November 13, 2015
THE GREAT RIGHT HOPE
Frederick Clarkson, Institute for First Amendment Studies, 1993
The wildest dreams of the Far Right in America may actually be within their reach - control of the Republican Party. While this may be as much because of moderate burn-out defections to the Democrats, and schisms, as because of the strength of the Right itself, it is the stuff of which dreams are made.
The Right has long jockeyed for power within the Republican Party, often threatening to bolt if they didn't get their way. For example, in 1976, they sought to replace President Gerald Ford with Ronald Reagan. When that failed, they tried to join forces with the racist remnants of the American Independent Party (AIP) of George Wallace. (In the 1968 Presidential race Wallace won five Southern states and did well in others. However, the "Wallace vote" had been up for grabs since the Alabama governor was disabled in an assassination attempt in 1972.)
The yahoos at the 1976 AIP convention in Chicago, however, didn't want to deal. So Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus, direct mail guru Richard Viguerie, and National Review publisher William Rusher, among others, begat the New Right (including the Moral Majority) and played a key role in the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan. Nevertheless, the Reagan/Bush era was frustrating for the Right, which failed to pass much of its program. Now the great Right hope lies in the systematic takeover of state and local GOP structures by the resurgent Christian Right. Epitomizing this trend is the recent split in the GOP of Harris County, Texas.
Harris County is home to the city of Houston, where President George Bush maintained his legal residence (at a posh hotel that went bankrupt during his presidency). While Bush orchestrated the selection of Houston to host the 1992 GOP convention which would renominate him for President, the Christian Right largely took over the Harris County GOP. And as Bush continued to alienate GOP constituencies, he further aligned himself with the Christian Right. The result was the shocking prime-time convention rant of Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, and Marilyn Quayle - a major factor in Bush's defeat.
SHOUTED DOWN AND OUSTED
Since the election, the party of Lincoln has begun to unravel. For example, in a strange turnabout, moderates are openly discussing abandoning the Oregon GOP to the Christian Right. And in Harris County, Texas, they've done it. Recently, the Christian Right shouted down and ousted the elected party chair Betsy Lake, and installed a theocratic activist, Steven Hotze. Lake, meanwhile, incorporated a competing entity, the Republican Federation of Harris County.
Click on Link:
http://www.theocracywatch.org/great_right.html
