by Robertson forces.
But so far their Republican Majority Coalition, founded last
December, is little more than a fund-raising letterhead, and
they are scared because they know it may already be too late.


Although most Americans first noticed that a strangely
authoritarian tone had reentered the nation's politics during
the Republican convention in Houston last August, local
Republican politicos in certain key states began to realize
that their party was being taken over as early as the spring
of 1992.


For example, when the upright Republicans of suburban San
Antonio, Texas got together to choose the delegates they
would send to the 1992 Republican National Convention, they
probably expected the usual staid and utterly predictable
proceedings. They had gone to sleep that beautiful spring
night of the Texas presidential primary confident that all
was well in their neat little world. And why not? Their
president, the quintessential country-club Republican George
Bush, had wupped Pat Buchanan badly and that was the end,
wasn't it?


Well, not quite. At the delegate selection meetings, the
party regulars began to notice a lot of unfamiliar faces.
After that, it took only a few hours for the new activists of
the Christian right to blow away the country-club GOP in that
part of Texas. With laser-beam precision, they elected new
chairmen and passed resolutions against abortion, sex
education, AIDS education and gay rights, and for the
abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts.


The rich Republicans of San Antonio's Bexar County consider
themselves very conservative. And they are. But the
politics of this new crowd gave them a bad scare. Not long
after the Christian rightists staged their coup, the
president of the Alamo City Republican Women's club just gave
up and quit.


"The so-called Christian activists have finally gained
control," she explained in her resignation letter,
"and the Grand Old Party is more religious cult than
political organization."


Of course, that was Texas, a traditional hotbed of Birchers
and Bible jocks. Couldn't happen anywhere else, could it?


Next came the Pennsylvania primary, where moderate
Republicans slept soundly after cheering the defeat of an
ultraconservative challenger to their incumbent senator,
Arlen Specter. For them, the shock came the next day, when
the votes for obscure Republican state committee positions
were tallied. From nowhere, conservative Christians had
grabbed dozens of seats. The militant newcomers are now
close to controlling the Republican Party in Pennsylvania,
too.


In June, in the San Diego County towns of Lemon Grove and El
Cajon, a slate of "pro-family" Christian right
activists financed by a group of conservative businessmen
swept the Republican primary for all of the open council
seats, along with a slew of state assembly seats. On the
same day, several hundred miles to the north in Santa Clara
Country, another slate of "biblically oriented"
candidates--committed to the death penalty for such sins as
homosexuality and abortion--captured 14 of 20 seats on the
Republican county central committee. The GOP apparatus in
the nation's most populous state is within a few votes of
being absolutely controlled by the Christian right.


These no-so-isolated incidents foreshadow a change taking
place in American politics--a shift that has nothing to do
with bounced checks, smoking bimbos, talk shows, dirty tricks
or any other floating ephemera of campaign 1992. Across the
nation, in primary after primary, stunned Republican leaders
echoed the lament of one longtime party activist in Texas, a
personal friend of Barbara Bush, who suddenly found herself
ousted by the fundamentalists. "They organized and we
didn't," she said. "I didn't think it was going to
be this bad."


A leading Christian right organizer in southern California
put it much more cheerfully when he said, "How do you
eat an elephant? One bite at a time."


The elephant being eyed so hungrily by the Christian right
seems to be in no position to defend itself. If the
Republicans were vulnerable to a takeover by Robertson's
forces before November's debacle, they are even more so now.

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Scripps-Howard News Service

Joan Lowey

THE GOP'S RELIGIOUS WAR

Until last spring, Jo Martin was a relatively non_political Houston housewife. Today she's on the front lines of a religious war that has fractured the Republican Party. Martin, a 52-year-old mother of three, and her husband David, a stockbroker, are lifelong Republicans but hadn't been active in party politics for many years until they happened to attend a local GOP meeting last spring. They were appalled by what they found.

The part apparatus had been taken over by religious activists intent on bringing "biblical principles" to government: outlawing abortion, ostracizing homosexuals and teaching creationism in pub_lic schools, among other things.

"We honest to goodness felt like we had fallen through a time warp into a Nazi brown-shirt meeting," Martin said.

Now Martin has an office in her husband's brokerage firm where she spends her days researching and publicizing the political agenda of the Religious Right.

"I would never had pictured myself getting involved in some_thing like this," said Martin, an Episcopalian and fifth-generation Texan.

In cities and towns across the country, the precinct-by-precinct battle for control of the GOP between mainstream Republicans and conservative Christian activists is going full-tilt.

Moderates who were awakened by the Republican National Convention in August to the gains within the party by the Religious Right have begun to organize and fight back. But they have a long way to go.

Working at the grassroots, fundamentalist activists have either gained control or made sizable inroads into state party organization in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Or_egon, Washington and Virginia.

A loosely affiliated network of Religious Right organizations led by televangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition has also mobilized millions of evangelical voters across the country. While they failed to re-elect President Bush, those voters helped to elect hundreds of religious activists and Republicans sympathetic to their conservative social agenda to school boards, city councils, state legislatures and Congress.

Now Christian Right activists are laying plans to expand their influence within the party and to target off-year election contests, particularly gubernatorial and state legislative races in New Jersey and Virginia this year.

"We're going to be a significant force at the grass roots of American politics for the foreseeable future," predicted Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed.

For most evangelical activists, promoting a conservative social agenda is far more important than furthering the Republican Party. They generally believe that the United States is a "Christian nation" favored by God, but they're disturbed by many societal trends - rising crime, rampant teenage pregnancy, abortion, the feminist movement and growing acceptance of homosexuals, among others.

These trends, they believe, are attributable to Americans stray_ing from their "Christian heritage." If they can elect like-minded Christian conservatives to office, then government would reflect religious values and these trends would begin to reverse, they argue.

"The agenda this voting bloc is interested in is not some sort of bizarre agenda," said Gary Bauer, president of the Family Research Council, a Religious Right organization. "Most Americans don't want gays to be allowed to marry or adopt children. Most Americans are troubled by the increasing amount of sex and violence on TV and in the movies. Most Americans want some restrictions on abortion."

The battlelines between religious activists and mainstream Republicans already have been drawn. Among the recent develop_ments: Oregon state GOP chairman Craig Berkman has proposed joining Ross Perot's supporters to set up a separate, independent state Republican party apart from the anti-abortion, anti-homo_sexual forces that now dominate the state party.

Meanwhile, the Oregon Citizens Alliance, the state's leading Christian Right group, plans to try again in 1994 to pass an anti_homosexual law. A referendum opposing homosexuality pushed by the alliance failed in 1992, but the next attempt will be modeled after a more softly worded referendum approved by Colorado voters last year.

Mainstream Republicans in Houston recently formed a separate party committee to compete with the regular GOP organization when the Harris County Republican chairwoman was forced out of office by religious activists.

The new county chairman, Dr. Steven Hotze, is a born-again activist who argues that the survival of the United States hinges on restoring "its Christian heritage" and limiting government "to its God-ordained role of providing justice based upon God's laws, restraining wickedness, punishing evildoers, and protecting the life, liberty and property of law-abiding citizens."

More than a dozen county meetings to elect party officers in Washington state erupted into shouting matches in recent weeks as mainstream Republicans and religious activists battled for control. Last summer, the GOP state convention under the control of reli_ gious activists passed a party platform denouncing witchcraft and yoga, among other subjects.

In Minnesota, the state GOP's former executive director caused a stir with a memo recommending that the party eliminate its practice of endorsing candidates through state conventions, which are easily controlled by a small number of dedicated activists. This would diminish the growing power of evangelical activists, who had been pressuring the Republicans attending precinct caucuses to state if and when they had been born again.

Moderates in Johnson County, Kan., a suburb of Kansas City, lost out two months ago when members of a conservative, anti_abortion faction were elected to three of the four top local Republican Party posts.

Groups have sprung up in Colorado Springs, San Diego, Virginia Beach and elsewhere to research and publicize the Reli_gious Right's activities.

Several leading GOP moderates - including Rep. Tom Campbell of California, retiring Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, and Sens. Nancy Kassenbaum of Kansas, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and John Chafee of Rhode Island - recently announced the formation of the Republican Majority Coalition, a national organization "to take our party back" from the Religious Right.

"We believe issues such as abortion, mandatory school prayer, homosexuality, the teaching of creationism and other similar ques-. tions recently inserted into the political context should instead be left to the conscience of individuals," said the coalition's statement of purpose.

Among the group's goals are to identify moderates in precincts across the country, recruit and endorse like-minded candidates and soften the GOP platform in 1996, including making it neutral on the abortion issue.

The 1992 GOP platform called for an across-the-board ban on abortion, said laws should reflect a "faith in God," promoted prayer in school, opposed homosexuals marrying or adopting children and favored a voucher system that would give parents public funds to send their children to private schools, including religious schools.

"We don't believe issues of personal morality ought to be tests for being a Republican," Campbell said.

Rep. Rod Chandler (R-Wash.), a moderate who lost the Senate race in Washington to Democrat Patty Murray last year, said he plans to form a similar organization in his state. "If you have one narrow faction controlling a party the way we did in our state this year, you are doomed," Chandler said.

It's preferable to find a way to keep the Christian activists within the party, Chandler said, "but if they insist on attempting to control it themselves, at that point ... it becomes a fight to the finish."

The Christian Coalition's Reed said the actions of mainstream party members like the Republican Majority Coalition border on "anti-Christian bias."

"We hope they don't want to exclude Christians," Reed said.

"No one should be excluded from participation in the civic process based on their faith."

Reed also warned that the party needs Christian activists, who have become its most loyal voting bloc and provide many of its most dedicated grass roots volunteers. "Without pro-family conserva_tives, the big tent will become a pup tent," he said.

Many Republican strategists agree. "If they were successful in driving the Religious Right out, we wouldn't be successful in winning another election in this country," GOP consultant Eddie Mahe said.

"You can't throw out a third of your base vote and win," Mahe said. "They are us and we are them."

- Joan Lowy

Reprinted with permission of Scripps-Howard News Service

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What amazes and astounds me is that Baptists were once protected by Thomas Jefferson’s strong belief of church/state separation when they were in the minority, and now some of their modern-day descendents with great political power want to foist their beliefs upon everyone else by wanting to abolish church/state separation. I simply cannot believe the hypocrisy of their position, but I also know that many good Baptists do not share their extremist views.


Entire article (well worth reading!) here:

http://www.wallbuilders.com/resourc...hp?ResourceID=9


Summation:

quote:

The Separation of Church and State by David Barton In 1947, in the case Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court declared, “The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.” The “separation of church and state” phrase which they invoked, and which has today become so familiar, was taken from an exchange of letters between President Thomas Jefferson and the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, shortly after Jefferson became President. The election of Jefferson-America’s first Anti-Federalist President-elated many Baptists since that denomination, by-and-large, was also strongly Anti-Federalist. This political disposition of the Baptists was understandable, for from the early settlement of Rhode Island in the 1630s to the time of the federal Constitution in the 1780s, the Baptists had often found themselves suffering from the centralization of power. Consequently, now having a President who not only had championed the rights of Baptists in Virginia but who also had advocated clear limits on the centralization of government powers, the Danbury Baptists wrote Jefferson a letter of praise on October 7, 1801, telling him: Among the many millions in America and Europe who rejoice in your election to office, we embrace the first opportunity . . . to express our great satisfaction in your appointment to the Chief Magistracy in the United States. . . . [W]e have reason to believe that America’s God has raised you up to fill the Chair of State out of that goodwill which He bears to the millions which you preside over. May God strengthen you for the arduous task which providence and the voice of the people have called you. . . . And may the Lord preserve you safe from every evil and bring you at last to his Heavenly Kingdom through Jesus Christ our Glorious Mediator.1 However, in that same letter of congratulations, the Baptists also expressed to Jefferson their grave concern over the entire concept of the First Amendment, including of its guarantee for “the free exercise of religion”: Our sentiments are uniformly on the side of religious liberty: that religion is at all times and places a matter between God and individuals, that no man ought to suffer in name, person, or effects on account of his religious opinions, [and] that the legitimate power of civil government extends no further than to punish the man who works ill to his neighbor. But sir, our constitution of government is not specific. . . . [T]herefore what religious privileges we enjoy (as a minor part of the State) we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights. In short, the inclusion of protection for the “free exercise of religion” in the constitution suggested to the Danbury Baptists that the right of religious expression was government-given (thus alienable) rather than God-given (hence inalienable), and that therefore the government might someday attempt to regulate religious expression. This was a possibility to which they strenuously objected-unless, as they had explained, someone’s religious practice caused him to “work ill to his neighbor.” Jefferson understood their concern; it was also his own. In fact, he made numerous declarations about the constitutional inability of the federal government to regulate, restrict, or interfere with religious expression. For example: [N]o power over the freedom of religion . . . [is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution.Kentucky Resolution, 1798 3 In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general [federal] government. Second Inaugural Address, 1805 4 [O]ur excellent Constitution . . . has not placed our religious rights under the power of any public functionary. Letter to the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1808 5 I consider the government of the United States as interdicted [prohibited] by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions . . . or exercises. Letter to Samuel Millar, 1808 6 Jefferson believed that the government was to be powerless to interfere with religious expressions for a very simple reason: he had long witnessed the unhealthy tendency of government to encroach upon the free exercise of religion.

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quote:

So Exactly Which Provisions of the Texas GOP Platform Does George Bush Disagree With? by Ralph Nader "The Platform is the Party's contract with the people." This noble sentiment has been used by both Republicans and Democrats in characterizing their state and national party Platforms over the decades. It can become an embarrassing yardstick for any Party that lives a double life. Consider President Bush and his Texas State Republican Platform of 2002 which is still in effect. The authors and endorsers of this lengthy document were taking no chances. It says crisply that each "Republican candidate for a public or Party office shall be provided a current copy of the Party platform at the time of filing. The candidate shall be asked to read and initial each page of the platform and sign a statement affirming he/she has read the entire platform." Signing on the dotted line is connected with the Party giving the candidate financial and other support. Then follows policy after policy of great specificity in direct opposition to what the Bush Administration is doing and not doing. For example, the Texas Republican Party demands that Washington repeal NAFTA and GATT and get out of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. It is adamant against any gathering, accumulation and dissemination of personal data and information on law-abiding citizens by business and governments. It wants "all citizens" to be free from government surveillance of their electronic communications. In a slam against Attorney General John Ascroft, the Texas Party believes that "the current greatest threat to our individual liberties is overreaching government controls established under the guise of preventing terrorism." Remember, this is the Texas state Republican Party. It is President Bush's Party -- the organization that launched his political career to the Governorship and beyond. His friends and political allies run this Party. So it is remarkable to read that the Platform demands the "elimination of presidential authority to issue executive orders, presidential decision directives. . . .and a repeal of all previous executive orders and administrative mandates." This policy would handcuff both George W. Bush and John Ascroft. In opposition to President Bush, his state Party insists that social security funds "should not be commingled or spent with general revenues or invested in private or public corporate stock." And it adds, Social Security benefits should "be non-taxable," until private pensions replace social security. Talk about abolishing government! The Texas Republican Party wants to terminate the U.S. Department of Education, (there goes Bush's Leave No Child Behind hoax), the Internal Revenue Service, along with the elimination of the personal income tax, inheritance tax, corporate income tax, payroll tax and the minimum wage. That is not all. The Party wants to close down the Department of Health and Human Services, Commerce, Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and for good measure, the "position of Surgeon General." The Platform has one demand that is quite sensible -- namely "The Party does not support governmental subsidies, tariffs, bailouts, or other forms of corporate welfare [including sports stadiums] that are used to protect and preserve businesses or industries that have failed to remain relevant, competitive, and efficient over time." President Bush made his fortune by getting Texas taxpayers to pay for the Texas Rangers's new baseball stadium. His government now expandscorporate welfare on the backs of individual taxpayers, while allowing huge tax escapes for large multinational corporations. If you want to read more, long onto www.texasgop.org/library/RPTPlatform2002.pdf. But if you've read this far, you may be asking how did this astonishing Texas GOP vs. Bush come about. It has to do with the double life of the Republican Party -- the main party dominated by corporatists and the adjunct Party relying on conservatives and libertarians to produce the margin of votes for victory in elections. The corporatist Republicans give the platforms and the core ideological issues to the conservatives, pat them on the back at convention time and then move into office with the welcome mat for Big Business lobbyists and their slushfunds. This duplicity is illustrated by the large contributions that the national Republican Party takes from the gambling industry in return for political support. In contrast, the Texas Party Platform states that "gambling has had a devastating impact on many Texas families" and opposes "any further legalization, government facilitation, or financial guarantees relating to any type of gambling. . . " In a letter to President Bush, I called on him to engage in truth-in-advertising and let the voters of this country know which provisions of his own state Party's Platform he endorses and which ones he opposes. For all its faults, the media does not like forked tongues and will sooner or later demand "clarification." As for the Democratic Party, why didn't it make hay with this Platform, as the Republicans surely would have if the shoe was on the other foot. Why? Because the Democratic Party IS hay.

Nader is also right to some extent about the Democratic Party, but there are still people in the Democratic party who are there to fight for ordinary americans. Basically the Democratics need to stop being such candy asses all the time and fight back more hehe.

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what is this, honest reporting or something?

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Lol I just found out the other day that David Barton is head of the Texas GOP. He must have written that article in order to try and defend his position, but all he has done is magnify his hypocrisy.

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http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/7027/republican.html

quote:

THUNDER FROM THE MIDDLE Members of Team 100, an elite group of Republicans who have given more than $100,000 to the party, received an extraordinary letter this week from John Moran, finance chairman of Bob Dole's presidential campaign and former finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. As first reported in the Washington Post, Moran charges that the R.N.C. has been hijacked by the Christian Coalition "and others who are adamantly opposed to a moderate agenda"; that these forces (led by Coalition executive director Ralph Reed) engineered the election as R.N.C. chairman of Jim Nicholson, who "will now be beholden to the far right for their support"; and that as a result, the members of Team 100 ought to be "giving consideration to throwing our financial support to a committee or organization that has a more moderate Republican political philosophy." Saying the Coalition is at a point where it is "exercising significant control" over the R.N.C., Moran suggests that the G.O.P.'s future "is in jeopardy."--TIME magazine notebook, FEBRUARY 24, 1997 VOL. 149 NO. 8

"When you've got prominent Republicans such as John Moran worried that their party has been hijacked by an extremist organization, its time to be frightened. Moran is apparently worried enough to tell the party's wealthiest donors to give their money to someone else, because the Republican National Committee is under control by religious extremists.

A prime example of Christian Coalition control over the GOP was seen during the last convention. During the formulation of the platform, the Coalition managed a series of victories for intolerance, including gutting plans to include tolerance language on the subject of abortion. Additionally, one of the major reasons that Jack Kemp was chosen as Bob Dole's running mate is that the Coalition approves of him.

Sure, the Christian Coalition claims to be a non-partisan organization, which means they don't have to pay taxes. This is nothing but a huge crock, as stated by Pat Robertson himself on CNN: "You know, I'm a convention, at the Republican convention I'm a delegate from VA. So is Ralph Reed. We're both delegates elected by our state to come to this convention. And, uh, we have another 450 Christian Coalition members. Ah, so to say that we're non-partisan is a little ingenuous. I mean, obviously we're partisan. The Christian Coalition's voter guides, on the other hand, are non-partisan. The money that is spent in an election cycle is a non-partisan, uh, effort. But I think under the various laws, the FEC rules and so forth, it is perfectly all right to advocate candidates who support your positions on key issues, be they abortion, or family tax credits, or whatever. The Supreme Court has said that's part of our First Amendment freedom. So I, I, I don't deny that we have that right. But so far we have been more or less non-partisan, but I think rather clearly Republican." (8/15/96)

Unfortunately for Pat, the Federal Election Commission does not agree with him, and is currently suing the Coalition for illegally supporting the Republican party."

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Most of Bush's policies are stealth-imposition of christian right values ... like within weeks of coming to power he removed all funding from any foreign aid agencies that condoned abortion or contraception - hence anyone who was doing things like handing out condoms to Africans to protect themselves from HIV found themselves with the rug pulled. I really really wouldn't like to be a normal, non violent muslim in the middle east if Bush wins another term because I seriously think there will be some more crusades ... cooking up of intelligence and pre emptive strikes to defend the american people from these evil terror merchants (and if we accidentally happen to end up 'reconstructing' the place and coincidentally impose wholesale american christian values and make a few extra hundred billion for Halliburton, well that's a real shame isn't it).

Hate to say this but you americans have kind of brought this on yourselves by only having two serious political parties, both of whom are totally corrupted by business and religious interests ... if you had some sort of true representative democracy, a proportional system like Germany or New Zealand for argument's sake, then there would be a lot more checks and balances to power, all these crooks and religious zealots and big business wouldn't be able to take over the country so easily. Alas I think the damage is already done.

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