Elections

After being lifted from fringe figure in the Nevada State Assembly to become an all-star for Religious Right and Tea Party groups across the country, Sharron Angle is now plotting her next move after losing to Harry Reid in November. Even though voters in Nevada rejected Angle in three separate elections, including races for the State Senate, House, and US Senate, Angle is floating another bid for higher office.

According to Guy Benson, the political editor of the conservative Townhall.com, Angle may be a candidate for “statewide office” in 2012 despite her humbling loss to Reid:

Amidst the blame game, Angle is plotting her next move. A well-informed source says Angle is seriously considering another run for statewide office. “Running for office gets in your blood,” the source said. “Sharron’s developed a huge donor list, she has lots of national connections, so there are several options she’s weighing.” This confidant wouldn’t say whether Angle has her eyes on John Ensign’s seat in 2012, but said she would likely make a decision about her future by “late spring.” Others dispute that any such explicit timetable exists, referencing post-election interviews in which Angle more vaguely mentions contemplating “lots of options.”

In fact, Angle’s recent moves suggest that her political career is far from over. Angle bragged during her concession speech about her fundraising capabilities and help from donors outside of the state, and many of her Tea Party supporters and campaign workers didn’t even want her to concede to Reid at all and instead “charge voter fraud.” And just last week she announced the creation of the Patriot Caucus, which will help her preserve her fundraising capabilities and political standing. Already, the group is building ties to key players in the Nevada Tea Party, including Eric Odom of Liberty.com.

If Angle wants to run statewide, US Senate may be her only option since the races for Governor, Lt. Governor, Attorney General, State Controller and Treasurer were all decided this November. The incumbent Republican John Ensign has been dogged by ethics scandals and many Republicans expect him to be challenged in a primary. Angle has experience running against leading Republican figures, running unsuccessfully against State Senate Republican Leader Bill Raggio in 2006 and defeating the former Nevada Republican Party Chairwoman Sue Lowden in the 2010 primary.

Following his vote in favor of repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Ensign made himself a top target of groups such as the Family Research Council which vowed to back and finance a primary challenger to anyone who voted to repeal DADT. Now, they may look to Angle to rally Religious Right activists and her Tea Party brethren to make another run for the Senate.

Politico’s Ben Smith discussed today the unforeseen possibility that right wing activist Herman Cain could be a surprise Republican candidate for president, after he bested all other Republicans in an online straw poll conducted by the conservative blog RedState. Cain, an African American businessman and radio talk show host, even topped Sarah Palin, who came in second, to be the favorite of the right wing blogosphere. Erick Erickson of RedState writes, “I like Herman Cain and, though truth be told I never thought he’d make it past Mike Pence, I am delightfully surprised by the results.”

There is already a Draft Cain movement and he operates his own political action committee, called The Hermanator PAC (seriously). He has received praise from conservative darlings from Bishop Harry Jackson and Bryan Fischer to Joe the Plumber, and Cain himself is talking-up his chances at a presidential bid, telling The Daily Caller: “I will run proudly as a non-establishment candidate. I think the public has an appetite for a non-establishment candidate.” More recently, Cain told Fischer on the American Family Association’s radio program that after Republican gains in November, he is “one step closer” to running for President. When pondering a run, he explained: “No I don’t want to…but I feel like I must run.”

Of course, a 2012 presidential run wouldn’t be Cain’s first foray into politics. Cain is closely involved with Tea Party organizations and co-signed a letter with prominent right wing leaders asking the GOP leadership make “restoring traditional moral values” a key part of their agenda. He also ran for US Senate in 2004 in his home state of Georgia but garnered just 26% of the vote and lost to Senator Johnny Isakson in the GOP primary.

During the 2006 election, Cain was the public face of America’s PAC, a group that used stereotypical language and imagery when calling on Black voters to support Republicans. Cain, who voiced many of the group’s ads, maintained, “The main thing that America’s Pac is up to is it basically is challenging the thesis or the belief on the part of the Republican Party that they cannot attract the black vote.” America’s PAC suggested that Democrats were “decimating our population” by supporting abortion rights:

“Black babies are terminated at triple the rate of white babies,” a female announcer in one of the ads says, as rain, thunder, and a crying infant are heard in the background.

“The Democratic Party supports these abortion laws that are decimating our people, but the individual's right to life is protected in the Republican platform. Democrats say they want our vote. Why don't they want our lives?”

Or as put in another ad:

Michael: And if you make a little mistake with one of your ho’s, you’ll want to dispose of that problem toot sweet, no questions asked, right?

Dennis: Naw, that’s too cold. I don’t snuff my own seed …

Michael: Huh. Really? (pause) Well, maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican!

America’s PAC was heavily backed by Republican financiers and led by a conservative activist who said that teaching evolution is “tantamount to teaching atheism.” Another one of their ads suggested that Democrats who opposed the Iraq War were treacherously allied with racist and right wing leader David Duke, who also opposed the war:

Now, I can understand why a Ku Klux Klan cracker like David Duke makes nice with the terrorists. They fight voting rights in Iraq, just like he does back home. But what I want to know is why so many of the Democrat politicians I helped elect are on the same side of the Iraq war as David Duke.

According to a report by the New York Sun, “Many of the ads with conservative social themes are sandwiched between hip-hop songs that convey blunt sexual messages. A spokesman for America’s Pac, John Altevogt, said no stations have refused the ads, but a few asked for minor edits, such as the removal of the word ‘cracker’ from the David Duke spot.”

However, the ads failed to produce significant gains for the GOP among Black voters, as nine in ten African Americans backed Democratic candidates in 2006.

Certainly, the Tea Party, the Religious Right, and the GOP will seek Cain’s help to attract Black voters in case his presidential run fails to get off the ground. Judging by his track record at America’s PAC in 2006, they may want to look elsewhere.

When Michigan Republican Fred Upton was tarred as a “moderate” during his campaign to lead the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, leading anti-choice groups including the National Right to Life Committee and the Susan B. Anthony List suggested back in November that they could support Upton if he picks Joe Pitts to chair the Health Subcommittee. Pitts, the co-author of the restrictive Stupak-Pitts amendment during the health care reform debate, is one of the most fervently anti-choice members of Congress. Now, Upton won his campaign to lead the committee and selected Pitts to chair the Health Subcommittee which not only deals with health care legislation but also sets policy with regards to abortion rights and reproductive health.

Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser called Pitts’s appointment “a major pro-life victory,” and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council told LifeNews that Pitts is committed to passing anti-choice legislation to stop the purported taxpayer funding of abortion.

While the nonpartisan PolitiFact already determined that rightwing claims of taxpayer funding for abortion are false and simply untrue, the facts didn’t stop groups like SBA List, CitizenLink (formerly Focus on the Family Action), and the Family Research Council from spreading the badly misleading claim.

The “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” better known as “Stupak on steroids” would impel private insurers to drop abortion coverage by taking away the insurance plans’ tax deductions, make the Hyde Amendment permanent, and prevent “any government department from funding any program that touches on abortion in any way, however notional.” There is already a drive by Mike Pence and Michele Bachmann to pass the "Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act," which would de-fund reproductive healthcare organizations which provide abortions, like Planned Parenthood, even though such financing does not go to abortion coverage.

During an interview with CNSNews, Bachmann was asked “What should Republicans do to advance protections for the lives of those unborn babies who are being slaughtered in this country?” Bachmann repeats the two baseless and fallacious claims that women in Pennsylvania received taxpayer funding for abortions and that “for the first time in American history under Obamacare, socialized medicine, under President Obama, we have federal funding of abortion.” She also calls for the reinstatement of the global gag rule, which cuts off US funding to international family planning services.

Watch:

It has been no secret that many of Sen. Jim DeMint's Republican colleagues have been unhappy with his willingness to back radical candidates to challenge, and in some cases defeat, establishment-backed candidates and to openly attack them for failing to embrace his ultra-right-wing agenda.

Of course, DeMint's ideological zealotry has made him a hero to the Religious Right and the Tea Party Movement. But now comes word that DeMint is privately assuring his Republican colleagues that he will not support any candidates who might decide to offer a primary challenge to a sitting senator:

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint is privately reassuring his Republican colleagues up for reelection that he won’t recruit or endorse any primary opponent against them, vowing to raise more than $10 million aimed mainly at taking down Democratic incumbents.

In a letter obtained by POLITICO, the tea party favorite appears to be taking steps to soothe post-election tensions with his GOP colleagues, including some who say his political tactics have been counterproductive.

At the same time, however, the South Carolina conservative’s latest move could disappoint some of his most fervent grassroots supporters who are preparing to line up tea-party-backed candidates in states like Indiana, Utah and Maine where Republican senators have become targets of the right wing.

...

“First, despite rumors to the contrary, I want to assure you that I will not recruit or support primary challengers to incumbent Republicans, and you can also be assured I will support all of our Republican nominees for the Senate,” he wrote in the letter he sent Wednesday.

Given that there are several Senators up for re-election in 2012 who are regularly derided as RINOs, this move by DeMint seem likely to anger Tea Party activists ... and, in fact, Richard Viguerie is already declaring that "other conservatives cannot, and will not, give these out-of-touch Republicans a pass":

"Senator DeMint has repeatedly taken heat from establishment Republicans for his strong conservative stances and support for the tea party movement, and no doubt feels tremendous pressure from his colleagues to fall in line with the GOP leadership.

"All small-government, constitutional conservatives are deeply in Senator DeMint's debt for his sacrifices, work, and leadership in behalf of our cause.

"However, four or five of the ten Republican Senators up for re-election in 2012 need to be voted out, and if Sen. DeMint feels that he cannot involve himself in those primary races, then it is up to grassroots conservatives and tea partiers to provide the leadership to replace RINO Republicans or ineffective Republicans with effective and principled conservatives."

James Dobson has dedicated the last two days of his radio program to a discussion with Richard Land about the recent elections and the general state of America today (hint: everything has been terrible since the 1960s.)

During the interview, Land lamented the "the sexual revolution" and the rise in divorce, which prompted Ryan Dobson to pipe up with this observation:

Dobson: You were saying earlier, when you were talking about marriage, when you look at the number of people who live together before they get married, it's unreal. People seem to want to test drive their relationships. They don't want to commit to someone for better or worse, they want to have some kind of a performance evaluation in their vows of marriage where if you're making me happy or you're making me feel fulfilled then I'll stay with you. But the minute things start to go south, that's it, I'm out. And too many people, too many Christians, are bringing that kind of attitude into their marriage relationship and I think we have to tell people "you have to be committed for life."

Just allow me to point out that, in 2001, Ryan Dobson divorced his wife.

It seems that blatant hypocrisy just runs in the Dobson family.

My two favorite Religious Right political prognosticators - Richard Land and Ralph Reed - teamed up recently to discuss the recent election results and the exchange was pretty much what one would expect, with Reed declaring that George Allen was "smeared" by the Washington Post for his infamous "Macaca" incident and Land proclaiming that the 2006 and 2008 elections where Republicans lost were some sort of anomaly:

Reed: Jim Webb in Virginia, who narrowly defeated George Allen after he was, in my view, smeared by the Washington Post and other liberal media outlets for the alleged, you know, slur of macaca ...

Land: 2006 and 2008 were aberrations. This is a return to the basic voting pattern of 2004 where white evangelicals made up 27% of all the people who voted and they voted 78% for Bush.

Reed: And we saw, as you accurately indicate, we saw a dip in the turn out of those voters and a little bit of a dip in the margin of those voters for Republican candidates.

My view is that's because we just weren't running the kind of candidates that they could get excited about. But if you offer a Marco Rubio, or you offer a Dan Webster, or you offer those kind of candidates, they are going to turn those voters out.

That sort of assessment must come as a real surprise to all of those right-wing candidates who lost in 2006 and 2008 like Rick Santorum who must have been one of those candidates that Religious Right voters just couldn't get excited about. 

Texas State Rep. Leo Berman, who introduced a “Birther bill” in the State House because “we have a president whom the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place,” appears to be part of a growing trend among Republican state legislators. In Pennsylvania, State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe told WorldNetDaily that he will be “introducing the legislation that would require presidential candidates to prove their natural born citizenship before they are allowed to file petitions to have their name on the state ballot.”

Metcalfe, who was last seen calling veterans who supported actions to prevent climate change “traitors,” dubbing a Domestic Violence Awareness Month resolution part of the “homosexual agenda,” and decrying Muslims because they “don't recognize Jesus Christ as God,” believes that the bill will gain momentum after the Republicans won control of the State House in the 2010 elections. Metcalfe said that he and his cosponsors “hope we would be able to pass this legislation and put it into law before the next session.”

Like Metcalfe, Georgia State Rep. Mark Hatfield confirmed to WND that he is seeking to reintroduce his Birther bill in the State House since the Republicans control both chambers of the legislature and “"every constitutional statewide office.” Hatfield claimed that Hawaii only made “cryptic” statements confirming Obama’s birth in the state, and that, “I don’t think anyone has seen his original long-form birth certificate.” But Hatfield not only has doubts concerning Obama’s birth certificate but also his time in college and abroad, saying: “The President himself could release the records to show and document where he was born, he could release the records to show where he went to college and what he did in college, and he can release his passport. These are things that are completely within his control and he has chosen not to show those to the American people.”

For the last few days we have been noting the battle between the Religious Right and the gay conservative group GOProud set off by the latter's effort to get the Republican Party to ignore the social issues that are at the heard of the former's entire agenda.

This question is obviously going to be a significant one as the GOP prepares to take control of the House and sets out its agenda heading into 2012 ... which makes this announcement rather interesting:

Conservative activist Grover Norquist will quiz candidates running for Republican National Committee chairman at a debate to be held just two weeks before elections, he told Hotline On Call Wednesday.

Norquist, who runs Americans for Tax Reform, will moderate the Jan. 3 debate at the National Press Club. It's an effort, he says, to take the race for chairman beyond the 168 members of the national committee and to bolster transparency.

As you may recall, Norquist was savaged by Religious Right leaders for joining GOProud's advisory council, with Tony Perkins slamming him for selling out the conservative movement.

So I wonder how the Religious Right feels about the next RNC chair being vetted by someone like Norquist who clearly does not care about their social issues agenda and, presumably, has no interest in including such questions in the debate process.

As the Republican Party lurches farther to the right and comes to the successful conclusion of its Southern Strategy, even the party’s most radical candidates can win elections. In an open Democratic seat in Arkansas, where Republicans made significant gains in the election, Republican candidate Loy Mauch defeated his Democratic opponent. According to the Arkansas Times, State Representative-elect Mauch is a staunch Neo-Confederate who is “a current member of The League of the South,” a white supremacist group, and an avowed opponent of Abraham Lincoln and his legacy. He describes the Confederate Battle Flag as “a symbol of Jesus Christ” and “Biblical government,” and an affiliate of the Sons of Confederate Veterans he led presented a speech entitled “Homage to John Wilkes Booth.” David Koon of the Arkansas Times writes:

For seven years, Mauch was the commander of James M. Keller Camp 648 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He stepped down as commander last year. In 2004, angered by the city of Hot Springs' refusal to remove a statue of Abraham Lincoln displayed in the Hot Springs Civic and Convention Center, the Keller Camp hosted a conference in Hot Springs called "Seminar on Abraham Lincoln — Truth vs. Myth," with a keynote address called "Homage to John Wilkes Booth."

Mauch said that he believes Lincoln didn't follow the Constitution. Of the statue of Lincoln in the convention center, Mauch said: "I didn't think it had any place down in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He wasn't friendly to Arkansas. He didn't have anything to do with Arkansas. Nobody in Arkansas voted for him."

A prolific writer of letters to the editor (Garland County Democratic Party chair George Hozendorf said one of the only things he knew about Mauch was that he recalled a letter to the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record in which Mauch advocated for enlarging the controversial Confederate flag and Confederate soldier statue at the fork of Central and Ouachita Avenues), Mauch took pen in hand in 2008 during the controversy stirred up by Huntsville businessman James Vandiver's decision to respond to the election of Barack Obama by flying a Confederate battle flag in front of his motel.

"The government has lost its moral authority over God-fearing Americans," Mauch wrote to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "I wish more patriots like James Vandiver would take their stand for what the Confederate Battle Flag truly symbolizes."

When asked what the Confederate flag symbolizes, Mauch said: "It's a symbol of constitutional government. It's a symbol of Jesus Christ above all else. It's a symbol of Biblical government."

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s profiles of the League of The South, which calls for Whites to “establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities,” and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which has ties to extremist groups such as the League and the Council of Conservative Citizens, reveal their radical underpinnings. The SPLC has documented the Southern Republican politicians who have ties to such racist groups, and Mauch appears to be the latest example of a politician who views the Southern Confederacy with nostalgia and praises its history with religious fervor and nationalistic devotion.