Senatorial candidate Todd Akin caused quit a stir when he came forward with his extremist views on abortion and attacked the rights of women and their dignity by his 'legitimate rape' comments. As time went by, it was evident that there's a ton of support for this view within the Republican House, even if they try to distance themselves from Akin. The controversy is still raging on as many high-ranking tea partiers called for his ousting from the race. But his disgusting misogynist statements were not unfamiliar to many Republican politicians as has been highlighted by Paul Ryan's co-signing onto Akin's beliefs about rape and pregnancy. A few days later, the GOP released their party platform for the national convention which begins on August 27, in Tampa, that overtly supports Akin's extremist views.
As Republican officials continue their attempts to persuade Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri to end his bid for the Senate over his comments about rape and abortion, GOP leaders adopted a party platform on Tuesday that calls for a constitutional amendment protecting “human life” but does not say whether exceptions should be allowed in cases of rape and incest.
According to a plank adopted by a 112-member Republican committee meeting here, an “unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life that cannot be infringed.” The platform also calls for legislation recognizing the rights of unborn children under the 14th Amendment.That language would appear to be incompatible with exceptions when pregnancies result from rape or incest. But the draft does not specifically address the issue of exceptions, and party leaders here said that the issue is too complex to be addressed in what is intended to be a broad statement of party principle, and that it should be left up to states in a federal system.
This might seem crazy to most sane people across the country, but it's standard operating procedure for anti-government conservatives since the days of Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist in the 1980s. They have been on a mission to turn the American government into an evangelical, laissez-faire marketplace that looks and operates like Apartheid South Africa.
Chapter Five from Thomas Frank's 'The Wrecking Crew':
In fact, the apartheid government made an ideal love-match for the American far right. South Africa was the place where all the strands of eighties conservatism came together. It was a God-fearing land where American corporations did well, where Christianity was written into the constitution, and where the government wasn’t squeamish about the death penalty.
It's taken over thirty years for these agents of libertarian gobbledygook to turn one major political party into a caricature, but they're still pushing for their 'utopian dream,' as Thomas Frank coined the phrase, and nothing will get in their way. They turned the once great 'public service' mantra of the New Dealers, where young people strove to make a difference in the lives of average Americans of the 1930s and '40s into a new breed of greedy Randians in the Bush years, where all manufacturing jobs were left to those places with distant borders and inhumane cheap labor.
There was a time when gun control was a losing issue for politicians, but now with the help of these radicalized conservatives, the NRA has a solid grip around the neck of the GOP. No Republican can win an election if he doesn't fully support the NRA and their gun passion, even when it comes to assault weapons that serve no purpose but to kill a high volume of people.
These radical extremists found their true niche when they formed anti-abortion groups after Roe v Wade which turned evangelicals and many other religious group members into die hard Republicans. What was different about this was that they were working class Americans and not specifically from the Republican elites. Unfortunately, the evangelical element of the Republican party usually support legislation that is harmful to their well-being and that is the one that has many pundits scratching their heads. Thomas Frank quite expertly explains this in great detail in his book What Ever Happened To Kansas
But Frank is less interested in debunking this myth than he is in explaining what he calls a disturbing "derangement" in American politics–that in places like Kansas, poor and working-class people have galloped to the right over the past few decades, voting for a right-lurching, increasingly evangelized Republican Party that has implemented economic policies that have hurt workers and helped the rich. Here is how he puts it:
This derangement is the signature expression of the Great Backlash, a style of conservatism that first came snarling back onto the national stage in response to the partying and protests of the late sixties. While earlier forms of conservatism emphasized fiscal sobriety, the backlash mobilizes voters with explosive social issues–summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art–which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends. And it is these economic achievements–not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars–that are the movement’s greatest monuments. The backlash is what has made possible the international free-market consensus of recent years, with all the privatization, deregulation, and declining unionization rates that are its components.
In 1986, the odious Randell Terry organized a group known as Operation Rescue, a virulent anti-abortion group and in 1991 they headed down to take Kansas by storm.
ORN's activities gained attention again in 1991 during the “Summer of Mercy” in Wichita, Kansas, led by Keith Tucci. Thousands of anti-abortion protesters flocked to Wichita and were arrested at sit-in protests and blockades of clinic entrances and adjacent streets. The protests were held at three different clinic locations in Wichita but focused on George Tiller's abortion clinic. Over 1,600 arrests took place during the first three weeks, with thousands of locals gathering and dozens of clergy people becoming involved.[1] The event lasted six weeks, with over 2,600 arrests accomplished by the Wichita Police Department.[3] The protests culminated in a rally that filled Cessna Stadium, featuring Pat Robertson. The New York Times ran an article on August 4, 1991, quoting John Snow, a retired accountant who sat on the sidewalk across from Tiller's clinic in Wichita, dispensing Kool-Aid and saying the rosary. "'They're in there killing babies, nothing else, ma'am,' Mr. Snow said."[1].
They set up shop in Wichita and after they were finished the newly energized radical right owned the political system.
Yet, says Frank, in Kansas the "gravity of discontent" pulls even poor and working-class victims of these policies "to the right." The turning point came, according to Frank, in 1991, when Operation Rescue organized forty-six days of protest that drew an estimated at 30,000 people to blockade abortion clinics in Wichita–an event which put the wind in the sails of the evangelical religious right, which then proceeded to take over the Kansas Republican Party from the moderates ("Mods") who had previously controlled it.
I gave you a few good examples of how conservative crackpots planned to turn the US into their libertarian/evangelical utopian dream and lo and behold, after decades of futility, they finally have the GOP, hook line and sinker. They understand that by repeating the same lies and propaganda over and over again, eventually (even if it takes thirty more years) fiction will be turned into fact in the echo chamber of the navel-gazing commentariat. With no real fourth branch of government left to be actual watchdogs of democracy and a working class struggling to pay their bills, they feel nobody can stop them.
Whenever I hear politicos say the tea party, birthers or the newly-created legitimate rape believers will now destroy the GOP forevah because of their lunacy, I laugh out loud. We've had sixty years of history to disprove that opinion. Are you really surprised the GOP national party platform reads like a who's who list from the John Bircher Society? They may be many things, but they are patient and willing to lose in the present to win in the future. I do know that we are in a new era of Republican politics that I call: Welcome to the lunatic fringe.
