The Pink Flamingo :: “Christian” Conservatives Get Too Much Religion

"The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others," { he said,} "unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives. . . We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now" { he insisted}. "To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic."

"I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process." (in a 1994 Washington Post essay)

"The religious factions will go on imposing their will on others,"

"I don't have any respect for the Religious Right."

"Every good Christian should line up and kick Jerry Falwell's ass."

"A lot of so-called conservatives don't know what the word means….”

Barry Goldwater

THE UGLY
I was shocked, shocked to discover that Peggy Noonan thinks religious conservatives have gone way too far and are now creating problems for the GOP. She now also declares something I’ve been saying for well over a year – that Ronald Reagan would never be elected in today’s outrageous GOP climate. The situation has become so extreme and rather humorous that I am violating my policy of jumping on the blogging bandwagon and am highlighting what the MSM blogsphere is saying.

“…I wonder if our old friend Ronald Reagan could rise in this party, this environment. Not a regular churchgoer, said he experienced God riding his horse at the ranch, divorced, relaxed about the faiths of his friends and aides, or about its absence. He was a believing Christian, but he spent his adulthood in relativist Hollywood, and had a father who belonged to what some saw, and even see, as the Catholic cult. I'm just not sure he'd be pure enough to make it in this party. I'm not sure he'd be considered good enough….”

A MINI RANT
This is choice – beautiful actually. Peggy Noonan as been one of the most flagrant abusers of Reagan’s name in vein there is. It’s almost as though she were some spinster teenybopper dealing with her first rock star crush that she never abandoned. She worships at the altar of Ronald Reagan. She holds him up as a paragon to the point where she is one of the individuals most responsible for the debacle the GOP faces today. For ages now she has been losing it.

Last week her commentary on Romney’s religious speech was incoherent.

“…There was one significant mistake in the speech. I do not know why Romney did not include nonbelievers in his moving portrait of the great American family. We were founded by believing Christians, but soon enough Jeremiah Johnson, and the old proud agnostic mountain men, and the village atheist, and the Brahmin doubter, were there, and they too are part of us, part of this wonderful thing we have. Why did Mr. Romney not do the obvious thing and include them? My guess: It would have been reported, and some idiots would have seen it and been offended that this Romney character likes to laud atheists. And he would have lost the idiot vote. My feeling is we've bowed too far to the idiots. This is true in politics, journalism, and just about everything else….”

I think when referring to Jeremiah Johnson she was probably thinking about Robert Redford. I can think of no other explanation for this dribble.

She absolutely detests George W. Bush, which makes me wonder why she hates him so much. He probably rebuffed her and she’s now taking it out on his ‘legacy’.

“…The GOP challengers, no matter how they feel about Mr. Bush, can't knock him, because that would infuriate the president's 20% in Iowa, New Hampshire and elsewhere. The exception is Ron Paul, who seems to have no fear of criticizing anybody, and, this week, John McCain, who in the debate had some sharp words for the current reality: "The American people no longer have trust or confidence in our government. Our failure at Katrina, our failures in Iraq, our failures to get spending under control. And we've got to restore that trust and confidence." That sounded like the beginning of a little rebellion. I suspect the Republican establishment knows all this, but I am not sure it concerns them overmuch. Why should it? If you are an absolute Bush partisan, you probably don't really want a Republican to follow him and potentially, in decisions if not in words, rebuke him. That would be the worst thing, not being followed by Hillary or Obama. If the latter happens, the outgoing administration can--and will--blame the loss on lax candidates, on a party that wasn't sufficiently inclusive, on congressional scandals, on immigration. "If only they'd followed our lead!"

They'll be fine. The party may be defeated, the conservative coalition that raised them high sundered, but they'll be all right. Which is important, because more than the president's legacy is involved. Their very personal legacy is involved. No one wants to have worked for the biggest embarrassment in modern American political history. You won't be burning up the public speaking trail with Terry McAuliffe that way….”

This woman needs a make-over!

Race for 2004

You know “Christian” conservatives have gone too far when even Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House starts squirming. Moran is quoting Captain Ed

“…The Republican primary risks falling into a theological beauty contest. Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have actual policy positions and track records as governors, something that pundits and the media seem to have forgotten. Neither man is running for Pope -- neither man qualifies, of course -- and the nature of their doctrines matter little in comparison to the nature of those policies they espouse. All of us have value systems from which we operate, and America has a splendid diversity of them. The shared values we have in the political realm are informed by those in the religious or personal realm, but in the end we judge people on what they do, not which congregation they join. Americans of many faiths and of no faith at all have joined together to extend self-government on the basis of rational decisions about policy for over 200 years, and the President serves all equally. Let's call off the revival, please, and get back to policy. I know how I see my way to God. I want to know how the candidates see their way to fiscal responsibility, national security, and border control….”

Harold Hutchison at Called As Seen has been one of my favorite bloggers since I started this mess. I think his Friday post is worth reading. Harold mentions the GOP Main Street Partnership, which is a very good thing.
AJ Strata
Poligazette
Fausta’s Blog
The Moderate Voice

THE OBSCENELY UGLY
A few months ago Mike Huckabee wrote that as a Christian he would treat illegals who were here as migrants as would Christ. Now, though he has changed his mind, and literally made a deal with what I think is the devil – Jim GilchriseThe best way to deal with what he is now endorsing is Dave Neiwert wrote in Oricus yesterday.

“…I've been trying to envision what Mike Huckabee's immigration plan -- the one calling for the deportation of 10 to 12 million "illegal immigrants" within a 120-day period -- would look like. After all, we're talking about truly enormous numbers. The logistics alone would be daunting: we're talking about rounding up and shipping out 100,000 people a day. These are numbers that make the notorious Palmer Raids of the 1920s look like a drop in the bucket…... I know it's hard to imagine such a thing. Because we all know that as the push to search out all 12 million intensifies, so will the ugliness of the raids.

And let's not forget that rounding people up is only the beginning: There is, fortunately, such a thing as due process in America, even for non-citizens, which means that each one of these 10 to 12 million people will have to have their cases reviewed. In the meantime, they'll have to be placed in detention centers. When you're talking about 100,000 people a day, you're talking numbers well beyond the capacity of any current holding facility or detention center operating in America. And because the need will be ostensibly short-term, that means we'll almost certainly once again be building temporary mass detention centers -- otherwise known as concentration camps. Of course, this country already has some experience with that. And sure enough, in response simply to the increased demand under Bush's relatively modest push for illegal-immigrant roundups, we're building them again.

Just what kind of America is it that Mike Huckabee envisions? Has anyone thought about what this country will look like -- not just ethnically and racially, but ethically and morally -- after he has his 120 days?”

IS HUCKABEE FIT TO BE POTUS
You have my opinion above. I have a feeling his arrogance is going to be his undoing, and it won’t take all that long. Here is what others think:
AJ Strata

“…But Huckabee’s traitorous act was to use a term favored by the most anti-war critics on the left. The “bunker” image has been used by Mad Sid Blumenthal, Sen Harry Reid, Sen Chuck Schumer and all across the far left to denigrate Bush’s determination to win. It seems Huckabee is reaching out to the “Impeach Bush” crowd with the use of this phrasing. In a Presidential election were Huckabee would be trying to out liberal the liberals on Iraq why would anyone vote for the GOP variant??? I have one word of warning for all GOP contenders this year: Don’t try to win by stabbing President Bush in the back. If will turn on him you will turn on anyone. Good-bye Gov Huckabee, don’t let the door hit you on the way out….”

Right Wing Nut House
The Hedgehog Blog
Flopping Aces
Ace of Spades
Palmetto Scoop has my thoughts exactly.

“…I can’t tell you how mad this made me. President Bush has undertaken one of the most difficult and boldest national security programs in the last 50 years. At every step along the way his efforts have been obstructed by blind Democrat oppostion to nearly every policy that has been so successful in keeping this nation safe during the years since the September 11th attacks. Huckabee’s words are a personal insult to those of us who have poured both heart and soul into support for President Bush and stood by him on the road to VICTORY when others were abandoning him for political gain….”

Huckabee thinks women should submit to their husbands. I’m so sick of religion. Just read yesterday’s mess of a post on this subject.

WHY I THINK HUCKABEE IS UNFIT TO BE POTUS
This article in Oricus says it all.

THE BAD
Let’s face it, Huckabee is now enjoying his half hour under an electron microscope. Everything he has ever said or done is coming back to haunt him. I saw this posting at Powerline   and (oh heck I don’t even wonder) have a sneaky feeling the Romney folks are behind more than a little. Then there are what I call the MSM extreme conservatives – like the National Review bunch who have sold their soul to Romney. Rich Lowery is shilling for him and doing everything he can to hit Huckabee.   I get a kick out of the disingenuousness of the far right.
The Politico

THE GOOD
Let’s just sit back and enjoy the show. I have a feeling things are going to be changing before those stupid Iowa caucuses and the NH primary. Frankly, I want to see (both parties) the person who wins either one of them lose everywhere else. I’m sick and tired of a few little twits telling the rest of America how to vote. Iowa and New Hampshire are no more a reflection of America than Rumsfeld is, and I’m talking about my very naughty toy poodle, not the former Secretary of Defense.

EXTINCTION BY MURDER SUICIDE
I don’t mind admitting I was wrong months ago when I predicted it would be a murder-suicide for McCain-Romney. Okay, I was half right. I think the murder-suicide is going to be Romney-Huckabee. Right now it couldn’t happen to a more charming couple. Could you imagine both on the same ticket? Lord help us all! Read Flap today.

Fact Check on Romney v Huckabee Keep watching. I have a feeling these two spoiled brats are going to end up knocking themselves into oblivion. If not we’re going to be stuck with Hillary as President.

ANOTHER MINI RANT
I usually don’t do the pile on blogsphere thing, but this is just way too much fun. You will never know how much I am enjoying the spectacle of our far right bloggers and pundits crying buckets of crocodile tears over Mike Huckabee’s turning a mediocre presidential run into the ultimate TV preacher extravaganza. Let’s face it the real reason they are complaining is not because Huckabee is doing the Jim and Tammy Faye thing all over Iowa but because he has trumped their current incarnation of Ronald Reagan, Mitt Romney. Last week Romney was to have put the whole religion thing to bed with his “Mormon In America” speech. Instead, Mike Huckabee, that barnyard Baptist bantam weight has gone for the jugular, turning the campaign trail into a “Christian” conservative’s fondest desire – a complete merging of church and state.   If Huckabee were not ahead of Romney in the polls and had not trumped the great religious speech I have a feeling not one of the “Christian” bloggers and pundits would even be complaining.

Be careful what you wish for and what you preach. It may come back to haunt you. While it is, the rest of us are sitting back laughing poking fun of you. Stupid is as stupid does. My one request? Keep it up. You are soon reaching the point where you are going to be completely archaic and obsolete. Then, the rest of us in the Republican Party can get back to the business of electing the next POTUS.

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