The Road to Hell

Political chatterers are talking about this piece by a former GOPer congressional staffer Mike Lofgren.  He takes aim at both parties but in particular the GOP, which he has quit because he doesn't want to be a member of a cult.  I'll have more to say about this article later.  But responding to the part of Lofgren's analysis that says that the GOP has been totally captured by a Rabid Religious Right faction, Andrew Sullivan wrote the following:

That too is my view: that the GOP, deep down, is behaving as a religious movement, not as a political party, and a radical religious movement at that. Lofgren sees the "Prosperity Gospel" as a divine blessing for personal enrichment and minimal taxation (yes, that kind of Gospel is compatible with Rand, just not compatible with the actual Gospels); for military power (with a major emphasis on the punitive, interventionist God of the Old Testament); and for radical change and contempt for existing institutions (as a product of End-Times thinking, intensified after 9/11).

His conclusion:

If you ask why I remain such a strong Obama supporter, it is because I see him as that rare individual able to withstand the zeal without becoming a zealot in response, and to overcome the recklessness of pure religious ideology with pragmatism, civility and reason. That's why they fear and loathe him. Not because his policies are not theirs'. But because his temperament is their nemesis. If he defeats them next year, they will break, because their beliefs are so brittle, but will then reform, along Huntsman-style lines. If they defeat him, I fear we will no longer be participating in a civil conversation, however fraught, but in a civil war."

This is not the only reason I remain a strong Obama supporter, but it is certainly an important one.  I think Sullivan is exactly right about Obama and about 2012.  The leading GOPer presidential candidate at the moment is Cowboy Rick Perry, the perfect combination of a corrupt big money pol and RRR zealot.  With any GOPer nominee, this looks like it's going to be a Goldwater kind of year for the GOP, on steroids.  If the election doesn't have the same resounding result as 1964, I believe Sullivan's fear is well founded.

 A set of politicians and lawmakers who deliberately set out to drive America to the bottom could not conceive of a better set of policies than are currently being advocated and engineered by the GOP.  The future is going to be tough no matter who is President.  But with Rick Perry or his RRR ilk, it's going to be hell.