Every time Pat Robertson opens his mouth (
gay culture caused 9/11, calls on our government to
assassinate political foes, calls on God to
assassinate political foes) Republican leaders fall all over themselves in their mad scramble to throw up some
distance. "Pat Robertson does not speak for us," has become something of a mantra for the Republican leadership. But if Pat Robertson doesn't really speak for Republicans why has government funding for Robertson's
scandal plagued Operation Blessing, under George Bush's "faith based initiatives", gone from a paltry $108,000 in 1999 to a
whopping $14,400,000 in 2005?
There's the obvious:
CBN claims 1,000,000 daily viewers and of course there's the religious political machine created during Robertson's
failed Presidential bid, as a Republican, but is it actually something much more insidious?
The Republican leadership has been incredibly successful in promoting and using people like Robertson, Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, et al to radically shift political polemics to the right. Trot out the Reverand Mike Bray calling for the mass execution of all the "murdering abortionists" in the country and suddenly Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ka.) becomes a "moderate" Republican voice on the subject to the viewing public.
Certainly the Republicans appreciate the radical rights infusion of votes after all it's the only way they win elections by pandering to the "religious whackos" (trademark pending Mike Scanlon), but demagogues such as Pat Robertson are a much more useful tool in moving this country further and further to the right every time they open their mouths. This $14,400,000 "grant" is nothing more then a payoff to a usefull pawn in a politically motivated effort to guarantee his extreme speech continues to have as wide an audience as possible.