Posted on 08/06/2012 7:45:42 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
A veteran Republican says the religious right has taken over, and turned his party into anti-intellectual nuts
Having observed politics up close and personal for most of my adult lifetime, I have come to the conclusion that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism may have been the key ingredient in the transformation of the Republican Party. Politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes—at least in the minds of its followers—all three of the GOP’s main tenets: wealth worship, war worship, and the permanent culture war.
Religious cranks ceased to be a minor public nuisance in this country beginning in the 1970s and grew into a major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson’s strong showing in the 1988 Iowa presidential caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. Unfortunately, at the time I mostly underestimated the implications of what I was seeing. It did strike me as oddly humorous that a fundamentalist staff member in my congressional office was going to take time off to convert the heathen in Greece, a country that had been overwhelmingly Christian for almost two thousand years. I recall another point, in the early 1990s, when a different fundamentalist GOP staffer said that dinosaur fossils were a hoax. As a mere legislative mechanic toiling away in what I held to be a civil rather than ecclesiastical calling, I did not yet see that ideological impulses far different from mine were poised to capture the party of Lincoln.
.... All around us now is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science. Politicized religion is the sheet anchor of the dreary forty-year-old culture wars.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Sounds like a guy who preferred the permanent minority status of the 1970’s.
This dude is stupid. Religion has nothing to do with the “destruction” of his party, but the corruption of establishment.
Progressists are like the door to hell, they do not kick you out, they drag you in like demons who want your flesh. It’s a perception thing. Obviously this dude has no clue and would jump right in.
Give us a name, or it is simply BS.
About what, is he right?
this must be light in the loafers Mehlman. One who was responsible for gutting the spine of the GOP and giving us closseted RINOs.
...and hostility to science
Lemme guess... Lofgren is a "global warming" scammer? I am also guessing Lofgren is a homosexual.
By the way, "Longtime congressional staffer" = the ultimate DC parasite. The guy just loves big government. Party, philosophy, ideology, and principles have absolutley nothing to do with being a "congressional staffer". As far as claiming to be a traitorous "Republican insider", Lofgren sure found the magic potion for his "15 minutes of fame", as there will be no shortage of TV appearances, laughter, and champagne toasts in the Democrat "mainstream" newsrooms. .
Yep, definitely part of the problem.
Quite true, and the "hostility and anti-intellectualism" is emanating from those who deny the existence of God.
The principle of causality and the harmonious order of the natural world provide basic and obvious scientific proof that the universe is more than the result of the blind blunderings of unconscious natural forces.
Harry Reid, the purported pedophile, has already done that for the last 3 years. No need for Republicans, at all.
Actually, this so-called "veteran Republican" is David Brooks.
Bipartisanship has put us on the fast track to destruction.
GOPe sour grapes...
I suppose this nitwit wants the Republican party to continue to be the Democrat-light party. I still get irritated when I think about the RNSC immediately annointing RINO Charlie Crist as the “Republican candidate” for the Florida US Senate seat in 2010 and giving his campaign $100,000, despite the fact that a far superior candidate, Marco Rubio, had entered the race. When Rubio beat Crist in the primary, Crist changed to Independent.
I see now where Crist is supporting Democrat Nelson, and is expected to switch from Independent to Democrat—where he really belonged all along.
Guys, Mike Lofgren IS the insider who wrote this. No, I’d never heard of him before, either. Lifer congressional staffer, and apparently more notable for this than for anything he did while he was in. Wow. Working that long for a party you hold in such utter contempt really isn’t good for your soul, is it?
The entire story is a lie, and the “fundamentalist staffer” quoted in the article never existed.
They say all this as if the “Secular Humanism” of the left is not a religion itself.
Exactly!
He probably hangs out at Georgetown gay bars with his Democrat colleagues.
Without all those anti-slavery activist Christian ministers back in the 1850’s, there would probably not have been a Republican Party to begin with...
This is some really intense Leftist BS for sure. I wish it were true. But one look will tell you that the republican party is far from Christian these days. And it has been getting worse every year.
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