Unmasking the Theocons

The intrusion of America's leading Republican politicians into the tragic dilemma facing Terri Schiavo and her family speaks volumes about how deeply they have become beholden to the religious right. Brushing aside time-honored advocacy for limited government and state sovereignty at the behest of a crass internal memo advertising a "great political issue" that "the pro-life base will be excited" about, Congressional Republicans and President Bush instead used the moment to pay Christian conservatives their most dramatic homage to date.

The foremost political players in this drama - President Bush, Tom DeLay, and Bill Frist - bring a pungent mix of raw ambition, blatant agendas and inconsistencies on the issues in question that taint their flowery pieties with a distinctly fishy odor. Down in the trenches beside lawyers from the Family Research Council and American Center for Law and Justice, founded by James Dobson and Pat Robertson, respectively, with moral support from Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Burke Balch of the National Right to Life Foundation, Republican leaders are bringing a new face to their party that progressives should be itching to unmask.

Indeed, the grubby spectacle of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay trying to resurrect his reputation by force-feeding a woman who has been vegetative for 15 years has had the opposite of the intended effect on most Americans. An ABC poll on Monday found not only that 70% of those surveyed nationwide found Congress's involvement inappropriate, but that by a margin of 67 to 19% they believed that the politicians trying to keep her alive were motivated more by "political advantage" than "concern for Schiavo." Among Catholics, support for removing Schiavo's feeding tube stood at 63 to 26%, among conservatives, 54 to 40%, and among evangelicals, 46 to 44%. In granting standing in federal court to "any parent of Teresa Marie Schiavo," as provided in the remarkable new law passed last weekend, DeLay, Frist and the President were acting on behalf of a minority within a minority of their supporters.

The face of the theocon power brokers that hold the Republican Party in such thrall has up to the present been carefully shielded from the spotlight. At their New York City convention last fall, Republicans offered their prime time podium to a series of social moderates such as Arnold Schwarznegger, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain - who once referred to the religious right as "forces of evil" - while persuading the theocons to take a temporary back seat

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0323-24.htm

hadn't heard it before, but it make perfect sense.