The Republican intelligentsia (what's left of it) is in full hand-wringing/finger-pointing mode. And I couldn't be happier.
Today, resident Washington Post conservative pseudo-intellectual, Kathleen Parker, decries the current state of the Republican Party with a column titled, "Giving Up on God."
Like resident New York Times conservative pseudo-intellectual, David Brooks, who recently proclaimed that Sarah Palin "represents a fatal cancer to the Republican Party," Parker goes after the religious right with an axe (as outlined in an earlier diary by Upper West):
(more)
Parker writes:
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.
And, of course, the smart people know better.
Now.
A religious war inside the GOP? Can't think of a more engaging and entertaining spectator sport.
Parker notes that the GOP dance with religious right fanatics began back in the Reagan years:
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.
Oh, I so enjoyed that...
What Parker writes is all true. Saint Ronnie made a pact with the "moral majority" of Jerry Falwell, et. al., a natural progression of Richard Nixon's "southern strategy."
But what Parker, Brooks and other members of the conservative ruling elite fail to mention is that the man most responsible for the GOP's lock-tight embrace of the religious right is Karl Rove, who leveraged these fanatics into eight destructive years of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Karl Rove made a deal with the devil when he married church and state, using same-sex marriage ballot initiatives, government money for fringe religious groups like Promise Keepers under the guise of "Healthy Marriages," and events like the Terri Schiavo fiasco to cement the importance of the religious right in the Republican cause.
While the Parkers, Noonans and Brooks of the Republican elite were never comfortable being in bed with the religious right, they tolerated Rove's pandering for the sake of expediency: Republicans ruled the presidency, House and Senate.
Oh, but the consequences of Rove's cynical embrace...
Now that it has all come crashing down (the crashing started in 2006), the elite hand-wringers and finger-pointers want to blame the very people Rove ushered into the middle of the tent.
It's their fault? Really? The rightwing Christians who believe in God and Jesus and think that gay marriage, abortion and Muslims all need to be resisted or even eliminated? How did they get to command a central place in the tent in the first place?
Where were the strenuous objections of Kathleen Parker or David Brooks or Peggy Noonan back in 1999 when Rove first bent the party's will to fit these extremists?
[SFX: Crickets]
So to our friends in the Republican intelligentsia (an oxymoron?), please stop with the hand-wringing and finger-pointing. The people who are at fault for the fall of conservatism and the Republican Party are right there in your mirrors.
If I were you, I'd hunt down Karl Rove and give him a swift kick to the groin. Because kicking yourselves is probably to difficult to do.