UTVoter has a recommended diary detailing, once again, the seemingly uncontrollable urge by state and local Republicans to narrow, reduce and ultimately disenfranchise the Republican Party.
Media, both print and written, have been wondering at the gleeful madness of Michael Steele, the foolishness of Hannity, the paranoia of Glen Beck, and the over the top pronouncements of Rush designed to reduce the party to insignifigance. Even the Republican Bulls in Congress have stepped on their own appendages, eager to say, "Good Riddance" to Arlen Specter while Bachmann, and her ilk, have pride of place in making yuckie statements about Americans who do not toe the Republican Party line.
And this, short sighted fools that they are, is just how they planned it!
Back in the 1980's, when the Reagan Administration cultivated the Religious Right, men such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, with a long history of moving their followers to various kinds of excess, stepped up to help.
The original roots of Republican destruction can be found in the dreams of Pat Robertson, and his political activism by the Moral Majority.
Robertson, a long time Republican with ties to various questionable business dealing on the African continent, was eager to help roll back the environmental controls that had been imposed during the past 2 decades.
The origins of the Moral Majority can be traced to 1976 when Jerry Falwell embarked on a series of "I Love America" rallies across the country to raise awareness of social issues important to Falwell. These rallies were an extension of Falwell’s decision to go against the traditional Baptist principle of separating religion and politics, a change of heart Falwell says he had when he perceived the decay of the nation’s morality.
One of the major outgrowths of Robertson's efforts was a training program and much encouragement to move Moral Majority members to local political activism. They were encouraged to run for local school boards and restore Robertson's brand of Christianity in the classroom. They were begged to run for town and county governing boards and restore Robertson's view of a proper moral tone to local decision making. And, most importantly, they were expected to join the Republican Party.
The media reported on these efforts but could not wave a red flag and most Americans adopted a NIMBY shrug and dismissed the danger. We did begin to notice when Darwin was banned from classrooms and children were arrested for carrying aspirin in their back packs, but in a huge and very diverse country we simply thought, "If those people want to elect crazies, Who am I to complain?"
The national Republicans didn't care much, either. As long as the pockets of craziness voted for Republicans, and then went back to their obsession on sex, abortion, and evolution, they were happy to continue to promote their economic and diplomatic priorities without the close monitoring of an engaged citizenry.
They newly minted Republican activists, on the other hand, had found a fun new way to feel important. They began to move from local to state wide offices, and they continued to get elected at a time when any engaged group could control election outcomes because most people were too busy, or disinterested, to bother voting in statewide elections. Leaders of the movement began to emerge and beholden to the narrow interests of their ideological cohort, they ran in national election with carefully framed arguments that labeled any who disagreed with them as unpatriotic, ungodly, and unclean.
Those very same people who were too busy, or disinterested, to block this movement in its infancy, didn't want those labels, so they voted to support the Rick Santorums, and George Bush's.
One day the sleeping giant awoke. Americas began to question the narrow intrusive view of Pat Robertson's Army when the Terry Schivo debacle on the floor of Congress broke through their slumber, and they sat up and wondered, "What the Hell is going on, here?"
By then, the entrenched and monied interests (the clever and smart) who had emerged from those original grass roots activists had only one goal - to retain their power. To do that effectively, they would have had to step outside the bubble they had blown and expand their outreach to less committed Christians and those of other faiths, or no faith at all. But they just could not. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
So they retained the purity mantra, driving more and more people away from their ideology, and inadvertantly drawing attention to the policies they were enacting that no one was ever supposed to notice, or even know.
As we look, in bemused wonder, at the implosion of the modern Republican Party, let us remember that this is exactly what they wanted. They wanted a tightly controlled, narrowly defined purity among those they would support at the local and state level so they could redesign local society in the image they felt to be "Christian". They shut out those who were not in total agreement with their brand of Christian Values. As leaders of the movement arose to national office they had been groomed and shaped by the Robertsons and Falwells, and their grass roots movement, to espouse a narrow and rigid view of human behavior that must be promoted and legislated.
When, in a Democracy, the populace learns what is being done in their name, what is being carried out under the banner of "good", and they awake to a recognition that the policies are not of any benefit to them, they tend to revolt.
But never forget, the Republicans are getting exactly what they wished for. Exactly what they organized for. Exactly what they trained and molded their cadre to do, and be.
It is only justice that they are also getting exactly what they deserve.