Peter Montgomery's blog

‘Nonpartisan’ Religious Right Leaders Demand that Christians Vote for Romney

Wed, 10/10/2012 - 11:45am — Peter Montgomery

Religious Right leaders love to proclaim that they are nonpartisan. Rick Scarborough insists he is not a Republican or a Democrat, but a Christocrat. Samuel Rodriguez repeatedly claims that he is not pushing the agenda of the Elephant or the Donkey, but the Lamb. And yet they are actively involved in attempts to convince Christians that loyalty to biblical values requires a vote against Barack Obama and for Mitt Romney, even though many evangelicals do not consider Mormons to be Christians. The latest example comes via Rick Joyner’s dominionist Oak Initiative. Joyner sent Oak supporters a long essay by Dr. James Richards of Impact Ministries, which denounces partisanship and says, “This is not about Democrats and Republicans; it is about being a believer, committed to the Lordship of Jesus.” Richards’ essay concludes with a charge to elect Romney, the “least damaging” option on the ballot, in order to “buy time” to hold off socialism and get the right kind of people in office.

To my knowledge, there has never been a President that could satisfy all the interests of the church. So our only choice is to choose what we will overlook and what we will over emphasize. It is time for us to see the bigger picture. WE ARE ALWAYS VOTING FOR THE LESSER OF TWO EVILS. We must realize that in many instances, not voting means putting someone into office by default who may be a much greater risk to our beliefs and freedoms.

Many will not vote for Obama because he is in favor of gay marriage and abortion. However, those same people oppose Romney on the basis of his Mormon background. Many Christians will feel they have no choice and not vote. But we must remember, in 2008 the 30 million Christian evangelicals that didn’t vote decided the election by default.

We are not attempting to get a perfect man in office. We are attempting the get the least damaging man in office. As such we have peace, something the early church could only pray for, but we can vote for. If we can get a man in office who is not a socialist committed to the reduction of America and extreme leftist agendas, we will buy the time to make changes in Congress, and eventually at the State level. But most importantly, we can get people in office who will uphold God’s values and the Constitution. Based on the words and the track record of the extreme left, in four more years we may be too far gone to make a difference. YOU ARE NOT VOTING FOR THE MAN, YOU ARE VOTING FOR THE TIME TO MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE!

Romney's Right Resorts to Racial Resentment

Fri, 10/05/2012 - 10:39am — Peter Montgomery

This week, on the eve of the first presidential debate, right-wing media, led by the Drudge Report, the Daily Caller, and Fox News, hyped a supposedly secret video that they dubbed “the other race speech.” Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity tried desperately to portray the video as “explosive” footage that the liberal media had deliberately hid from voters to protect Barack Obama. Religious Right leaders played their part, with Liberty Counsel’s ludicrous Matt Barber demanding, “Romney simply must make ad upon ad out of this devastating video exposing Obama as a white-hating racist.” Karl Rove, who with a cadre of right-wing billionaires has kept Republican hopes alive by funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into the election, piled on, saying Obama’s comments were designed to “stir up racial animosity” and called them “abhorrent.”

Of course, as it turned out, the video is neither news nor explosive. It is a 2007 campaign speech that had been well covered by mainstream media at the time. Ultimately what is newsworthy and offensive is not Obama’s 2007 speech, but the way that right-wing pundits, desperate to defeat him in November, have resorted to a brazen strategy of stoking racial resentment, and trying to create a distraction by accusing the president of doing the same thing. Not only is Mitt Romney unwilling to stand up to the extremists in his own party, as President Obama pointed out in last night’s debate, Romney and his campaign are fully engaged in destructive racial politicking. It’s worth noting the contrast with John McCain, who sometimes stood up to his party’s extremists; Romney cheers them on.

Some Romney backers are not even bothering to try to cloak the racial-resentment strategy. Right-wing blogger John Hawkins flat-out declared this week, “Barack Obama is an Anti-White Racist.” And he tweeted, “A white woman voting for Barack Obama is like a black woman voting for the KKK.” When Glenn Beck accused Obama of hating white people in 2009, the resulting uproar contributed to an exodus of advertisers from his show. But in 2012, with the election on the line, there’s been no sign that the Romney campaign is troubled by Hawkins’ claims: his pro-Romney writing is still featured on the official campaign website.

Hawkins isn’t alone. Earlier this year, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer, told his radio listeners: “I believe that President Obama has a fundamental dislike, a fundamental distaste, nay I would even say he’s got what borders on a hatred for white people, and he is out to punish America and the white folks that make up the majority of the American population.”

Salon’s Joan Walsh has dissected the outrageous distortions of Obama’s speech by Hannity and Tucker Carlson in a post about “right-wing racial panic.” Romney officials said the campaign was not responsible for the recent “release” of the 2007 speech, but as Buzzfeed’s Zeke Miller points out, they did not distance themselves from it either. In fact a senior Romney advisor said that voters “have to look at that video and have to make up their mind on that individually.”

Indeed, the Romney campaign itself has made an appeal to racial resentment a centerpiece of its outreach to working-class white voters, who outside the South have been pretty equally divided between Romney and Obama. Exhibit A is the television ad campaign, pretty much universally acknowledged to be an outright lie, charging that Obama gutted welfare reform by getting rid of its work requirement. One ad shows glum white workers while claiming that thanks to Obama, people no longer have to work or train for a job; “they just send you your welfare check.” Later ads have repeated the same false charge.

Romney himself pushed the same point when, gloating to a Republican audience about having been booed when he told NAACP members that he would repeal “Obamacare.” Romney characterized those who disagreed with his speech as people who “want more free stuff” from the government. Journalist Adele Stan of AlterNet has chronicled various ways the Romney campaign is using racial resentment and racially coded language, including the welfare ads, statements such as John Sununu’s claim that Obama needs to learn how to be American, and the choice of “Keep America America” – one letter away from the KKK’s “Keep America American” – as a campaign slogan.

Divisive racial politics have a long history in America, of course. But there is also a more recent history: right-wing leaders have made the politics of racial resentment key to their attacks on President Obama throughout his presidency, as People For the American Way Foundation noted in its 2009 report, “Right Plays the Race Card.” And right-wing groups such as the National Organization for Marriage have made racial wedge issues a centerpiece of their anti-equality campaigns.After this week’s debate, Romney campaign co-chair Sununu described the president as “lazy” and “not that bright.”

Romney might get a bit of a bump out of this week’s debate, though the president’s prospects should be boosted by Friday’s good economic news. The longer President Obama's lead in the polls holds up, the more likely it is that we will see destructive racial politicking from the rabid right-wing.

Samuel Rodriguez: 'America for Jesus' to Make Voters 'Go Biblical' in Election

Fri, 09/28/2012 - 12:11pm — Peter Montgomery

RWW has reported on plans for this weekend’s dominionist-heavy ‘America for Jesus’ rally in Philadelphia, which will kick off some of the prayer-and-fasting-to-beat-Obama campaigns being waged by Religious Right leaders. Today, Charisma published an interview about the rally with Hispanic evangelical leader Samuel Rodriguez.

Charisma, whose publisher Steven Strang is helping Harry Jackson raise funds for his anti-Obama, anti-marriage-equality swing-state racial wedge campaign, is not exactly a neutral source; it introduced the interview, in part, with “Despite all the atheistic, socialistic, humanistic agendas that are attacking our foundations, there is yet a remnant. And part of that remnant is gathering in an historical city to pray for the salvation of our nation.”

Rodriguez, who excels at portraying himself as above partisanship even while participating fully in the Religious Right’s political campaigns, cites a litany of right-wing talking points as “historical proof” of the rally’s importance:

I can give you historical proof of this. We have never spiritually been down the road we find ourselves in as a nation. From abortion on demand to the diluting of the basic definition of marriage to the government requiring religious organizations to offer contraception and abortion services via the HHS Mandate to even a political party extracting any mention of God from the platform, we have never been down this road before. Never ever, ever have we been down this road before.

He says a “lukewarm church” is America’s most serious problem and that the objective of the rally is “to revitalize, to ignite a fire in the American Bible-believing church so the church will stand up for righteousness and justice in the name of Jesus.” He says the national character of the rally, and its location in Philadelphia, make it stand out among other such gatherings. “There’s an issue here of independence and freedom about the values that make our nation great.”

Rodriguez also makes it clear that he believe the rally will have consequences for the November election:

I believe that God has a purpose for this rally. I believe it will serve as an ignition point for the church to really light up. There's an election coming up in November. There are decisions that a Christian has to make. I hope this rally will engage the Spirit of God in each and every Christian to go beyond political ideology and to start holding Biblical worldview and go biblical about it. And I hope the church understands that the only thing that can save America in the end is not the donkey or the elephant but the agenda of the lamb. But we need to act according to that agenda in the name of Jesus.

Where does Harry Jackson live now?

Mon, 09/17/2012 - 1:21pm — Peter Montgomery

A few years ago, anti-gay activist Harry Jackson claimed that he had moved from Maryland into the District of Columbia in order to lead an unsuccessful campaign against marriage equality in the District. Jackson’s legal residency was the topic of much debate at the time; Jackson signed an affidavit affirming his DC residency. But now, Jackson is supporting an anti-marriage equality campaign in Maryland. Will he be eligible to vote against marriage equality in Maryland? At the Values Voter Summit this past weekend, Jackson bragged that he had ordained and pastored Derek McCoy, who directs the Maryland Marriage Alliance and asked VVS attendees for financial support. Jackson, in a workshop promoting his own campaign to use marriage as a wedge issue against Obama and other Democrats in seven swing states, caught himself when talking about the struggle over marriage in Maryland. “I live in – have a church in that state,” he said.

Sex, Lies, and Bloodlust: What the Values Voter Summit Tells us About the Religious Right and the Republican Party

Mon, 09/17/2012 - 1:18pm — Peter Montgomery

During this past weekend’s Values Voter Summit, the annual family reunion of the far right, RWW posted many memorable video highlights. What does it all tell us about the Religious Right and today’s Republican Party? First are foremost, Republican leaders are unwilling to distance themselves from the far-right fringes of their base, especially in an election year in which conservative evangelical voters are not tremendously excited about Mitt Romney. Romney took a pass this year, and it’s not hard to understand why. Last year, organizers maliciously put him on stage right before the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, who had ridiculed Romney’s Mormonism. A supporter of Texas Gov. Rick Perry denounced Mormonism as a cult, and the flap over Romney’s faith was the dominant story coming out of the gathering. It was much safer to let Paul Ryan represent the ticket this year, and to have other speakers like Rick Santorum and Rick Scarborough ensure evangelicals that voting for Romney was in fact a good thing. Romney did send a tepidly-received video, which seemed almost an afterthought. What is motivating these activists is not enthusiasm for Romney but their hostility toward the Obama administration.

Is Tony Perkins the Most Disingenuous Person on the Planet?

Thu, 09/13/2012 - 5:02pm — Peter Montgomery

Well, in a world that includes Paul Ryan, maybe not. But Perkins ensured his standing near the top of the list with his performance at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Perkins heads an organization that excels in the kind of incendiary rhetoric he denounced from the podium. I kept thinking about Bill Clinton’s recent characterization of Ryan: “It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.”

Perkins heads the Family Research Council, one of the Religious Right organizations that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for a long record of smearing LGBT people with false and denigrating rhetoric. Perkins used his press club appearance to repeat his charge that it was irresponsible for SPLC and other groups to describe his organization that way. He suggested that FRC’s critics had created a climate that contributed to the recent violence at FRC headquarters in downtown D.C.

Let me say that it was genuinely sobering and moving to hear Perkins describe the incident, in which a security guard who may have saved the lives of many FRC employees was shot while disarming a gunman. No one should be put in the position of being hunkered down in their office in fear for their life. No one should be subjected to violence for participating in the public arena. At the time of the shooting, progressive and gay rights leaders immediately and unequivocally denounced the attack on FRC.

It is true that irresponsible and hateful speech can poison our public discourse. But in today’s political climate, that speech is most likely to come from right-wing groups and their allies. I remember feeling nervous as well as outraged when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, two days after the 9-11 attacks, blamed People For the American Way by name, as well as feminists, liberals, and others. And the right’s rhetorical extremism has become supercharged since the election of President Obama.

The First Amendment does protect hateful and irresponsible speech. But being free to participate in the public arena does not meaning being exempt from criticism. And calling hateful speech hateful is not the same as actually promoting hatred toward a particular group of Americans. We have noted before how quickly Perkins moved to exploit the shooting in an effort to discredit his opponents and deflect attention from his own group’s extreme record and rhetoric:

You don't have to look far. Last year Perkins called gay-rights activists vile, hateful, pawns of Satan. In 2010, Perkins responded to President Obama's call for civility on the issue of homosexuality by slamming the president for criticizing Uganda's kill-the-gays bill. Perkins described the infamous law as "enhanced penalties for crimes related to homosexuality" and an effort to "uphold moral conduct." FRC spokespeople have supported laws criminalizing homosexuality overseas and here in the U.S.

What does it even mean for Perkins to make a public commitment to advocate with civility and compassion when his guests at the head table include rhetorical bomb-throwers like Bishop Harry Jackson, who has said that gay rights advocates are trying to recruit young people “just like during the times of Hitler” and that gay marriage is part of a “satanic plot” to destroy the family, and Rep. Louie Gohmert, who participated in the McCarthyite smear of Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin and who says that President Obama “wants a dictatorship?” Or when he recently hired as his executive vice president retired Gen. Jerry Boykin, who has called for limits on American Muslims’ religious liberty and accuses Obama of using the health care reform law as cover to create a private army of Brownshirts?

Perkins also used his speech to promote this weekend’s Values Voter Summit, which is co-sponsored by organizations whose leaders regularly spout rhetoric that is often even more extreme than FRC’s -- about LGBT Americans, Muslims and other non-Christians, supporters of church-state separation and more. Among the worst are the American Family Association, whose spokesman Bryan Fischer is such a torrent of bigotry that it cannot be easily condensed, and Liberty Counsel, whose Matt Barber purveys loathsome attacks on his political opponents, charging that satanic gay rights activists are “running interference for pedophiles” and charging that groups supporting church-state separation, like People For the American Way, are enemies of religious freedom.

Calling for civil discourse on the eve of the Values Voter Summit sounds like nothing more than a bad joke. If Tony Perkins is at all sincere about his call for civility, this weekend would be a good time to start.

Who's Ted Cruz? Getting to Know the Next Senator from the Tea Party

Fri, 08/31/2012 - 1:30pm — Peter Montgomery

Cross-posted at AlterNet

The power center that Dick Armey and FreedomWorks have been aggressively building in the U.S. Senate around reigning extremist Jim DeMint will almost certainly welcome Ted Cruz in January. The Republican convention gave most Americans their first look at Cruz, who has become a Tea Party folk hero after crushing the establishment candidate, Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, in a bitterly contested primary.

Ted Cruz loves to portray his victory as an upwelling from the grassroots, as he did during his Tuesday night speech from the platform. “I have the honor of standing before you this evening for one reason, because thousands upon thousands of grassroots activists stood united, not for a candidate, but for the sake of restoring liberty.”

It is certainly true that his impressive come-from-behind primary victory captured the fervor of anti-government Tea Party activists as well as conservative evangelicals that Cruz has been courting for years at religious right gatherings. But it wasn’t an act of spontaneous combustion. Pouring gasoline on the prairie fire were national right-wing super PACs and Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. Club for Growth Action dropped millions into the race on Cruz’s behalf; Jim DeMint’s Tea Party-backing Senate Conservatives Fund also kicked in with seven-figure spending. (DeMint has since cut his formal ties to the group so that it could create a super PAC.) A FreedomWorks spokesperson said after Cruz’s primary that wins by candidates like Cruz would “force Romney to the right.”

Cruz also benefitted from endorsements by an impressive roster of right-wing figures. During the primary he bragged that he was the only candidate this year supported by all four of his favorite senators: DeMint, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Pat Toomey. he Cruz campaign used video of a Palin campaign visit for its GOTV efforts. After his primary win an excited Breitbart blogger quoted Sarah Palin’s celebration on Facebook. She wrote that Cruz's victory was a win "both for Ted and for the grassroots Tea Party movement," and that the “message of this race couldn't be clearer for the political establishment: the Tea Party is alive and well and we will not settle for business as usual. Now, it's on to November!”

While the media accurately describes Cruz as a darling of the Tea Party and its corporate backers, he also had strong backing from religious-right figures. Cruz has campaigned for support at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit and the Freedom Federation’s Awakening conference, where he said “we are engaged in spiritual warfare every day.” James Dobson and David Barton are among the religious-right leaders who backed Cruz; Rick Santorum endorsed Cruz on Glenn Beck’s television show.

Cruz embodies Ralph Reed’s desire to merge the Tea Party and religious right. In his convention speech, Cruz talked about the Tea Party movement as a “Great Awakening” – a not-so-subtle shout-out to religious-right leaders who are calling for a spiritual great awakening that they believe will turn the nation back to God and its Christian roots. At Rick Santorum’s event on Wednesday afternoon, Cruz mocked media conversations about divisions between different “chunks” of Republicans, declaring the party united. “We’re all here because we believe in values and principles bigger than ourselves,” he said.

Sessions Suggests Gay Republican Welcome in House as Long as He Avoids ‘Personal Crusade’

Wed, 08/29/2012 - 12:45pm — Peter Montgomery

Cross-posted at AlterNet

Pete Sessions heads the National Republican Congressional Committee and in that role his top goal is electing Republicans. To that end, Sessions has worked with Log Cabin Republicans – and was honored by the group with its Barry Goldwater Award in 2010 – in spite of his own strongly anti-gay voting record: during the past three sessions of Congress his rating on HRC’s scorecard has ranged from zero all the way to six percent and now sits at three percent. Sessions has voted repeatedly for federal constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage, and against ENDA and repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

At a press event in Tampa this morning, Sessions was asked about Richard Tisei, an openly gay Republican congressional nominee in Massachusetts. The questioner specifically asked how Tisei, who is pro-choice and pro-marriage equality, would fit in with the Republican caucus.

“I have a litmus test and that’s to be able to get elected,” said Sessions, who said he is in regular communication with Tisei and will be a strategic and tactical partner in his race. Sessions did not talk about LGBT issues directly, but said it was his sense that Tisei is “not on any personal crusade” but “wants to become a professional member of Congress.” Tisei’s opponent, Rep. John Tierney, has been hurt by financial scandals involving his wife and other family members.

Indeed, there’s no “personal crusade” on behalf of LGBT equality evident on Tisei’s campaign website, whose issues page does not mention LGBT issues – it focuses on right-wing talking points on the economy, Medicare, education, and Israel.

Sessions’ attitude reflects a growing split between the Republican Party’s conservative evangelical base – which flexed its muscle in this year’s platform committee – and the growing support among Americans, including Republicans, for LGBT equality. Politico reported in March that Republican congressional leaders have tried to dial back the caucus on marriage, while anti-gay activists continue to battle marriage equality around the country.

“I will proud to have him be a member of our conference,” said Sessions. But if he does win, Tisei probably shouldn’t expect too much support from his colleagues for any “personal crusades” for equality.

GOP Gays have Hope but Perkins has Power

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 5:23pm — Peter Montgomery

The Log Cabin Republicans group turns 20 this year, but the party’s platform committee did not give them much to celebrate. The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins has been bragging for more than a week about how much influence his group had on the platform, which reflects the religious right’s anti-gay opposition to marriage equality. Perkins and others shot down an attempt to add support for civil unions to the platform.

But at a Monday afternoon reception co-hosted by Log Cabin and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the mood is surprisingly upbeat. Talking to people at the reception made me wonder at the fine, fuzzy line dividing optimism from delusion.“This is our party...” LCR’s Clarke Cooper insists. “We are here to make it stronger and more inclusive.”

“[I]t’s a whole new world out there” and in the Republican Party, says former member of Congress Jim Kolbe, who was “outed” while in office. He contends that the kind of resistance to LGBT equality that is reflected in this year’s platform is a generational issue -- "the last gasp of the conservatives," he calls it -- and boldly predicts that this is the last year in which the platform will contain such language. When I suggest that if Ralph Reed’s turnout operation among conservative evangelicals does as much for the Republicans in November as Reed hopes, the party is not likely to turn its backs on the anti-gay religious right base, Kolbe shrugs and says both parties appeal to their bases for turnout. “We will have the victory,” he says.

Sarah Longwell, who serves on the Leadership Committee for Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry, affirms that it was disappointing that Perkins, who is “brutally anti-gay,” was basically allowed to write the part of the platform pertaining to marriage and LGBT rights. Her group and LCR are taking out a full page ad in tomorrow’s Tampa Tribune that quotes Tony Perkins on the importance of marriage, and offering this response:

“We agree. That's why Log Cabin Republicans and Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry believe that government should stop denying marriage licenses to committed gay and lesbian families. As conservatives, we believe that the freedom to marry is directly in line with the core ideals and principles of the Republican Party.”

Those hoping for the GOP to embrace equality do have a point about generational change. Polling shows that equality is making gains among individual Republicans, especially those under the age of 44, who are now about evenly split on the question of marriage equality. Longwell points to the key role played by Republicans who joined Democrats in advancing marriage equality in New York, New Hampshire, and other states. Longwell says she believes that the crass anti-gay wedge politics employed by the GOP in 2004 played a role in encouraging Republicans like Dick Cheney, Ken Mehlman, and Laura Bush to be more outspoken in their support for marriage equality. If 2004 was a turning point, she says, 2012 could be a “tipping point,” at which shifting public opinion makes overt anti-gay politicking unfeasible. “You can’t demagogue gay people forever.” Perkins, however, may have a different opinion on that, and no small measure of power in the G.O.P.

The Log Cabin folks are particularly excited about Richard Tisei, a 50-year old former state senator from Massachusetts who is running for Congress this year with backing from the national party. Tisei, who is challenging Rep. John Tierney, is openly gay, pro-choice and pro-marriage equality, but none of these issues appear on his campaign’s issues page, which pushes standard right-wing talking points on “Obamacare,” Medicare, the economy, education, and the Middle East. Of course, that doesn’t phase the Log Cabin Republicans, who are excited about a member of Congress who would vote to repeal both the Defense of Marriage Act and the Affordable Care Act.

6 Right-Wing Zealots and the Crazy Ideas Behind the Most Outrageous Republican Platform Ever

Tue, 08/28/2012 - 9:30am — Peter Montgomery

Note: this story is cross-posted at AlterNet.

The official 2012 Republican Party platform is a far-right fever dream, a compilation of pouting, posturing, and policies to meet just about every demand from the overlapping Religious Right, Tea Party, corporate, and neo-conservative wings of the GOP. If moderates have any influence in today’s Republican Party, you wouldn’t know it by reading the platform. Efforts by a few delegates to insert language favoring civil unions, comprehensive sex education, and voting rights for the District of Columbia, for example, were all shot down. Making the rounds of right-wing pre-convention events on Sunday, Rep. Michele Bachmann gushed about the platform’s right-wing tilt, telling fired-up Tea Partiers that “the Tea Party has been all over that platform.”

Given the Republican Party’s hard lurch to the right, which intensified after the election of Barack Obama, the “most conservative ever” platform is not terribly surprising. But it still didn’t just happen on its own. Here are some of the people we can thank on the domestic policy front.

1. Bob McDonnell. As platform committee chair, McDonnell made it clear he was not in the mood for any amendments to the draft language calling for a “Human Life Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution and legal recognition that the “unborn” are covered by the Fourteenth Amendment – “personhood” by another name. McDonnell is in many ways the ideal right-wing governor: he ran as a fiscal conservative and governs like the Religious Right activist he has been since he laid out his own political platform in the guise of a master’s thesis at Pat Robertson’s Regent University.

His thesis argued that feminists and working women were detrimental to the family, and that public policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals, or fornicators.” When running for governor, McDonnell disavowed his thesis, but as a state legislator he pushed hard to turn those positions into policy. As the Washington Post noted, “During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women.” As governor, McDonnell signed the kind of mandatory ultrasound law that is praised in this year’s platform. When his name was floated as a potential V.P. pick, Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood decried his “deeply troubling record on women’s health.”

2 Tony Perkins. Perkins heads the Family Research Council, whose Values Voter Summit is the Religious Right’s most important annual conference, at which movement activists rub shoulders with Republican officials and candidates. Perkins bragged in an email to his supporters how much influence he and his friend David Barton (see below) had on the platform. Perkins was an active member of the platform committee, proposing language to oppose school-based health clinics that provide referrals for contraception or abortion, and arguing for the strongest possible anti-marriage equality language. Perkins also introduced an amendment to the platform calling on the District of Columbia government to loosen its gun laws, which Perkins says still do not comply with recent Supreme Court rulings.

The media tends to treat Perkins, a telegenic former state legislator, as a reasonable voice of the Religious Right, but his record and his group’s positions prove otherwise. Perkins has been aggressively exploiting the recent shooting at FRC headquarters to divert attention from the group’s extremism by claiming that the Southern Poverty Law Center was irresponsible in calling FRC a hate group. Unfortunately for Perkins, the group’s record of promoting hatred toward LGBT people is well documented. Perkins has even complained that the press and President Obama were being too hard on Uganda’s infamous “kill the gays” bill, which he described as an attempt to “uphold moral conduct.” It’s worth remembering that Perkins ran a 1996 campaign for Louisiana Senate candidate Woody Jenkins that paid $82,600 to David Duke for the Klan leader’s mailing list; the campaign was fined by the FEC for trying to cover it up.

3. David Barton. Texas Republican activist and disgraced Christian-nation “historian” Barton has had a tough year, but Tampa has been good to him. He was perhaps the most vocal member of the platform committee, and was a featured speaker at Sunday’s pre-convention “prayer rally.” During the platform committee’s final deliberations, Barton couldn’t seem to hear his own voice often enough. He was the know-it-all nitpicker, piping up with various language changes, such as deleting a reference to the family as the “school of democracy” because families are not democracies. He thought it was too passive to call Obamacare an “erosion of” the Constitution and thought it should be changed to an “attack on” the founding document. He called for stronger anti-public education language and asserted that large school districts employ one administrator for every teacher. He backed anti-abortion language, tossing out the claim that 127 medical studies over five decades say that abortion hurts women. Progressives have been documenting Barton’s lies for years, but more recently conservative evangelical scholars have also been hammering his claims about American history. The critical chorus got so loud that Christian publishing powerhouse Thomas Nelson pulled Barton’s most recent book – which, ironically, purports to correct “lies” about Thomas Jefferson – from the shelves. Of course, Barton has had plenty of practice at this sort of thing, from producing bogus documentaries designed to turn African Americans against the Democratic Party to pushing his religious and political ideology into Texas textbooks. Barton’s right-wing friends like Glenn Beck have rallied around him. And nothing seems to tarnish Barton with the GOP allies for whom he has proven politically useful over the years.

4. Kris Kobach. Kris Kobach wants to be your president one day; until now, he has gotten as far as Kansas Secretary of State. He may be best known as the brains behind Arizona’s “show me your papers” law, and he successfully pushed for anti-immigrant language in the platform, including a call for the federal government to deny funds to universities that allow illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition – a plank that puts Kobach and the platform at odds with Kansas law. Immigration is not Kobach’s only issue. He is an energizing force behind the Republican Party’s massive push for voter suppression laws around the country, and he led the effort to get language inserted into the platform calling on states to pass laws requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. He also pushed language aimed at the supposed threat to the Constitution and laws of the US from “Sharia law”; getting this language into the platform puts the GOP in position of endorsing a ludicrous far-right conspiracy theory. Kobach hopes that will give activists a tool for pressuring more states to pass their own anti-Sharia laws. In the platform committee, he backed Perkins’ efforts to maintain the strongest language against marriage equality. Even an amendment to the marriage section saying that everyone should be treated “equally under the law” as long as they are not hurting anyone else, was shot down by Kobach. Kobach also claims he won support for a provision to oppose any effort to limit how many bullets can go into a gun’s magazine.

5. James Bopp. James Bopp is a Republican lawyer and delegate from Indiana whose client list is a Who’s Who of right-wing organizations, including National Right to Life and the National Organization for Marriage, which he has represented in its efforts to keep political donors secret. As legal advisor to Citizens United, Bopp has led legal attacks on campaign finance laws and played a huge role in bringing us the world of unlimited right-wing cash flooding our elections. Bopp chaired this year’s platform subcommittee on “restoring constitutional government,” which helps explain its strong anti-campaign finance reform language.

Bopp is also an annoyingly petty partisan, having introduced a resolution in the Republican National Committee in 2009 urging the Democratic Party to change its name to the “Democrat Socialist Party.” In this year’s platform committee, Bopp successfully pushed for the removal of language suggesting that residents of the District of Columbia might deserve some representation in Congress short of statehood. His sneering comments, and his gloating fist -pump when the committee approved his resolution, have not won him any friends among DC residents – not that he cares. He also spoke out against a young delegate’s proposal that the party recognize civil unions, which Bopp denounced as “counterfeit marriage.” In spite of all these efforts, Bopp has been at the forefront of Romney campaign platform spin, arguing in the media that the platform language on abortion is not really a “no-exceptions” ban, in spite of its call for a Human Life Amendment and laws giving Fourteenth Amendment protections to the “unborn.”

6. Dick Armey. Former Republican insider Dick Armey now runs FreedomWorks, the Koch -backed , corporate -funded , Murdoch -promoted Tea Party astroturfing group – or, in their words, a “grassroots service center.” Armey has been a major force behind this year’s victories of Tea Party Senate challengers like Ted Cruz in Texas and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, both of whom knocked off “establishment” candidates – FreedomWorks also backed Rand Paul in Kentucky and Mike Lee in Utah in 2010. As Alternet’s Adele Stan has reported, FreedomWorks’s goal is to build a cadre of far-right senators to create a “power center around Jim DeMint,” the Senate’s reigning Tea Party-Religious Right hero.

To put Armey’s stamp on the platform, FreedomWorks created a “Freedom Platform” project, which enlisted Tea Party leaders to come up with proposed platform planks and encouraged activists to vote for them online. Then FreedomWorks pushed the party to include these planks in the official platform:

● Repeal Obamacare; Pursue Patient-Centered Care

● Stop the Tax Hikes

● Reverse Obama’s Spending Increases

● Scrap the Code; Replace It with a Flat Tax

● Pass a Balanced Budget Amendment

● Reject Cap and Trade

● Rein in the EPA

● Unleash America’s Vast Energy Potential

● Eliminate the Department of Education

● Reduce the Bloated Federal Workforce

● Curtail Excessive Federal Regulation

● Audit the Fed

An Ohio Tea Party Group, The Ohio Liberty Coalition, celebrated that 10 of 12 made it to the draft – everything but the flat tax and eliminating the Department of Education. But FreedomWorks gave itself a more generous score, arguing for an 11.5 out of 12. FreedomWorks vice president Dean Clancy said that the platform’s call for a “flatter” tax “opens the door to a Flat Tax” and said that they considered the education section of the platform a “partial victory” because it includes “a very strong endorsement of school choice, including vouchers.”

Honorable mention: Mitt Romney. This is his year, his party, and his platform. The entire Republican primary was essentially an exercise in Romney moving to the right to try to overcome resistance to his nomination from activists who distrusted his ideological authenticity. The last thing the Romney campaign wanted was a fight with the base, like the one that happened in San Diego in 1996, when Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition delighted in publicly humiliating nominee Robert Dole over his suggestion that the GOP might temper its anti-abortion stance. Romney signaled his intention to avoid a similar conflict when he named Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell to chair the platform committee.

Keeping Everybody Happy

The new GOP platform reflects Romney’s desire to placate every aspect of the party’s base. It also demonstrates both the continuing power of the Religious Right within the GOP, as well as ongoing efforts to erase any distinctions between social conservatives and anti-government zealots, as demonstrated by Ralph Reed welcoming Grover Norquist to his Faith and Freedom coalition leadership luncheon on Sunday.

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