Christian Conservative Dirty Tricks

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You may have heard that over the weekend a group of more than 100 Christian conservatives met to discuss their choices for the Republican presidential nomination. And you may have heard that the group voted to endorse Rick Santorum.

Today some of the attendees say the ballots were rigged.

A civil war is breaking out among evangelical leaders over allegations of a rigged election and ballot stuffing at a Saturday gathering of religious and social conservatives. …

… in back-and-forth emails, Protestant fundamentalist leaders who attended – most of them backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to be the anti-Romney candidate — are accusing Catholic participants of conniving to rig the vote.

They said they were conned into leaving after the second ballot on Saturday. They said pro-Santorum participants held a third ballot which Mr. Santorum won with more than 70 percent of the vote — far higher than the nine-vote margin he won on the first ballot.

Steve Benen points out that both Gingrich and Santorum are Catholic (Newt being a convert). Still, it shows us that the Religious Right ain’t the political juggernaut it used to be.

It also shows us that the word “evangelical” is now being stretched to cover conservative Catholics as well as a subset of protestantism, which certainly didn’t use to be the case.

And WWJD? Live in Canada, one suspects.

14 thoughts on “Christian Conservative Dirty Tricks”

  1. I think that if the Evangelicals thought Joe Lieberman, wearing a slinky black cocktail dress, doing his best Marilyn Monroe impression while singing Judy Garland and Bette Midler songs, could beat Obama, they might support him, too.
    They would justify this by tying Holy Joe with the Holy Land, yada, yada, yada… AND THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST!!!

    And as for “conniving to rig the vote, ” I’ll take them at their word that it’s probably true. After all, who knows better about rigging votes, than Conservatives?

    What, did they have hanging chad’s and Diebold machines at the meeting? Scalia wasn’t around, O’Conner’s still retired, and Rehnquist’s still dead?
    What?

  3. “And now for something completely different – a look at some real, true, GOB (Good Old Boy) racism:

    http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2011/11/22/why-do-you-hate-america/

    I know it’s OT, but it’s a classic – about the reason being that they don’t like today’s America is because it’s, get this: BRA – Black Run America.

    And in it, the GOB doesn’t even bother to dog-whistle. He’s blowing an air-raid siren.

    He even cites as a positive, I kid thee not, the inter-marriages between rich Southern families. Something that it seems he and his KKKlan may have some familiarity with.

    I bet that GOB’s family-tree ain’t got but one branch. And that one branch probably likes having “strange fruit” hung from it.

  4. More in line with the previous thread – Chris Hedges, Why I’m Suing Barack Obama

    ….to challenge the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by the president Dec. 31.

    The act authorizes the military in Title X, Subtitle D, entitled “Counter-Terrorism,” for the first time in more than 200 years, to carry out domestic policing. With this bill, which will take effect March 3, the military can indefinitely detain without trial any U.S. citizen deemed to be a terrorist or an accessory to terrorism. And suspects can be shipped by the military to our offshore penal colony in Guantanamo Bay and kept there until “the end of hostilities.” It is a catastrophic blow to civil liberties.

    I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism….

    …The oddest part of this legislation is that the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn’t support it. FBI Director Robert Mueller said he feared the bill would actually impede the bureau’s ability to investigate terrorism because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military. “The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain cooperation from the persons in the past that we’ve been fairly successful in gaining,” he told Congress.

    But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.

  5. Gulag, I clicked on that link and . . . words fail me.

    Well, actually not so much that I didn’t throw in my two bits worth.

    I really have to ask this in all seriousness: are humanoids evolving and devolving into a variety of disparate species?

  6. This is the point in the orgy where players are changing partners and combining in unnatural ways. The powers-that-be behind the Tea Party seem to have accepted Romney after Pizza-man imploded. The Tea Party rank-and-file have not. Including evangelicals. Sarah Palin’s went off script last week on Fox, asking how many jobs Romney created in the US .

    The narrative from the right is that Obama hates Christians, because he won’t government-fund programs in Catholic hospitals which discriminate. By discriminate, I mean exclude based on ‘moral’ factors. So evangelicals are best buddies with Catholics for the election. Of all the Christian sub-categories, Catholics are the least homogeneous. I was raised Catholic. When I went to parochial school, Catholics were solidly behind the New Deal. Some will vote for Romney, but the GOP can’t count on a Catholic block vote. There’s too many elements of the church in ministries to the poor and elderly.

    Romney has a lock on the nomination, but a lot of groups, evangelicals & libertarians especially , are going to feel like they were sold out by the party (and Tea Party) leadership. Romney’s task, in all this dissatisfaction, is to build a coalition who will show up to vote against Obama, because he has no chance of building a 51% coalition who will vote for him. As recent posts have shown, the democrats face the same crisis of potential no-shows, and the deciding factor in November may be the idiots on both sides who are motivated to make a statement by not voting.

  7. “It also shows us that the word “evangelical” is now being stretched”

    Just wait till they are forced to support Mr. magic underpants! Anything will be better than that christian colored fella.

    I find it amazing how our corporate media allows these tax dodging religious groups to endorse candidates for federal office, affording them the importance over that of a common taxpayer.

  8. uncledad,
    They are affording them the importance because they can afford to pay the per-30 second ad rate. You, me, and the rest of us common taxpayers, uhm… not so much.

  9. muldoon,
    I’ll give that GOB some credit. He posted my comment AND yours.

    When I submitted mine yesterday, it said it was being held for ‘moderation,’ so I figured no say he’s going to post it. But he did, and that really shocked me. But, credit where credit is due – unlike other rightie sites, this GOB allows dissenting opinion.
    He even recommended going through his archive.
    I’d rather sift through a sewer’s sh*t looking for lost coins.

  10. Doug, don’t forget, eventually there will be a debate between Obama and his GOP challenger. At that point (not as exciting as orgy participants changing partners, quite a visual….),Obama gets to confront the liars and misrepresenters. He gets to ask the contrarian to be SPECIFIC. Up ’till now this has been the problem. His opposition throws up bullshit and smoke clouds, twists the truth as calling “the affordable health care act” “Obamacare”.
    It’s gonna be fascinating to watch Romney the corporate raider try to deconstruct all Obama has done, sepecially since he needs the middle class on his side, the class that shoulders most of the load.

  11. Pingback: Is There ANY Election that Republicans Won’t Try to Rig? « ENDAblog

  12. hmmmm WWJD, in Canada no one gives a f*** to be honest with you. Thats what I find absolutely ridiculous about politics in your country. Everyone is running around being”holier than thou”(ie those dumb I am a mormon comercials) on one hand. Then saying we are the greatest nation on the other. Got a hint for you……no one else in the world cares

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  14. Mike,
    So what’s it like living in the apartment above a family that’s crazed by, and obsessed with, religion, sex, drugs, and guns, guns, guns? You’re basically living above a well-armed nuthouse.
    You’re not concerned?
    The other neighbors aren’t either?
    How did our SCOTUS giving the 2000 election to Bush over Gore affect Canadians – and especially the people in NYC, DC, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
    Think the world might be a saner place without having Little Boots and The Bush Crime and War Family in power for 8 years?
    And Obama v. Romney, or whoever, will not have any impact on the global economy and ecology?

    And if you don’t care, then don’t read US political sites.
    Besides, Stephen Harper is hardly the epitome of Liberalism. So, maybe you need to check out what’s happening up there more closely. 🙂

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