Today's NYT has an eye-opening article detailing how Republicans nationwide are seeking to make the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque a top 2010 issue.
The article contained a pair of quotes from GOP candidates that I think illustrate the Republican Party's core dysfunction on the mosque issue. First:
"Ground zero is hallowed ground to Americans," Elliott Maynard, a Republican trying to unseat Representative Nick J. Rahall II, a Democrat, in West Virginia’s Third District, said in a typical statement. "Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?"
The flaw in Maynard's reasoning is as obvious as it is astonishing: effectively, his argument is that New York City in the United States of America should be more like Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Maynard looks towards Saudi Arabia and sees a nation in which there are zero churches and synagogues and he gets jealous. He wonders why it is that America cannot become a Christian nation in the way the Saudi Arabia is an Islamic nation. He explicitly rejects one of America's greatest achievements: the separation of church and state. He seeks to set us back to the pre-revolutionary era. He doesn't see America as a shining beacon on a hill; he sees America as a flawed nation because it is not sufficiently similar in form to theocracies in the Middle East.
Amazingly, Maynard's views seem to be fairly widely held on the right. They just don't seem to value the religious freedom which makes America great.
The second quote is a tad less astonishing, but equally revealing:
"It is very troubling to see President Obama again turning a deaf ear to the thoughts and concerns of a majority of Americans," said James Renacci, a Republican candidate in Ohio’s 16th District, who said people at a recent public meeting were furious about the mosque proposal.
While I will concede that most Americans oppose the location of the mosque, I also believe President Obama was speaking for most Americans when he defended the right of Muslims to build houses of worship anywhere that a house of worship of the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, or any other faith could be built.
But I will also note that the mosque issue is nowhere near the top of the list of "thoughts and concerns of a majority of Americans." Jobs and the economy are atop that list. And while President Obama has talked about jobs and the economy and his plans for accelerating the recovery, Republicans have been absolutely, completely, totally silent.
Instead of talking about the issue that matters the most to Americans -- jobs and the economy -- Republicans want to talk about whether it's okay to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. (There's already one four blocks away.)
As I argued yesterday, it's a real mistake for Republicans to dwell on the mosque -- it's like the Bill Ayers of 2010. Sure, many Americans are uncomfortable with the mosque, but it has about as much to do with the Democratic Party as Bill Ayers did with Barack Obama.
Yet nonetheless, as the AP reports, Republicans are stepping up their offensive against the mosque -- and they're attacking President Obama, even though he's not on the ballot, and the issue pales in importance to the economy.
By focusing so much energy on such a minor issue, Republicans are giving Democrats an easy opportunity to play jujitsu, pointing out while the GOP is obsessed with the mosque, they are virtually silent on the economy. They literally have a more detailed plan on dealing the mosque than they do for dealing with the economy. And the reason is simple: Republicans don't have a plan for the economy, or at least they don't have a plan that they are willing to publicly describe.
It's conceivable that the GOP's attempt to turn 2010 into a referendum on a mosque will be successful, but their gambit will only work if Democrats allow it to happen. As long as Democrats point to the GOP's silence on the economy, it will backfire -- bigtime.