GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party

Salon ^ | 8-5-2012 | Mike Lofgren

[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.

[StAnDeliver]

Typical lifer Mandarin douchebag who retired with a pocket full of government grift and now wants to bitch about the GOP that fed his family:

Mike Lofgren

"Mike Lofgren retired in June 2011 after 28 years as a staff member in the U.S. Congress. From 2005 until his retirement, Lofgren was a professional staff member of the Senate Budget Committee. His primary focus was on national security budgets, but he also worked on such matters as the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and the 2009 International Monetary Fund replenishment.  From 1995 through 2004, he was budget analyst for national security on the majority staff of the House Budget Committee. In 1994 he was a professional staff member of the House Armed Services Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee. He began his legislative branch career as military legislative assistant to Rep. John R. Kasich in 1983. He has a B.A. and M.A. in history from the University of Akron. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study European history at the Universities of Bern and Basel in Switzerland and completed the strategy and policy curriculum at the Naval War College.

Since retirement, Lofgren has written about politics, budgets, and national security issues. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Monthly, Truthout, and Counterpunch. His essay on Congressional Republicans published by Truthout received over a million views. He has appeared on numerous radio and TV news interviews."

[N. Theknow]

Hey Mikey, here's a clue for you.

Chik-Fil-A on Wednesday. Compared to the Great Homosexual Kiss-In later in the week.

Which set of voters was larger?

I guess your car was the only one in the JC Penney parking lot when I drove by yesterday.

Pander to Perverts and Pay the Price

Cater to Christians and Count your Cash.

[StAnDeliver]

Note that link to Truthout -- a hard Left nutroots site that currently leads with an 'op-ed' that insists the US should have been prosecuted for war crimes re: Hiroshima. That's who publishes his whiny Mandarin fantasies...

Notably early-on in Lofgren's overly long screed, he can't even get Michele Bachmann's name right; and of course Truthwithout doesn't have any editors...

[DPMD]

Another one of the Left’s invisible friends.

Salon is assuming way more credibility than it’s actually earned. National Enquirer is more reliable.

[Notary Sojac]

I am not sure why someone’s belief about dinosaur footprints should make a difference in a discussion about deficit spending, the role of government or even cultural morality issues.

Absolutely correct, and I'm marking your words for use the next time some Freeper says that I can't be both an atheist and a conservative.

[Breto]

I will take anti intellectualism over anti morality any day of the week.....

[rlmorel]

"...Fulbright scholarship..."

He and Clinton have a lot in common.

[rlmorel]

Well said on all counts, Pollster1...

[cranked]

Another no-name claim and assertion? And this is called journalism?! =.=

[The_Reader_David]

Why no barf alert? (Or is that regarded as redundant on posts from Salon?)

[lowbridge]

Bump

[Little Ray]

Poor guy misses the GOP of Nixon, Ford, Rockefeller, et al.

It was that Reagan feller and all those strange blue-collar types he brought in that ruined his party.

[ExCTCitizen]

GOP insider? I think the nutjob is Harry Reid talking about his party. Salon decided to change Democrat to Republican. /s

[Lakeshark]

Look around FR and you'll see plenty of us religious FReepers as true lovers of science and discovery.

You are just so wrong, we here in our religious fervor are obviously ignorant of the scientific reasons for removing dams and putting up windmills. Global warming, fish habitat, unnatural concrete and man made materials in dams clearly polluting the pure watersheds of America, scientists all agree these things should be removed to return America to its formerly pristine state.

Thoughtless, mindless religious zealots such as yourself just can't understand the nuances of political science, unlike the genius who wrote this article to save us from the likes of you............

[Sir Napsalot]

Well thought out post, thanks.

[danielmryan]

Oh, boy - an "insider" speaks! As is usual with writings of this sort, any factual scoops are mixed in with promotion of the author's friends and allies and denigation of his rivals. Consequently, this excerpt is of little value except for those who want to see what a Washington insider normally keeps to him- or herself. As canny cops know, one of the neater ways to get a confession out of a perp is to butter him up and let him run his mouth.

"Counselor, the defendant not only confessed his crime - he bragged about it."

For someone who claims to be averse to demagogy, this fellow's pretty quick with the cheap political rhetoric. His claim that the Religious Right is taking America back to the seventeenth century should merely be met in kind. Which group of people are taking America back to seventeeth-century mercantilsm (French style)? Which claque of folks are the true heirs of Jean de Colbert? Qui ont les Intendants?

As for his point about "cheap salvation," it shows that he's a hierarch. Lofgrean's citation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, despite Rev. Bonhoffer's Lutheranism, is reminiscent of the Catholic Church's opposition to sola scriptura. The way he uses it reveals his inner belief that the people, on their own, just can't be trusted. They need a hierarchy to, uh, "steer" them in the right direction.

Obviously, Lofgreen considers himself to be part of an elite. What's interesting about his attitude is that there seems to be only two common bonds in this elite: landing the big government job and cultivating a suspicion of the people - specifically, the people who don't conform to D.C.'s aceptable range of orthodoxies. That's all it takes, it seems. Needless to say, he is no man of the people.

His paragraph on Ayn Rand is puerile. It's the same old stereotypes thrown together with new words. Rand's position regarding religion is what she called "intransigent atheism." In Rand-speak, this means defensive atheism: at most, passive-aggressive atheism. No Dawkins has ever come from the Randian world. Moreover, she specifically criticized Christianity only once, in her Playboy interview, which is not considered part of the core canon. That was the only time. She was so far from a Social Darwinist, she one wrote "I am not a student of the theory of evolution, so I am neither its supporter nor its opponent."

That paragraph about Ayn Rand says a lot about Lofgreen's mental processes. He's fond of generalizing from single datums, often the sign of a person who uses stereotypes. Naturally, he pulls out the old trope about Religious Right "hypocrisy." Note that, in the case of Herman Cain, he treats rumour as fact. That says a lot about how he and his ilk "think:" it's very revealing, and not about the Religious Right. As for the allegation from Joe Walsh's ex-wife, why hasn't she sued? If her allegations were fact, why hasn't she collected the money?Again, he treats claims as if they were proven facts.

Needless to say, his sterotype about "plutocrats" says more about his thinly-disguised Washington-insider venality than the character of someone who became rich in the free market. Perhaps, he rates a bye on this one because he's a mere bureaucrat generalizing from his own experience.

As I indicated before, his writings are more revealing of the D.C. mindset than any truth about the Religious Right - except for the fact that the Religious Right made his job harder. That's really all you need to know about his bias.

[Dr. Sivana]

Absolutely correct, and I'm marking your words for use the next time some Freeper says that I can't be both an atheist and a conservative.

The existence and nature of God has more direct bearing on the basis of a moral or political system than the source of dinosaur footprints. The existence of a dinosaur footprint, in itself, means next to nothing. But the unalienable rights endowed by a Creator cannot be excised without changing the basis of the whole system.

[techcor]

Sure they helped “destroy” it by taking both Congress and the Senate in 1994. He would prefer the Rinos help “restore” it to its’ rightful place at the back of the political bus.

[zeugma]

Actually, my impression was the rise (beginning) of the Republican Party was from religious people against slavery. I think those who are more interested in corporate cronyism and social moderation took over after the civil war.

Absolutely. Principled opposition to slavery was nurtured in the Church. Without the active participation of Christians, slavery would still be commonplace around the world.

Indeed, the philosophy of moral relativism has no standing to oppose slavery. Indeed, it seeks to enslave us all.

[CommerceComet]

What are the RINOs complaining about? They got their pro-abort, pro-gay, big government guy whose Mormon beliefs offend a large portion of the evangelical Christian Right. In four years, they’ll probably be in better shape after Mitt weakens the conservative wing even more from the inside. I hope I’m wrong but I believe that Mitt Romney will be the biggest disaster that ever hit the conservative movement.