Earlier today, People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch happened on a conference call sponsored by Tea Party Unity, an organization dedicated to bringing together activists from the tea party and the religious right. As you might expect, when those two get mixed, the combination is downright scary.
There's already some overlap between the two groups--after all, some of the looniest members of the fringe, such as Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Tom Coburn, Rand Paul and Steve King, have feet in both camps. But James Robison, a former religious right veteran from the 1980s who has now returned full-time to the culture wars, suggested that we may be about to see a merger of the two streams, and suggested that God was about to do a "miracle" that would make that happen. He said that the tea party doesn't have the numerical support to win without help from the religious right.
The organization is helmed by veteran religious right activist Rick Scarborough, who chimed in today with effusive praise for renegade rancher Cliven Bundy. While Scarborough conceded that Bundy should have gone ahead and paid his grazing fees, he claimed that the BLM's response amounted to "Gestapo tactics," and are just a preview of what may happen if the American people don't "wake up."
Robison and Scarborough were models of sanity compared to Rafael Cruz, who falsely claimed that the city council in his hometown of Houston was considering taking a page from San Antonio and fining pastors who preach against homosexuality. In fact, no such law exists--except in Cruz Sr.'s mind.
Listen to the whole thing (if you can stand it) here.