The Republican’s Holy Primary

We’re just over two weeks away from the Iowa Caucus, which will establish the party frontrunners going into New Hampshire and on to the “Super Tuesday” sew-up, months before the summer conventions that supposedly start the race to November. Why Iowa and New Hampshire are considered to be an authoritative gage of America’s best choice of Presidential candidates is something I’ve never figured out. By the time my state has it’s primary the results are already decided.

My own opinion is that the 2008 Presidential campaigns started way too early this cycle, egged on by an erroneous assessment of what Republican defeats in 2006 really meant. The change of Congressional power from Republicans to Democrats has accomplished nothing much. The leadership has steadfastly thwarted all meaningful reform legislation, all meaningful exercise of oversight, and bowed regularly to the spoiled shrubbery in the White House who has suddenly found his veto pen to be more useful than his “signing statements” stating what laws he may ignore with impunity.

Still, here we are. The Democratic field is more impressive across the board than in any other primary I can remember – all of them are sane and non-threatening, all have some great ideas, some of them have vast experience, and others are genuine populists. Compared to them the Republican field is a joke. Or, would be a joke if it weren’t so God-awful. And I do mean God…

We all know the religious right’s thirst for political power has delivered a significant, highly reliable voting bloc to the Republican Party for the last two decades. Regardless of how little that bloc actually receives in the way of legislation designed to further their theocratic ambitions, they do seem content with the nauseating lip service Republicans are always willing to deliver. The fundamentalists represent a dependable 38% of the Republican “Base” we hear so much about, even though in real numbers they don’t represent that large a percentage of the population.

Saddled with a lame duck whose approval ratings barely hover in the 20s and a sickly cyborg veep whose numbers are barely in the teens, it is clear that large numbers have been defecting and may just stay home in November. Thus watching the Holier Than Thou act between Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee over the past couple of weeks has been particularly nauseating. You’d think the “Base” could by now recognize blatant hypocrisy when confronted with it so graphically. Alas, we’ll have to await the results to find out.

Between Romney’s impassioned pretense that Mormonism is just like the Baptist version of Christian fundamentalism and Huckabee telling the base that Mormons believe Jesus and Satan are brothers, Romney now has to worry about losing evangelicals and home schoolers to Huck.

Of course, the rest of the Republican stable are running well behind the two theocratic front-runners, so I doubt Democrats need be concerned. Perhaps as the primaries head into the big blow-out we’ll see much more religious in-fighting in the Republican ranks. Which will of course translate into a divided base and a likely reduction in the reliability of that base for the November election. The Dems need not lift a finger (or a voice) here – the smartest thing to do is let Republicans go ahead and demolish their own base. They don’t need any help.

Links:

NYT: Huckabee Draws Support of Home-School Families

Huckabee: ‘I don’t have anything to apologize for’

NYT: Candidates Scrambling to Cope with Rise of Huckabee

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Filed under Campaigns, Class War, Hypocrisy, Iowa, Presidential Candidates, Republicans | Comments (2)