[From one of our newest members, 2435 who — until the Neocon heterosexual (and must-be-married!) white men’s mastery of the universe is complete — will still be known as XicanoPwr. He’s been writing several analytical and researched diaries here – susanhu.]
Part II: The Radical Right’s Hypocrisy
How did conservatives – along with the religious right – successfully defeat Dudya’s Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers? Where did the Democratic Party go wrong? One a side-by-side comparison between now confirmed Chief Justice John Roberts and Miers, they had the same views that matter to the GOP – pro-life, pro-business, and a fundalmentalist.
Yet former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott reacted philosophically at her demise.
“The president, in my opinion, made a bad choice here,” the former Senate majority leader told Fox News Thursday. “In a month, who will remember Harriet Miers?”
Chief Justice John Roberts
As noted on Law.com those who do know Roberts will confirm that he is a reliable conservative who can be counted on to undermine if not immediately overturn liberal landmarks like abortion rights and affirmative action. The minute Dudya announced Roberts, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council was ecstatic that Dudya had kept his promise by nominating “someone along the lines of a Scalia or a Thomas, and that is exactly what he has done” while Pat Robertson gleefully exulted that Roberts “was at the top of the list of candidates that Jay Sekulow and the ACLJ [an organization founded by Robertson] put together.”
Below the fold, Harriet Miers and The Radical Right Gender Natural Policy … along with some terrific Bill Maher quotes …
Harriet Miers
James Dobson, founder of the evangelical Christian organization Focus on the Family, told his listeners on his radio program that Karl Rove made a call to him to discuss Miers’ religious beliefs before Bush announced her nomination October 3.
Dobson also told his listeners Rove assured him Mier’s is “an evangelical Christian…[and] that she is from a very conservative church, which is almost universally pro-life; that she had taken on the American Bar Association on the issue of abortion and fought for a policy that would not be supportive of abortion.” [emphasis mine]
The Radical Right Gender Natural Policy
According to HBO’s Bill Maher, it had nothing to do with her mastery of constitutional law. And it wasn’t about cronyism, either. Neither if she did overturn Roe v. Wade or set back civil rights for another generation.
Miers’ defeat had to do more what the Radical Right didn’t know about her. What was an enigma to the Radical Right was her sexuality. Bill Maher explained it best on his Oct 14 show:
It’s not that Harriet Miers’ views are a mystery. It’s that her genitalia are a mystery. You see, Republicans have issues with sex, or as they call it, “inserting pork.” Undefined sexuality in women makes them nervous.
Further commenting, he stated that “there are only three possibilities if you’ve never married or had kids by 60”: Miers is either “an asexual figure … [who] isn’t using the equipment God gave her for making babies,” a “practicing lesbian,” or “a slut.”
The last time “genitalia” was mentioned in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing was during the Clarence Thomas hearing. And we know happened there; when it seemed appeared that Hill’s testimony would end Thomas’ chances of being confirmed, Thomas’ supporters launched a masterful counter-attack to discredit Anita Hill. The attack was led by then right-wing activist David Brock. Brock would relentlessly villanized Hill with right wing propaganda. In 1992 Brock would latter write an article in the American Spectator claiming Hill had lied during the hearings and stating how she might be “a bit nutty and a bit slutty.” And Thomas won confirmation.
Earlier this month, Dotty Lynch, senior political editor for CBS News, brought up the possibilities sexism had a lot to do with Radical Right’s backlash. She said:
Why is it that battles for the Supreme Court have become more about sex than about the constitution? … Sex and sexism. Laura Bush and Ed Gillespie joined forces with Barbara Mikulski and Eleanor Smeal in suggesting that a lot of the opposition to Miers was based on sexism. Conservatives like Bill Kristol yelped that Republicans were using liberal arguments…
However, it is evident a conservatives apply a double standard when it comes to the gender issue. In many ways this type of concern can be found Justice David Souter’s 1990 Supreme Court confirmation hearing. In 2003, The Advocate reported when Papa Bush nominated Souter, the Radical Right believed Souter leaned with the far right. Like Miers, Souter also was a bachelor, so his appointment was greeted by hate filled speculation that he might be gay. Nevertheless, Souter survived, possibly because reporters found three of his former girlfriends.
“Souter had barely left the podium in the press room of the White House before Republican Party officials were raising ‘the 50-year-old bachelor thing,’ which was widely interpreted as a way of introducing speculation that Souter is homosexual,” Margaret Carlson wrote in Time magazine in August 1990, shortly after Souter’s nomination.
It’s important to point out I did not support her nomination because; 1) she did receive the seal of approval from Focus on the Family’s, Dr. James “Mr. Family Guy” Dobson, as well as the Reverends of Righteousness, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson; and 2) Dudya applied a religious litmus test, which is unconstitutional. The point I am trying to make is to show the Right Wingers hypocrisy when it comes to gender issues. As a Hispanic male, I am willing to admit, it is still a man’s world – a white man’s world. Something conservative women continually deny. It is interestingly to note, that it is often said that the Dudya is excessively loyal. Yet, when he had someone who he verbally said to be one of his very best friends; he had no problem kicking her to the curb to protect his white male Beltway Bandits.
My mother constantly told me, with disgust in her voice, that “it’s a man’s world.”
And, you’re right. It is a white man’s world.
I see the seemingly odd contradictory behavior of the GOP vis a vis Miers and Roberts this way.
I see a three-way division in what passes for the “conservative” community. There are the religious extremists, (Dobson,et. al.) the money gang, (ala Norquist), and the war gang, (Cheney and his neocons).
This three-legged construct has produced some pretty effectrive alliances around themes common to each, disdain for “liberals” and the poor, a desire to wreck social programs and to helpthewealthy get even wealthier at the expenseofthe common man, etc.
But in the end these three groups must turn against each other; the War God must battle the God Mammon who must also battle the Evangelical Religious God for ultimate supremacy over the country. There is only one throne in a dictatorship, and the idea that creatures ike Cheney or Norquist or Dobson would be willing to share power over the long term is darkly laughable. These are megalomaniacs; weaponized narcissists whose only loyalty is to themselves and their own particular delusions. sharingpower is out of the question!
As to Miers, my sense is that the worshippers of Mammon won that battle. they weren’t sure if she had what ittakes to vote down all the civil protections enshrined in the New Deal and the “Great Society”. they weren’t sure she had what it took morallyto oppose child labor laws and afirmative action and judicial procedures for redress against corporate entities doing damage to the public. So the money guys shot her down. In the end, these greedy creeops aren’t the least bit concerned with abortion rights or any of the other so-called moral issues so obsessed upon by the evangelicals. They only want to loot the treasury and exploit an unmonitored business environment as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.
The evangelicals have been played for fools again by these dollar obssessed money grubbers. Damaged by their own dogma, they’ve become blinded to the reality of the limitations of power of their own own influence. They don’t understand that political power never rests on either ethical or moral foundations, and so, even though they’ll continue to be successful in weaponizing ignorance amongst the populace, they will never seize control of the government or set the agenda by which the USA interacts with the rest of the world. They’ll remain cannon fodder for the wars they’ll mistakenly believe are being waged in the nameoftheir god, but of course they’ll be wrong about that, just as so mahy before them have been wrong about it too. War is never really about God, though God is usually the myth used to legitimize the naked lust for power and the esential deceit that is at the core of every war ever produced.
No kidding — this IS brilliant.
You must turn this into a diary.
The evangelicals have been played for fools again …
I instantly thought of those great scenes in “West Wing” a couple weeks ago, when Alan Alda and his VP candidate did a number on an evangelical leader.
Thank you (and thank everyone) for the kind words.
I will expand on this into a diary soon but right now I’m in hurricane whacked south florida and mypower is still out.
I have a great laptop and a free AOL thingy, but the battery doesn’t last long andit takeas a long time to charge up on the car charger.
So, once the power is restored I’ll set about diarying about the inevitable failures that always accompany zealotry and weaponization of ignorance.
Damaged By The Dogma might be the title.
sbj..you’ve managed to put my own thoughts into perfect form: this is how I’ve been seeing this for a long time now. All three of these groups saw many advantages to exploiting an egomaniac puppet-creep like Bush, so they gathered forces to get him where they wanted him. But now, when it is time to divy up the spoils with one hand, and cover their butts with the other..the crapola hits the fan and the gloves come off.
My guess it the whole top heavy triad is crumbling under the weight of it’s own greed, dishonesty,and fanaticism, which is the only fate possible, sooner or later, in a country where justice IS still alive, and I know this because I believe I actually saw it still alive and breathing on my TV screen yesterday.
Watch for reactionary extremist and anti-abortion religious nut Judge Luttig to be nominated by the regime for the SC. They’ll thinkhis nomination will unite the evangelical crazies with the anti-social program looter crowd, but it will only be a temporary fix.
The entire premise on which the extremist policies of this so-called regime is based is crumbling under the weight of it’s own inability to perform to even minimum standards. The so-called conservative meme for government is self-destructing on it’s own, failing perform the primary function of government, serving the people. It may take a while, and we must continue to keep up the pressure, but the extremism of these faux conservatives is slowly being repudiated in almost every demographic across the country.
They’ll still be doing a ot more damage, but where their “glass was being filled” before, now that “glass is being drained”. This is the climate in which “Revolution” is traditionally born. If the leaders don’t learn to restrain their own excesses, the rest of us start yelling “Off with their heads!”
You are correct. Just look at the “Abramoff-Norquist-Reed triumvirate.” I wouldn’t be surprised if they came up with a ploy to play the evangelicals and Ralph Reed was going to be their con man. I think what Nina Easton wrote is true regarding Reed’s so-called “religious experience.”
The sad thing, the fools don’t see it.
None of the leaders of the evangelical wingnuts has a single spiritual bone in their body, so a slug likeReed fits right in with them.
Power is the game, and deception and fear are their stock in trade. Thi is why the people don’t get it, though I have to say that I know quite a few obsessive religious folks here in Florida and quite a few of them are starting to realize that the most outspoken leaders of the Christian jihad movement, (Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, James Kennedy), are scarier and more violence-minded than they thought previously.
been getting his best material from anna in philly.
Maher SHOULD hire her … she’s hilarious (and bawdy)!
. . .so I’m thinking of the past:
In light of the above, what happens when the money-people have created enough misery among the religion-people?
The war-god-people start breaking out the brown shirts.
The Meirs nomination failure is evidence Bush is now a lame duck. Every faction within the GOP refused to support Meirs. The Radical Right for the reasons outlined above the other factions had their own reasons.
Bush has to re-build some bridges. Appealing to the country at large is not an option given the poll numbers. Therefore, he must go to internal support from the GOP.
Bush cannot govern without the support of the Radical Right but neither can he govern without the support of the other factions of the GOP. Support of the RR is necessary but not determinate. The hot button issues of the RR: overturning Roe, establishing Low Protestantism as the national religion, and etc are not supported by the other factions of the GOP and especially House and Senate members facing re-election in 2006.
To thread the needle Bush has to nomiate someone who can appeal, and appease, to the RR and at the same time appeal and appease the other factions. He succeeded with Roberts and it is possible he can succeed with the next nominee.
If the RR is willing to compromise and only if the RR will compromise.
And that’s what makes this interesting. As has been endlessly observed: the RR has been the grunts for the GOP for decades and have gotten little to show for it; they certainly haven’t had their issues enacted. The leaders of the RR, at some time, have to be able to point at a clear and convincing victory or they risk loosing their followers.
At some point, the RR is going to demand some payback for all of their efforts.
When they do the GOP coalition will fall apart.