Thursday, October 27, 2005

NOT ALL CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS ARE FAR RIGHT, NEO-NAZI, RELIGIONIST MANIACS AND FANATICS. HERE'S A FEW WORDS FROM ONE WHO ISN'T

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Former Senator John Danforth (R-MO) is an ordained Episcopal minister (who officiated at the Reagan funeral services), the heir to the Ralston Purina fortune, George Bush's former Ambassador to the UN, and a conservative Republican who served 18 years in the U.S. Senate. He is considered the man whose clout got his former aide and protégé, Clarence Thomas, through a controversial Supreme Court confirmation process. Yesterday Daniel Connolly reported for the Associated Press that Danforth said the political influence of evangelical Christians is hurting the Republican Party and dividing the country. "I think that the Republican Party fairly recently has been taken over by the Christian conservatives, by the Christian right," he said in an interview at the University of Arkansas. "I don't think that this is a permanent condition, but I think this has happened, and that it's divisive for the country." He also said the evangelical Christian influence would be bad for the party in the long run.


Although the Far Right Noise Machine is notorious for blackening the name of anyone who criticizes Bush or his fanatic base, perhaps because so many of the key players are spending all their energy trying to stay out of jail, there has been no smear of Danforth yet. One right-wing goon usually fast out of the shoot when the smear campaigns begin, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracy Schmitt, declined to comment on Danforth's remarks.

1 Comments:

At 1:26 PM, Blogger KenInNY said...

This is good to hear, both because I've always had genuine respect for Danforth and because, well, because it's so damned nice to have someone of his stature and background speak up this way. (My recollection is that he's made statements along these lines before.) It seems obvious to me that any REAL Christian has to feel the same unease he's voiced regarding the politicization of religion--as a matter of principle AND of practical politics. It's especially timely with the Miers withdrawal, now that we confront the possibility of the attempted creation of a Designated Religious Loon Seat on the Supreme Court.

Surely it's no accident that the loon-brigade smear machine is so far stuck in sputter-idle mode. Danforth must be AWFULLY hard for them to deal with, since his credentials as both a conservative and a Christian, not to mention a sentient human being, are so much better than theirs.

K

 

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