First this paragraph that jumped out at me on this long documented page from Theocracy Watch….how they took over Iowa and moved on to other states.
As can be seen from the documentation on this page, one of their tactics was to tie up the meetings for hours until people left. Then they appointed themselves leaders and made key decisions. Once they took over the local leadership throughout the State of Iowa, they could control the state party apparatus. After their success in the Iowa ’88 primary, they used the same tactic in several other states — precinct by precinct.
They use this tactic on the floor of Congress as well. After hours stuff, getting others to leave, etc.
I thought of this today while listening to State of Belief on AAR. Welton Gaddy said any celebration of the death of the right wing Christians was premature. I agree.
They not only took over parties that way, but they gained control of churches without good people realizing it. Some saw it, but not soon enough to stop it.
Taking Over the Republican Party
There is so much on these pages, so I will only post a few.
The GOP’s Religious War, Joan Lowy of Scripps-Howard News Service:
Until last spring, Jo Martin was a relatively nonpolitical Houston housewife. Today she’s on the front lines of a religious war that has fractured the Republican Party. Martin, a 52-year-old mother of three, and her husband David, a stockbroker, are lifelong Republicans but hadn’t been active in party politics for many years until they happened to attend a local GOP meeting last spring.
They were appalled by what they found. The party apparatus had been taken over by religious activists intent on bringing “biblical principles” to government: outlawing abortion, ostracizing homosexuals and teaching creationism in public schools, among other things. “We honest to goodness felt like we had fallen through a time warp into a Nazi brown-shirt meeting,” Martin said.
1994 was a big year for them. Not just Congress but control of the State Houses. Then they could gerrymander. I don’t mention Howard Dean at this site anymore, but that is one of his main goals. State houses, get control of them so we control the redistricting, not their party. We won a number of them back in 2006, so kudos are in order.
By election time in 1994 Christian Coalition had distributed 40 million copies of the “Family Values Voter’s Guide” in more than 100,000 churches nationwide. 1994 was the year Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. It was also the year that Republicans made a huge gain in State Legislatures.
The purpose of focusing on state legislative races was to enable Republicans to gerrymander Congressional Districts. To be sure, both parties have used the practice of gerrymandering to their advantage, but, in recent years, Republicans have elevated this practice to new heights.
And here is part of how they did it in 2004. They used the Southern Baptists to elect Bush and Cheney.
Ralph Reed, former Executive Director of the Christian Coalition, relied on stealth tactics throughout the nineteen nineties. He no longer needs to use stealth. As a senior official of the Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign, Reed attended the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention to ask pastors explicitly for their help in winning votes.
More on Reed’s visit from the NYT, a dead link but a good paragraph.
Mr. Reed delivered his remarks at a Bush-Cheney “pastors reception,” paid for by the Bush campaign. The hosts were the departing president of the Southern Baptists and three other prominent leaders, and the reception was in a conference room of a hotel adjacent to the convention. As the pastors came in, a campaign aide collected about 100 signatures and addresses from ministers pledging to endorse Mr. Bush’s re-election publicly, to “host a citizenship Sunday for voter registration,” to “identify someone who will help in voter registration and outreach” and to organize a ” ‘party for the president’ with other pastors” on specific dates closer to the election. (New York Times, June 18, 2004)
I’m with Gaddy on this. We have to be on guard. They are still working for their agenda. If Bush fails them, they will work for another. Using the same divisive wedge issues, and going on unnecessary wars if needed to keep their base.
