Dick Armey

• David Corn and Andy Kroll @ Mother Jones: Dick Armey Quits Tea Party Group in Split Over Direction.
• Anjali Sareen @ Mediaite: Limbaugh: ‘Decades of Liberalism,’ Not 2nd Amendment, To Blame For Javon Belcher’s Murder-Suicide.
• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: When Roger Ailes tried to play kingmaker.
• Annie-Rose Strasser @ Think Progress: Nearly Half Of Republicans Believe Defunct Organization Stole The Election For Obama.
• Towleroad: Arizona Governor Jan Brewer is Gone and No One Knows Where.
• Luke Darby @ New York Magazine: Chancellor of Patrick Henry College Withdraws Short-Lived Threat to Sue Student-Run Gay Blog.

Early risers got a chance to start the second day at CPAC by quaffing champagne mimosas and rubbing shoulders with a group of freshman GOP representatives. The reception was hosted by the Texas-based Institute for Policy Innovation, a think tank founded in the 1980s by Dick Armey and dedicated to “Advocating lower taxes, fewer regulations, and a smaller, less-intrusive government.”   Greeting the mimosa drinkers was IPI President Tom Giovanetti, who once complained that Republicans “blew it” in the 1990s when they got a congressional majority and failed to fire all the Keynesians from the Congressional Budget Office.

• Pamela Geller is being represented by the Thomas More Law Center in the $10 million lawsuit filed against her by the attorney for Rifqa Bary's parents.

• Tea Partiers seem to love Dick Armey based on the mistaken belief that he is some sort of DC outsider.

• I find it amazing that Religious Right leaders will so openly denigrate Islam and that the Washington Post continues to provide them a venue in which do so.

• Who needs science to learn anything about comets when you have the Bible?

• Virginia Thomas is stepping down from Liberty Central.

• Al Mohler says that exorcisms are hokum because "there is absolutely no New Testament evidence that a believer in Christ can be possessed by demons."

• Finally, the quote of the day from Robert Knight responding to efforts to elimiate DADT: "Not all of the snipers targeting U.S. military personnel are in caves or perched on cliffs in Afghanistan. Some are right here in America, planting stories instead of explosives. Their mission: to destroy the military's moral backbone."

Most of the posts I have written in the past about Dick Armey have revolved around his attacks on the social conservatives in the movement, starting back in 2006 when he blasted the Religious Right for trying to make things like the Ten Commandments and Terry Schiavo issues on which the GOP was expected to take a stand, with Armey lashing out at "[James] Dobson and his gang of thugs," calling them demagogues and "real nasty bullies" and saying that "being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid."

Needless to say, the attack did not sit well with the Religious Right, which lashed back at Armey and set off a fued that continued for years ... until President Obama was elected and then the Tea Party leaders like Armey and social conservative leaders like Tony Perkins decided that they should all try to work together. But that truce tended to focus mostly on letting social conservatives sign on to Tea Party activism, and not with Tea Party leaders adopting the issues that social conservatives care about. 

Given this history, you'll have to forgive my amazement at the fact that Dick Armey is now suddenly touting the importance of abortion at an issue for Tea Party candidates:

When asked Monday at a Monitor-sponsored breakfast for reporters about the possibility of a truce on social issues going into the presidential campaign, Mr. Armey said, “A truce? No. These are issues of the heart. People are not going to turn their hearts and minds away from things that they have so heartfelt.”

Armey, who served as House majority leader, added, “the fact of the matter is there is sort of a question of first things first priorities. If we lose this nation, if it falls into insolvency, then all of these issues pretty well fall by the wayside too, don’t they. So i think there is a setting of priorities.”

He specifically referred to the abortion issue. “Since President Obama has been elected, there has been extraordinarily high levels of funding for international abortions through what is called the Mexico City language. That fight hasn’t been had for a few years. Now that fight will be had with this majority," he said, referring to his stated expectation that Republicans will win control of the House, and perhaps the Senate. He added, “these issues are too important to be left behind and they won’t be left behind.”

Presumably, Armey is trying to reassure the Religious Right that they still have a place in the conservative movement in order to quell their fears that the GOP is ignoring their issues.

I have to take issue with Andrew Sullivan's assertion that the Tea Party movement is "Christianist" at its core.

By "Christianist," Sullivan means essentially the Religious Right and the idea that the Religious Right's anti-gay, anti-choice political agenda has played a central in Tea Party activism is ludicrous. 

When the movement began last year, the "TEA" in Tea Party stood for "Taxed Enough Already" and was aimed at the bailouts and stimulus measures put in place in an attempt to stabilize our economy.

At first, the Religious Right more or less watched from the sidelines as the fiscal conservative groups like Freedomworks, National Taxpayers Union, Americans For Tax Reform, and The Club for Growth started to institutionalize the Tea Party effort. 

Eventually, groups like the American Family Association climbed on board, as did leaders like Ralph Reed, but that was done in order to try and capitalize on the Tea Party success and tie their "Christianist" agenda to the already established Tea Party activism.  

The presence of Religious Right fringe figures like Roy Moore and Rick Scarborough at the National Tea Party Convention is more a sign of the power of the Tea Party narrative than it is of Religious Right control or influence over the movement or its agenda.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the fundamental merging of overall right-wing movement under the banner of the Tea Party than the fact that the Tea Party front-runners at Freedomworks recently partnered with Religious Right powerhouses like the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America despite that fact that, just a few years back, Freedomworks' founder Dick Armey was calling the socially conservative wing of the movement a bunch of stupid, lazy demagogues.

At the moment, Tea Party activism is the face of the conservative movement and so it is no surprise that Religious Right groups are climbing aboard the bandwagon in an effort to try and utilize it to press their own agenda.  

The Tea Party movement does not have a Religious Right agenda at its core, but rather as a component ... and that is only because Religious Right groups have set out aligning themselves with the movement in order to co-opt and exploit it.

It was just the other day that I was noting that Mike Huckabee, who had long been identified with the socially conservative wing of the movement, had suddenly jumped on the Tea Party bandwagon.

But for those who need more proof that tea party activism has become the driving force of the entire right-wing movement, look no further than fact that the Family Research Council is hosting an event next week featuring several tea party groups: 

On Tuesday, February 2 at 8 p.m. EST, Family Research Council's headquarters will be the host site for a special webcast, State of the Union, Voice of the People. This live webcast, one week after the President's address, will provide a voice to the American people and an opportunity for them to give their own State of the Union response. Family Research Council is partnering with TVTownhall.com and eight leading national conservative organizations that represent a combined membership estimated to be over 15 million Americans.

...

Organizations joining Family Research Council include THE New Voice, the Institute for Liberty, Media Research Center, Let Freedom Ring, Americans for Prosperity, Concerned Women for America, TEA Party Patriots and Freedomworks.

The inclusion of Freedomworks is especially telling.  While the organization has been at the forefront of the tea party activism, it has long had a rather icy relationshyip with the Religious Right.  Back in 2006, right around the time Republicans lost control of Congress, Freedomworks' chairman Dick Armey had this to say about the socially conservative wing of the party: 

"[James] Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies. I pray devoutly every day, but being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid. There's a high demagoguery coefficient to issues like prayer in schools. Demagoguery doesn't work unless it's dumb, shallow as water on a plate. These issues are easy for the intellectually lazy and can appeal to a large demographic. These issues become bigger than life, largely because they're easy. There ain't no thinking."

That set off a round of attacks and counter attacks between Dobson's supporters and Armey that eventually involved FRC's Tony Perkins.  It continued into 2008, when Armey even attacked Perkins outright and questioned his conservatism.

Tea party activism is so entirely driving the right-wing movement at the moment that the most influential Religious Right organization is willing to co-host an event with a group lead by a man who publicly and repeatedly insulted them as stupid, shallow demagogues just to get in on the action.

If that doesn't tell you just where the Religious Right fits in to the conservative movement, I don't know what does.

• The Washington Blade is back, now operating under the name DC Agenda.
• Fired Up! Missouri: The Lafayette County Republican Central Committee is proudly celebrating a new crazy billboard on I-70 near Grain Valley. It calls for citizens to "starve the beast" and "vote out incumbents" -- and if that doesn't work, "PREPARE FOR WAR."
• Media Matters: Conservative media frequently accuse progressives of "raping" Americans.
• Interestingly, "read the stimulus" advocate Dick Armey never bothered to, you know, read the stimulus.
• Sarah Palin gets booed for quitting early on those waiting at her book-signing.
• Finally, your lesson of the day: Don't trust NRCC press releases.

Yesterday, David Weigel had a good piece on the Republican "civil war" unfolding in New York over the race for the open Congressional seat between Doug Hoffman, the choice of the right-wing base, and Dede Scozzafava, who is being backed by the RNC:

In July, Hoffman bid to become the Republican Party’s nominee for a special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. The nominee would be chosen by party leaders in the district’s 11 counties; few people were surprised when they chose Deirdre “Dede” Scozzafava, a five-term assemblywoman who’d voted with Democrats on abortion and labor issues, factors that could help the party hold a historically conservative district that had voted for the Obama-Biden ticket last year. Hoffman, a 59-year-old accountant making his first run for office, forged ahead and grabbed the nomination of the venerable Conservative Party.

Since then, Hoffman’s campaign has become this election cycle’s great conservative crusade. On Sept. 5, the candidate was endorsed by 9-12 Candidates, an offshoot of Glenn Beck’s 9-12 Project, and a reflection of the support he was getting on conservative blogs. On Sept. 28, both Fred Thompson and the Club for Growth put their weight behind Hoffman, with the Club putting $250,000 into TV ads attacking Scozzafava and Democratic candidate Bill Owens. Those endorsements, coupled with reports that Scozzafava was struggling, brought the American Conservative Union and the anti-abortion rights group Susan B. Anthony List into the fray to back Hoffman. On Monday afternoon, FreedomWorks chairman Dick Armey announced that he’d campaign for Hoffman, putting the Tea Party movement’s seal of approval on the upstart campaign.

Two weeks out from the election, the battle in upstate New York is being portrayed in the press as a “civil war” between Republican factions. That might understate how much support for Hoffman, and how little for Scozzafava, there is in the conservative movement. As far as the roiling Republican base is concerned, support for Hoffman has become a test of whether a conservative leader can be trusted. Conservative media, from magazines to blogs, are using the low-stakes special election to test their ability to drive news cycles and raise money.

The Family Research Council is particularly incensed at the RNC's sell-out in this race, saying that what the GOP needs is "good women like Marsha Blackburn and Michele Bachmann in Congress" instead of more "pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, liberal candidate who fails to reflect the values the Republican Party."

In fact, so outraged is FRC that they are now declaring that their goal is to "bring down" Scozzafava rather than see a liberal Republican elected:

"This is ridiculous -- putting a liberal up like that and expecting everybody [in the GOP] to fall in line. It's just not going to happen," says [Connie Mackey, president of the Family Research Council Action Political Action Committee]. "And if we can't elect Doug Hoffman, frankly we do hope that we at least bring down the Republican candidate."

• Carrie Prejean says losing the Miss USA pageant and later her state crown was part of God's plan.
• The Hill: An aide to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), was indicted Friday on public corruption charges related to the wide-ranging case involving Jack Abramoff.
• Personhood Colorado announces that it is launching an effort to get its "personhood" amendment back on the ballot after its humiliating defeat last year, saying they are "seeing incremental advances for the personhood rights of the preborn."
• Gary Dull and his Faith and Freedom Institute announce that they will be conducting a "Patriotic Prayer Rally" at Lafayette Park in Washington, DC tomorrow.
• Janet Porter and gang will be hosting yet another web conference early next month highlighting the upcoming How To Take Back America Conference.
• Finally, Roy Moore came in second at the straw poll conducted by the St. Clair County [Alabama] Republican Party after a gubernatorial forum featuring all six Republican candidates seeking the party's nomination next year.