The recent furor over Arlen Spector’s comment about judiicial candidates not being chosen on the basis of opposition to/support for aobrtion rights (he’s a “no litmus test” guy) . leads me to believe the religious right is moving to consolidate their stranglehold on the Republican Party. Moderates like Spector must toe the line or be moved out of power, or at LeAST face vigorous attempts to move them out of power.
It’s been suggested that the religous right would try to make a complete takeover of the Pubbies after their success in the 2004 election, moving moderates to the fringe. Looks like it’s already happening.
It’s worse than you know. Some conservatives are going after Rick Santorum for supporting Arlen Specter when he was in a primary race against a staunchly anti-abortion opponent. Here’s a link to the story. To me, it’s a sad thing when Rick Santorum isn’t conservative enough for some folks!
Name’s “Specter”, by the way. This has been described by some right-wingers as the start of a “civil war” within the Republican Party, but I don’t know how far that will really go.
Religious conservatives definitely seem to feel that the Republican Party in general owes them for its successes in 2004, and they are expecting the party to walk their walk. I don’t have a good guess, though, as to how much resistance the moderates will put up, nor whether it would cause a serious schism in the Party.
Sure shows how much diversity of opinion is tolerated in the Republican party these days. The tightie righties will even go after Frist if he supports Specter. This macabre spectre will certainly get worse before it gets better.
My fantasy is that Specter, Snowe, and the rest of the moderate Republicans get pissed off enough to pull a Jeffords and go Independent, maybe even voting with the Dems to give them committee chairs.
**John Mace[/n] is correct about what Specter was really saying.
What it sounds like to me is that you’re willing to go after people without listening to what they actually say. Anything that even sounds like it might be dissent has to be cracked down on.
Actually, I suspect it’s a combination. Particularly since the President (through his press secretary) just reiterated the other day that he doesn’t think there’s support to do anything on Roe.
Here’s my read. The Republicans just came off a big win, and Specter won his own race (against a more conservative primary challenger) in no small part because the President went out and campaigned for him. Frist is all ready to take up the most vexing issue facing the Republicans from the last term – the filibusters of judicial nominees. And here’s Specter saying the President has to fear exactly that! No, Senator, the Democrats are supposed to fear being marginalized further through changing the filibuster rule! If they get that fear, the Republicans get a win without actually having to change the rule – a double win. His remarks were politically dumb and just a tad disloyal to a guy who had pissed off no small number of the hard right just to get him back into office. So he’s gonna grovel a bit to show contrition.
As someone who has voted for Senator Specter for as long as I’ve been eligible, I don’t think there are more capable hands in Washington. The man has his beliefs and has stuck to them (well, with the exception of some fudging this last primary) through quite a few revolutions in the Republican Party. I’m not a Republican anymore (thank you John Ashcroft), but as long as Senator Specter doesn’t toe anyone’s line but his own, this constituent will support him. He’s one of the few politicians left that I respect.
And I think this “civil war” is at hand. There is no place for economic conservatives in what is now an apparently Value-Conservative Party. So much for the Big Tent.
Firstly John Ashcroft isn’t even an elected official so if you left the Republican party because of him you need to blame the man who appointed him.
I’m still quite happy in the Republican party. Both of the two big parties are “big tent” parties with huge diversity in members.
I think the true “religioust conservatives” as seen on TV represent a fairly small number of voters, and a pretty marginal number of important voters.
The people that have given them power over the last four years are the people who have made gay marriage an issue. The majority of Americans (in general, all across the country) oppose gay marriage. The far right religious fascists recognized this and have tapped into the gay marriage debate to get support from people who on virtually every other issue are far more moderate.
I’m hoping that once the gay marriage debate dies down the Falwells of the world will regress back into the humorous and unimportant talk show celebrities that they were.
Here’s an interesting article, with lots of scholarly links, on the attacks leveled by conservative republicans on the "RINO"s or Republicans in Name Only.
As a former moderate republican from the 70’s (which now makes me a flaming liberal to most republican party members these days), I can only shake my head in sorrow.
Well, I haven’t figured out how to do the quote thing correctly yet…but in response to Martin Hyde: I was just using John Ashcroft as short-hand for anti-civil liberties and the “religious right” agenda (not that the two necessarily go hand-in-hand) and I find “blame Bush” to be monotonous. But you’re right…I should have been more clear about my reasons for leaving.
I wish I could be as confident that the gay marriage issue is the only reason that religious conservatives were up in arms. I rather think that we’ve not even hit the crest of this particular wave. I think that the Pat Robertson emergence is more of the time you’re talking about, but I hope you’re correct. Or should I say Amen!
Considering that Roe has been on the books for three decades and an entire generation of women has grown up under the expectation that they have reproductive freedom, wouldn’t you consider it activist to work to overturn it, regardless of how you’d view it if it were a de novo question?
Given that they’re also bound and determined to overturn Roe v. Wade and are upset with court decisions keeping prayer out of schools, and that neither of these is a new development, I don’t see how anybody could argue that the religious right is only upset about gay marriage.
