Election 2006: Did Anything Really Change?

November 23 2006
Counterbias.com
MEL SEESHOLTZ
 

Pennsylvania Republican senator Rick Santorum – Golden Boy of the Christian Right, rabid homophobe, and Bush “yes-man” – was crushed in the 2006 election by a margin larger than anyone had expected.

Also on election day 2006, it was reported by the Associated Press that James Dobson, leader of the antigay Focus on the Family and close friend of disgraced Rev. Ted Haggard, “will be one of the people overseeing counseling for” Mr. Haggard. Later on November 7, Dobson bailed out: “I don’t have the time.”

And just after noon on November 8, 2006, time ran out for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in whom Bush had only recently expressed “total faith.” According to Bush, “America is safer and the world more secure” because of Donald Rumsfeld’s leadership. If that were so, why the abrupt change following the election?

The entire world knew Rumsfeld was a disaster. Did “stay the course” GWB not just realize that? No one could be that stupid, not even George W. Could he?

One would think the GOP and the Christian Rights would see the proverbial handwriting on the wall. But neither seems to be fundamentally changing.

Exclusion and deviousness were – and still are – the modi operandi of both the GOP and the Christian Right. Witness Texas governor Rick Perry: “Non-Christians condemned to hell.”

Perry was attending a fire and brimstone theopolitical rally at San Antonio’s Cornerstone Church presided over by Rev. John Hagee who told the flock (1,500 plus a radio and TV audience), “If you live your life and don’t confess your sins to God almighty through the authority of Christ and his blood, I’m going to say this very plainly, you’re going straight to hell with a nonstop ticket." Perry agreed: “In my faith, that’s what it says, and I’m a believer of that.”

As for deviousness, my polling location had always been a local public school. But that school is being expanded and renovated. The construction made it impossible to use it this year, so my polling location was relocated to St. John of the Cross Parochial School. I find it difficult to believe that this Republican-dominated county could not find a non-religious site for a polling place.

When I walked passed the church, rectory and into the Catholic school’s gymnasium, crucifixes were everywhere. I was offended. Seems my experience and reaction were not unique, as the Associated Press reported:

Crucifix Hung Over Ballot Box Where Antigay Amendment Being Decided

 

(Middleton, Wisconsin) A Jewish man whose polling place was at a Catholic church said he was disturbed to see a crucifix hanging over a ballot box.

 

Dr. Zeev Bar-Av of Middleton said issues on Tuesday’s ballot such as gay marriage and the death penalty “are essentially on the national divide on religion and non-religion.”

 

The 65-year-old Middleton man said, “If there is a place where church and state should be separated, the polling place should be it.”

Wisconsin passed a constitutional “gay marriage” ban, as did several other states. But an antigay constitutional amendment failed in Arizona. That state’s motto is, appropriately, “Ditat Deus.”

“God” would indeed enrich all people and all families, not single out some for condemnation and exclusion as the leaders of the Christian Right preach. How hypocritical that Colorado – home to Ted Haggard and James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” – banned not only same-sex marriages, but also domestic partnership benefits for gay families and their children. Focus on the Family and its political arm spent about $900,000 to defeat equality and condemn families that didn’t fit their theopolitical agenda.

One rabidly antigay leader of the Christian Right exemplifies the movement’s continuing deception and hubris. A November 10, 2006 article by Larry Cohler-Esses, editor at large of The Jewish Week made the case:

Christian Right Agenda In Shambles After GOP Defeat

 

Moderate Evangelicals seen chafing against narrow priorities like abortion, gay rights. Will some work with Dems?

 

For a man witnessing a debacle in real time, Rev. Louis Sheldon, a leader of the Christian Right political movement, sounded amazingly sanguine Tuesday night – even as an early AP exit poll indicated that almost one-third of white Evangelicals chose a Democrat for Congress.

 

“We know that in America the people are with us,” insisted the founder and chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, one of the largest groups in the Christian right. “They’re just confused.”

If you don’t believe and act as delusional dogmatist Sheldon tells you to, then you’re “confused,” a polite way of saying you’re stupid.

Echoing Randall Terry’s proclamation –

I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don’t want equal time. We don’t want pluralism.

– “Sheldon scoffed at … the idea that Christian right activists might cultivate relationships with the newly empowered Democrats.” That’s the same Louis P. Sheldon who took money from a client of Jack Abramoff, the convicted fundraiser and briber. The Abramoff client from whom Sheldon’s TVC accepted “a donation” was an internet gambling firm. At the time “Lucky Louie” and the TVC were campaigning against internet gambling.

More telling is the fact that, as Cohler-Esses reported, “Sheldon disclosed that he and ‘a lot’ of others knew about Haggard’s homosexuality ‘for awhile ... but we weren’t sure just how to deal with it.’” So in true Christian Right and Republican fashion, they just covered it up.

What’s the likelihood of Haggard’s close friend James Dobson having been among that “‘a lot’ of others” who’d known about Haggard’s homosexuality “for awhile”? Might this embarrassing collusion have something to do with Dobson’s not having time to “help” his ersatz friend, now?

The future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said political revenge is not the agenda, and John Sonego’s article “Understanding Haggard’s fall from grace” expressed the attitude of most gay Americans the Christian Right and their faith-based GOP sycophants had sought to demonize and disenfranchise.

Sadly, the Christian Right and the GOP apparently intend to continue their Rovean tactics and divisive attacks on gays and civil equality. The former resurrected Americans for Truth that proudly claims to be “the only national organization devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda.” As for the GOP,

Mel Martinez, a notoriously antigay U.S. senator from Florida who previously served in President Bush’s cabinet, will assume the high-profile post of Republican National Committee general chairman, GOP officials said Monday [November 13].

 

“Senator Martinez was elected in 2004 by taking page 1 out of Karl Rove’s gay-baiting playbook,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign. “His campaign was one of the most antigay, bigoted, and divisive campaigns in the nation’s history. We are deeply troubled that this kind of senator has been chosen to lead the Republican Party.”
 

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