Could the Republican Party of Texas move even farther to the extreme right?
We’ll find out soon enough, apparently. Austin-based Quorum Report says Texas Eagle Forum leader Cathie Adams, who gives the word “extremist” new meaning, has thrown her hat in the ring to succeed outgoing Texas GOP chair Tina Benkiser. (Benkiser recently stepped down to join Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s re-election campaign.)
But how much more extreme can a party with this platform really get? A quick perusal of Ms. Adams’ public comments suggests what the answer may be: “a lot more extreme.” A few examples:
– Earlier this month, she compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler, suggesting that his speech to American students was “eerily like Hitler’s youth movement.”
– In an e-mail to far-right activists in 2008, Ms. Adams viciously attacked the faith of then-candidate Barack Obama (page 40):
“While many question Barak Hussein Obama’s ‘religion’…, the more important question is whether he has a ‘relationship’ with Jesus Christ because that is the only HOPE that any of us have to obtain eternal life. I personally see NO evidence that Obama has that kind of ‘saving faith.’”
– Two years ago Ms. Adams opposed a ballot measure providing $300 million annually over 10 years for cancer research. Voters approved the measure, which had the support of Gov. Perry and then-President George Bush. But Adams didn’t, falsely claiming that the money would be used in embryonic stem cell research and suggesting that medical researchers are amoral monsters:
“Scientists are on the verge of cloning humans, injecting them with diseases and studying them, then killing them.”
– Defending the dominance of failed abstinence-only programs in Texas schools recently, Ms. Adams blamed the state’s sky-high rates of teen births and sexually transmitted diseases on the supposedly inferior morals of Mexican immigrants:
“If mom had a baby at age 15, are her morals going to be setting different standards than someone who has grown up in the American culture where that is not typical? As a matter of fact, we would look at someone impregnating a 15-year-old as child abuse.”
– She opposes the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which gives children of the working poor access to health care:
“Now illegal aliens will be able to purchase cheap insurance for their children. This is an incentive for them to come here.”
– In May she attacked legislation by fellow Republicans (and signed into law by Gov. Perry) to aid the study of how mental health services might be used in treating patients with other health conditions. Such a thing, she said,
“is now more dangerous than ever with the federal government taking up nationalized/rationed health care. Texans must not surrender our mental and physical health to a socialist State that President Obama is striving toward.”
Let them select her as the new Texas GOP Chair.
Then the Republicans will have finally showed everyone just how kooky they have becaome and that will be the beginning of the end of the Republican party in Texas. Everyone will see very quickly that she doesn’t have good sense.
We can then get reasonable Democrats and maybe a few moderate Republicans elected.
There are Republicans, there are conservatives, there are Christian conservatives, and then there is Crazy, Kooky Cathie Adams. She sees black helicopters. It will be entertaining to watch her if she becomes state chair. She will indeed hurt the GOP, and if the state committee does not see that, then they deserve to go down in defeat. Grab your popcorn!
We need more normal people joining the Texas GOP specifically to ask so many embarrassing questions of the leadership that they get thrown out. That sentence is intentionally ambiguous; no matter who the ‘they’ is that gets thrown out of the GOP, sane moderate Texans win.
Please, please, please – let the Texas GOP pick her as their new chair. Ain’t nobody crazier than Texas Republicans, a fact Cathie Adams seems determined to prove.
Three brief comments:
1) This is truly scary. The retiring head of the state-wide Republican Party in my state (not Texas) was a woman baked in this same fruitcake mold. Her whole tenure in office was interwoven with far right wing extremist philosophy, reprehensible dirty tricks, and blatant racism. One would have thought the party was being led by a mean-spirited 7th grader. The good news is that she left office. The bad news is her recent announcement that she is running for Congress—to represent my district—my district!!! I was literally floored by this. They seem to be crawling out of the woodwork everywhere.
2) Cathie Adams said: “While many question Barak Hussein Obama’s ‘religion’…, the more important question is whether he has a ‘relationship’ with Jesus Christ because that is the only HOPE that any of us have to obtain eternal life. I personally see NO evidence that Obama has that kind of ‘saving faith.”
Notice how caring “…for the least of these…;” loving one another; loving our neighbor as ourselves; and caring for the poor, sick, and oppressed are no longer signs of being a Christian (even though Jesus said they were the principal signs). Mr. Obama does this, and he has openly stated that he is a follower of Jesus Christ. We have both word and deed here. Notice how the far right wing politics have so subverted the Biblical Christian message that only the politico-ideological tenets of fruitcakism are true signs of a Christian. Let’s all retire to Bedlam together so we can commune with people more sane than these.
3) Just in case you are wondering what the crazy theological schism is—the one that has fathered this far right wing nonsense—please go to the webiste below and read the explanation provided by my friend Dr. Bruce Prescott, who considers himself to be a true ordained Southern Baptist minister. For you Christians who might be interested, please go to this URL and scroll down to the article entitled “Conscience and the Word of God.”
http://mainstreambaptist.blogspot.com/
This is not meant to offend our good and dear friend Cytocop, which is why I specified it to interested Christians who might be confused about the subversion mentioned in Item No. 2 above and WHAT IS CAUSING IT—from a strictly theological perspective. If you always wanted to understand a far right wing Christian Neo-Fundamentalist whack job and what creates them—just go to the URL.
They used to say that California was the land of fruits and nuts. Don’t know about the fruits, but pecans aren’t the main crop of nuts in the Lone Star state.
Back in the 1960s, I think normal people wondered what it would be like if John Birch Society morons ever obtained real political power in the United States. They would glance at each other, shake their heads, and say in unison, “Nay-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y-y!!! Never would happen here!!! Most of those normal people are dead now, and we who are their children are left to pick up the all-too-real pieces of their speculative American nightmare.
Charles, thank you, and no problem-o, friend.
Torah also commands us (repeatedly!) to welcome the stranger “as ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Somehow I think this group of Nazis would not cotton to that commandment either, just as they have denounced commandments to care for the poor and the sick.
I respectfully disagree with those who think the Texas GOP being represented by someone farther to the right is a good thing. They’re the majority, and they’re in the grip of the Religious Right. I’m still in shock at what happened, and is still happening, with the SBOE.
“I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process.”
-Barry Goldwater, 1994
This may seem out of place here—and TFN please delete me if this is inappropriate.
I was watching Anderson Cooper Live 360 tonight on CNN. Much to my surprise, they had a longer than usual story on Texas Governor Rick Perry. It was about a convicted murderer who supposedly set fire to his house with his baby triplet daughters inside. This guy was executed for this crime on Perry’s watch, but it is alleged that Perry was aware of convincing evidence that he did not commit this crime, but he let the excecution go forward anyway. Lately, a special panel had been re-examining the evidence and was about to report back that this man was indeed innocent. Getting wind of the results of the investigation, Perry removed several members from the investigation panel, effectively shutting their work down, and appointed some cronie to be in charge (i.e., be the dam that forever blocks the truth from coming out). The cronie now says that there is no telling at what future time the actual results of the investigation will be made public. As CNN said, if the results of the investigation do clearly show that this man was innocent, as most believe that it does, Perry would be the first governor in American history to have allowed a clearly innocent man to be executed.
Now, I am not sure how much of that story stuck correctly in my mind. You folks down there would know the true details better than me. I had no idea that this was even an issue. However, regardless of anyone’s party or politics, it sounds as if something morally reprehensible may have been happening here with Mr. Perry and that his firing of panel members and appointing of cronies may be some sort of cover up to prevent a full reporting of the truth about this case. This is most disturbing. The question that sticks in my mind is simple. What would motivate a state governor to willfully allow an ostensibly innocent person to be executed? What was the motivation here? This is not politics. This is a question of basic morality and whether the governor’s actions were consistent with the high moral pedestal on which the Religious Right has placed him. I can perhaps understand South Carolina’s governor running off to Argentina for a rendezvous with a secret lover. I’m not saying it was right—just that I can understand it. However, I find it hard to even fathom how ANYONE could do what Governor Perry is being accused of doing—and being stupid enough to cover it up in such a shabby and transparent way.
Anyone here like to set me straight on the facts?
Well, Jame F. I pretty much agree with you.
The Religious Right would accuse me of being a stark raving liberal of the worst kind. However, I feel almost certain that I could have voted for Ike Eisenhower without too much trouble. Maybe we should all get together and start our own party.
I believe in Jesus, the constitution, my country, free enterprise, ssensible science, and occasionally kicking some foreign butt that needs it really badly. However, I am sensitive to the need for my freedom choices to not hurt my neighbor. For example, I have been known to smoke an ocasional cigar on vacation, but I am always aware that my freedom to puff needs to take into account women who don’t like the smell, baby lungs, and so forth. If I am in Florida, I will walk back into the wildlife refuge and enjoy my “gar” with the alligators (who also prefer fine cigars). I mean. Come on. Can you honestly look at a 12- foot gator and tell me they don’t keep humidors of their own out in the mangroves? They’ve got “cigar” written all over them!!!!
Charles — Texas has a long history of trying to execute innocents simply because they can. See Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line – this was the film that convinced me that I’m not white enough to be in East Texas (and I’m about as white as Martin Mull.) I’m not generally opposed to the death penalty but I simply don’t believe Texas state government is mature or competent enough to be trusted with that power.
Charles, this story is covered in several online news services, such as The Burnt Orange and Alternet.
Dr Craig Beyler wrote in the report: “A finding of arson could not be sustained.” This is what was going to be discussed at the Oct 2 meeting of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, until Perry pulled his Richard Nixon act.
We know Gov. Perry has a history of replacing board members he doesn’t like.
We also know Gov. Perry likes executions, having overseen 200 during his tenure of Texas governor. That exceeds the record of George W. Bush.
Thanks Cytocop. I don’t get out much these days. The CNN report was the first that I heard about it.
I have a friend whose grandpa was the sheriff in the high-population urban county next to mine. That was back around 1945. My friend grew up listening to “sheriffin” stories on his grandpa’s knee. One day, my friend and I talked about the death penalty. Grandpa had apparently given my friend a really good education on that one.
As you may be aware, every jurisdiction in the United States has revolving door criminals. These are people who commit crimes over and over and over again. They have a record a mile long and have been in and out of jail many times. They may never commit a murder, but they have burglarized every house in town and made themselves such a nuisance that the police get tired of messing with them. Well, according to my friend, back in the 1945 old days, the Sheriff’s Department would find ways to pin a first degree murder wrap on these guys just to get them permanently off the street.
For example, a murder was committed, but they were having a really hard time figuring out who did it. The evidence did not lead clearly to any particular person. Well, if that evidence could be bent a bit to make it look like Benny the Burglar did the crime (when the sheriff knew there was no chance that Benny could have done it), they would do that. A death sentence for Benny would get him off the street permanently so no more homes would be burglarized. According to my friend, through his grandpa the sheriff, this was a fairly common practice back in those days. If those stories are true, we may have executed hundreds of people who were innocent of murder. However, I suspect most far right conservatives think about that the same way that the old county sheriffs did.
Charles, I’m not generally opposed to the death penalty in theory but the Todd Willingham case is problematic to say the least!
The public’s desire for swift justice does sometimes, unfortunately, lead to hasty arrests and convictions: that’s true. And, in the case you describe above where the defendant is a repeat criminal – maybe even the type who sees repeated incarcerations as a badge of honor and raises his status in the “hood” – only lends to more swift justice.
But as we all know, once a capital sentence is carried out, there is no place for the Innocence Project to go – except a posthumous exoneration: a hollow victory.
I’m very disappointed the Willingham case is going nowhere and that Gov. Perry will come off still smellin’ like a Texas yellow rose. To me, he stinks to High Heaven.
The old Chinese principle could work miracles there:
Those responsible for a false conviction suffer the same punishment they condemned the innocent to. And that included everyone involved.
As a delegate to the Texas Republican Convention in Dallas this coming June 11 I intend to support Cathie Adams for chairwoman over her opponent, Steve Munisteri. The reason being that I have in the past 30 years as a republican voter opposed the folks endorsing Mr. Munisteri, and feel that Cathie represents the values of Texans and independant conservatives within the State of Texas.
Joe,
Can you summarize what it is about Cathie Adams (positions, outlook, character) that you feel makes her a better candidate than Steve Munisteri? This isn’t a loaded question – I know nothing about Munisteri and I’m curious about the differences between the two.
Joe,
I’d also like to hear more about your opposition to Steve Munisteri. I’m up late tonight doing research doing research on the candidates. Despite the anti-Cathie blaring that I read here, I’ve appreciated the information she’s shared — yes, I’ve learned to balance the hype from the rightwing like Cathie which counters the close-your-eyes-and-hope-it-goes-away attitude of the leftwing.
Just looking at articles online, I was feeling positive about Munisteri, and I’m wondering if Cathie is more effective as an activist and whistle-blower than as a chairman. So this is a serious question.
All of you who are writing so negatively about Cathie Adams have probably never met her personally. Well, I have, many times! She is a wonderful dedicated patriot, and yes, she is a Christian. Shame on you! Why don’t you look into your own hearts and search out the truth before you judge people. The Founding Fathers would be proud of her. Obama is a Marxist. So, there you have it. Wait and see. I can only hope that your eyes will be opened up to the truth before it’s too late.