1. Palin: Anointed or Just a Drag?
So it turns out that Sarah Palin isn't America's Everywoman and she's not Queen Esther. She's going rogue, she's a diva, and she's dragging the GOP ticket down with her.
The McPalin flameout isn't primarily a strategic problem for the GOP; it's an existential one. For 30 years the party has hitched itself to the wagon of a well-funded reactionary fringe of religious zealots, and this year that alliance is most certainly not paying off. It didn't pay off in the 1992 or 1996 presidential races, either, but the Republicans controlled Congress for most of those years and ran on the fuel of religious-right slime and scandal-mongering. It's harder to run a bogus investigation when you're in the minority, but they'll find a way to make some kind of noise -- they wouldn't waste all that fatuous opposition re-search, would they?
Even without a congressional majority or the White House there is a formidably organized religious-right fringe in this country with a lot of money and a lot of followers (about 10 percent of the population by most reckonings). Their zealousness, combined with their money, makes them a force, culturally and politically, and their activities are not limited to presidential politics. So no, they won't be dead, and, by the way, they won't be chastened, even in the face of evidence that they lost the race for McCain by demanding he pick a running mate like Palin. She's anointed, re-member, and the godless liberals brought her down, not the "real" Americans who really know Jesus.
Don't get me wrong -- it's a very good thing for progressivism that the religious right will probably be blamed for GOP losses this year. But looking ahead to 2012, the GOP seems poised to get right back to business as usual with its fundie friends.
2. Will the 2012 Candidate Have to Tame the Beast?
Is Palin really the 2012 GOP front-runner, as some conservative insiders have maintained?
According to a recent Newsweek poll, only 20 percent of Republicans favored Palin as their party's nominee in 2012, if McCain loses next week, with 35 percent favoring Romney and 26 percent favoring Huckabee. Among "traditional" (taxes, economy, national security) Republicans, Palin, and Huckabee's numbers were worse (19 percent for Palin, 23 percent for Huckabee) than Romney's (42 percent), but among what the poll termed "social issue" (abortion, immigration, guns, and "family values") Republicans, Palin drew 23 percent, Romney 30 percent, and Huckabee 31 percent.
The invisible man in that poll is Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who next month is headlining the Iowa Family Policy Center's big fundraising dinner, widely seen as his first step in building a base of religious-right support for the 2012 Iowa caucuses. Jindal is well liked by the religious right and is as conservative as they come -- he doesn't have some of the same we-don't-really-trust-you baggage that McCain and Romney both have. And unlike Palin, he can speak in complete sentences about policy. Bonus points over Huckabee and Romney: He's not white.
If Republicans looked around, they'd see that voters don't care about attacks on Obama's patriotism -- they are far more concerned about stanching the economic meltdown. That's why a new anti-Obama ad featuring footage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is producing a yawn, not a gasp, and why thousands of people reacted to Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Fool for Christ) McCarthyism with nearly a million dollars of donations to her challenger.
Yet religious conservatives, reports Peter Wallsten in the Los Angeles Times, are staging another takeover of the Republican Party, making the religious-right threats to defect to a third party seem less likely. They're dominionists: They would rather conquer the party than abandon it.
One of these four candidates would have to win over the religious right to get the nomination in 2012, but she or he has to tame the beast as well. There's a growing and better organized movement of centrist religious voters -- ripe for the picking for either party. Latino voters are increasingly a part of that swing vote. Stay tuned: 2012 might bring an attempt rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
3. The Weird Gender Politics of the Palin Pick.
While Palin's charismatic and Pentecostal followers believe she is anointed by God, for conservative pundits like Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, and Rich Lowry, Palin has a different kind of glow. These guys happily aligned themselves with the religious right's moral scolds for years, yet they can barely contain their slack-jawed, adolescent fixation with the attractive governor.
While the religious right grew out of the sort of evangelicalism practiced by conservative Southern Baptists -- who don't even permit women to be ordained as ministers and require wives to submit to their husbands -- Palin represents the growing influence of Pentecostals. In contrast to conservative evangelical women, Pentecostal women are more likely to listen to their call from God than obey men in authority, says Anthea Butler, a professor of religious studies at the University of Rochester and an expert on women in Pentecostalism. What Pentecostals perceive as Palin's calling into politics, said Butler, "is proof that she is able to do what she believes God has asked of her. Evangelical women tend to want to have approval from men. ... The Charismatic authority that Pentecostals prize and believe in allows one to step out of that submitted gender role and take leadership."
And about Palin "going rogue" on the McCain campaign? Since a lot of Pentecostals believe Palin is Queen Esther, called for this time, "why should she shut up and listen to what the campaign has to say?" Butler added. "McCain's not her husband, nor her spiritual leader. So any 'submission' on her part would have to come from either of those two sources or God."
4. Matthew 25 Hits Back Against Dobson's Chicken Little Move.
As part of a widespread panic on the religious right that if Obama wins next week, the world will come to an end, James Dobson issued a 16-page screed that is so ridiculous -- replete with pedophile Boy Scout troop leaders, terrorist attacks, blackouts, and a Chavez takeover of Latin America -- it's hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously.
Matthew 25, the Christian PAC supporting Obama, is asking its supporters to rebuke Dobson, calling his tactic "appalling."
5. Last-Ditch Obama Smear Efforts.
If you vote for Obama, you're going to hell.
Pennsylvania Jews receive a mailing from the state Republican Party likening Obama to Hitler.
An anti-choice group targets undecided voters to vote against Obama with misrepresentations including that he "voted four times to allow babies born alive in botched abortions to die" and the National Right to Life Committee launches an anti-Obama e-mail campaign reprising similar falsehoods about Obama's reproductive-rights record.
Phyllis Schlafly says William Ayers will be Obama's secretary of education.
Latino religious-right heartthrob Eduardo Verastegui endorses McCain in Flor-ida and narrates a grotesque video (in English and Spanish), promoted by Concerned Women for America, which falsely states that Obama supports abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy without qualification. (Obama favors exceptions to the late-term abortion ban to protect the health of mother.)
The National Republican Trust PAC, which has been running a Jeremiah Wright ad, is raising money to target its last anti-Obama ads at women, buying time during Oprah, Dr. Phil, The View, and The Price Is Right.
Contact me at tapthefundamentalist at gmail dot com.
