Another exercise in extremism. That’s our take on the new party platform adopted by Texas Republicans at their state convention on June 12 in Dallas. See our analysis of the platform here. The full platform is here. Among the planks:
- Separation of church and state is a myth.
- Teach junk science in public schools.
- Give politicians on State Board of Education — instead of teachers and scholars — even more power to decide what students should learn. (And give the SBOE authority over colleges and universities, too.)
- Promote the “independent and sovereign authority” of Texas — and form a “Constitutional State Militia” (apparently to protect that sovereignty).
- Undermine the national census.
- Keep teens ignorant about protecting themselves from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases — teach abstinence-only-until-heterosexual marriage instead of sex education.
- Criminalize embryonic stem cell research.
- Demonize gay and lesbian people, criminalize their relationships and bar them from having custody even of their own children.
- Bar federal courts from hearing cases on issues involving religious freedom and gay rights.
- Get us out of the United Nations! And the World Trade Organization!
- Keep Islamic law out of America!
- Down with ACORN!
- Turn Martin Luther King Jr. into a Republican hero. (Seriously?)
- Repeal the Endangered Species Act.
- Abolish the Federal Reserve System.
- Completely privatize Social Security.
- Repeal the new health care reform law (and apparently permit insurance companies to discriminate against children and adults with pre-existing conditions).
- Divert public school tax dollars to private and religious schools.
- Repeal minimum wage laws and measures that make it easier for citizens to register and vote.
- Gut the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- Pander to “birthers” and nativists.
It was particularly interesting, we thought, that Texas Republicans have decided to claim the heritage of the Civil Rights Movement by declaring Martin Luther King Jr. to have been a Republican. In fact, King supported Democrats John Kennedy (1960) and Lyndon Johson (1964) for president. He also called the 1964 Republican National Convention a “frenzied wedding . . . of the KKK and the radical right.” (See page 247 of The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.)
It looks like GOP convention delegates had the same politicized understanding of American history as the State Board of Education does.
Right TFN. The Republicans are apparently developing a “nit wit strategy” to win over the black man. I have seen the is idea floated at certain blogs. Here is how the new party line goes:
“Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. He used the Civil War to free the black slaves. However, after the war, the Democratic Party was the entity that usurped their new found freedom, instituted the Jim Crow laws, and kept the black man oppressed in his own country from 1865 to 1965 (100 more years). Therefore, the Democratic Party is the historic enemy of all black people. The people who freed you—the people who really care for you—are the members of the Republican Party. Why don’t you come over and vote for us Republicans—the people who really care about you and your rights.”
Yep. That is the new party line best I can tell. The history is largely true. However, the important part they leave out is that the Democratic Party saw the errors of its racist ways and repented of its sins on its knees in sack cloth and ashes back about 1965. This enraged large numbers of racist Democrats who migrated to the Republican Party over the next 30 years. Wanting to win elections and caring about little else, the Republican Party opened its arms wide to these racist nutcases and welcomed them into its bosom like the prodigal son returned home to daddy. Nowadays, the Republican Party has leaned so far to the extreme right that the racist element is actually in charge of the party. So, how do I interpret this new strategy to win over black people to the Republican Party?
Bottom Line: “Why don’t all y’all N-words people out there come on over to the Republican Party and help us kick the N-word out of The White House.
The Republican Party went insane when they hooked up with the so-called “Moral Majority” in the 80’s. Until the GOP sheds the concept of “social conservatism” which loosely translated is a platform of bigotry, racism and hypocrisy it will never get back to being a supporter of business, prosperity and fiscal responsibility.
Just look at John McCain’s career going from a Goldwater Republican to a pandering nut-job who would sell, and did, his soul for a vote.
As the Witch of the West said, “What a world, what a world!”
As a wise man once said “Witness the fetid cockroach that is James Dobson. Multiply his insanity by access to real power and the result is Sharia law.”
James Dobson or the Texas GOP, for the most part their agendas are interchangeable.
For those of you who can stomach a real wingnut web site, read this thread on FreeRepublic:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2540126/posts
Somebody posted a link to a NY Daily News story about the TX GOP platform. The platform is so extreme that the wingnuts posting to the FR thread are convinced that the platform is a lie, a fake document crafted by liberals to make Republicans look bad.
Gee, I think they left a few things out, such as — abolishing literacy, stoning disobedient children, burning heretics at the stake, ending speed laws, prohibiting the sale of condoms, removing the right to vote from women and blacks, forbidding anyone from celebrating Cinco de Mayo, requiring all women to dress like Fundamentalist LDSers, changing the value of pi to 3.0 to avoid confusion, reinstituting flogging and chain gangs, moving the LBJ museum out of Texas, erecting a 600 foot monument to George W Bush in Austin, outlawing hurricanes from coming ashore, rebuilding the Alama to several times its present size and adding a statue of John Wayne, erecting a 15 story creationist museum in Dallas, reintroducing stocks for punishing naughty people, forbidding research in Texas universities, etc.
GOP governance: hypocracy.
From the article above:
“He [Martin Luther King Jr] also called the 1964 Republican National Convention a “frenzied wedding . . . of the KKK and the radical right.”
My comment: Some things never change.
Edd. You forgot “seatbelts are just too confining” and “Whatdaya mean a $50.00 fine for littering?