Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party

According to Frederick Clarkson, a pioneering researcher of the Christian Right, “Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical law.’ Recontructionism would eliminate not only democracy but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed.”

"When I asked DeLay about his legal troubles, he cast his struggle in apocalyptic terms. 'Satan' is behind his prosecution, DeLay said, adding, 'Satan is behind the left.'"

"By presenting scenes of hearts exploded by arrows, skulls split by maces, and entire torsos bisected by broadswords, along with innocents burned, slashed and crucified, [Mel] Gibson redefined the aesthetic of authoritarian right-wing movements across the globe.”

At the police station, [arresting officer] Karsnia subjected Craig to a withering interrogation. Craig was lawyerly to the point of self-parody, insisting that his bumping of Karsnia’s foot resulted accidentally from his “wide stance” on the toilet…Craig’s infamous phrase, “wide stance” instantly became the universal code phrase for Republican sexual hypocrisy.

Hagee is a Christian Zionist who preaches that the prophecies of the Book of Revelations will unfold as soon as the Jewish diaspora resettles in ‘Biblical Israel,’ meaning all of Israel and the West Bank…According to Hagee’s reading of the Book of Revelations, the lodestar of End Times theology, when Jesus returns to Jerusalem, the Jews must convert to evangelical Christianity or suffer eternal torment in ‘an everlasting lake of fire.’ And liberals had better seek cover as well.

McCain had suffered torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp and given over thirty years of his life to public service, but he earned James Dobson’s vote only for selecting a running mate who decided not to abort her disabled child.

Instead of the suburban hockey moms the GOP hoped to attract by selecting Palin, those who filled swing-state fairgrounds and arenas to cheer the VP candidate were focused obsessively on issues and were sometimes openly racist. Not only was this not the portrait of a winning coalition—it was not much of a coalition at all—it became politically combustible. A few words of incitement were all it would take to turn the party base in a virtual lynch mob.

According to Frederick Clarkson, a pioneering researcher of the Christian right, "Reconstructionism seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of 'Biblical Law.' Reconstructionism would eliminate no only democracy but many of its manifestations, such as labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed." (20)

"The persistent 'conservatism' of American politics and society is rooted in large part in the physical violence done to children," [Phil] Greven wrote. "The roots of these persistent tilt towards hierarchy enforced order, and absolute authority--so evident in Germany earlier in this century and in the radical right in American today--are always traceable to aggression against children's wills and bodies, to the pain and the suffering they experience long before they, as adults, confront the complex issues of the polity, the society, and the world." (62)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German clergyman executed by the Nazis for publicly opposing Hitler and denouncing church leaders who acquiesced to his rule, had a phrase for this phenomenon. He called it "cheap grace." "Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like a cheapjack's wares... The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut-rate prices... In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin." (95)