Fundies splintering over GOP hopefuls

The Christian Right is all over the place when it comes to whom they want to support next year for the White House.

The latest news is that the anti-abortion group National Right to Life Committee has thrown their weight behind washed-up character actor Fred Thompson, despite the fact he's been trailing so far in the polls that he's this close to packing it in for sheer futility. None of the fundies are too fond of Rudy Giuliani, even though he's been courting them like mad, and has won over the clinically insane Pat Robertson. It's a tribute to Giuliani's cluelessness regarding these people that he can't see the pointlessness of asking them to look beyond his support for abortion rights while he tries to keep selling his image as the Savior of New York on 9/11. For one thing, even the wingnuts aren't dumb enough to buy that last pitch, and for another, asking a bunch of religious ideologues to overlook a position that happens to run contrary to their most preciously held beliefs (however hypocritical they might be — we all know the pro-lifers don't give a shit about unwanted children after they're out of the holy confines of the womb) is rank idiocy. You might as well ask them to embrace the "gay agenda."

Giuliani's nastiest slap came from Randall Terry, head of the infamous Operation Rescue. Sayeth Terry:

"In the eyes of the Angels, we may find that Hillary's pure evil is far less putrid and damnable than the hypocritical and seductive evil of Rudy's caliber. After all, Rudy has seduced one of the major leaders of the Religious Right. Even Hillary couldn’t pull that off."

Ouch. (Read Terry's whole rant for a fascinating exercise in "Christian love.") Of course, I think Hillary could get some mileage out of that one. To be called "pure evil" by a known domestic terrorist could win her a few points. Now if she could get Terry's spiritual cousins Osama bin Laden and Kim Jong Il to badmouth her as well, she'd probably shoot to the top of the polls in a heartbeat.

(Only it wouldn't happen that way. Bin Laden is smart enough to understand the fractured American political climate, and he's been loving what fools the Bush administration has been making of itself squandering lives, money, our last remaining military strength, and all our worldwide goodwill flailing around in Iraq. I expect bin Laden to congratulate Hillary fulsomely if she gets the DNC nomination, thus ensuring at last four more years of neocon blundering radicalizing the Islamists.)

What these reports reveal most sadly, I think, is America's most distressing truth: to succeed, not only in running for the presidency, but for any major political office, candidates must basically drop to their knees and fellate the most xenophobic, superstitious, dogmatic, bigoted, fearful and uneducated segment of the voting public. We may not be the theocracy that the likes of Roy Moore and James Dobson want just yet, but in a lot of ways, we might as well be.