Conservative columnist didn’t win any friends among the right-wing die-hards in the Republican Party when she penned a column in September calling on Sarah Palin to drop out of the campaign in order to stop the damage she was doing to John McCain’s campaign and the GOP. Needless to say, her message did not go over well and the right-wing backlash ended up becoming a story in itself.
So it is probably safe to assume that her latest column is probably not going to win back any friends among those who see the Religious Right as the foundation of the Republican Party and Sarah Palin as its future:
As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.
Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.
I’m bathing in holy water as I type.
To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.
Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.
The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.
But they need those votes!
So it has been for the Grand Old Party since the 1980s or so, as it has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners …
Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows.
For its part, the “oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP” has no intention of letting the so-called moderates in the party throw them overboard. Nor, as I’ve said before, does the GOP have any incentive to actually do so – at least not until the party can nominate a presidential candidate who openly eschews the Religious Right and still wins the election or the Right gets a dream nominee who makes the right-wing agenda the centerpiece of their campaign and then gets utterly destroyed at the polls. Until then, the Religious Right and the moderates in the Republican Party are going to be stuck with each other whether they like it or not.
