General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Please check in if you believe the GOP has gone insane. [View all]longship
(40,416 posts)I saw it back with Reagan, and saw it ramping up since then. It started with Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority -- Christopher Hitchens said that if he had an enema he could have been buried in a matchbox -- and Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition.
Throughout the 1980's the evangelicals and fundementalists built their base in the Republican Party. The ominous rumblings of these efforts was Robertson's victories in state caucuses. When a religious cabal seizes the precinct delegations, they can takeover the district delegations, and the state delegations. If one replicates this in enough states, one can take over an entire national party.
That's what's happened. The sooner we all realize that a major political party in the USA, one of only two, has been co-opted by religion, the sooner people may know how to respond. We have to call them out as just that, a political extension to extreme religion.
It won't play well, and they will fight hard. But it may become very apparent soon enough that we did not fight soon enough.
Just listen to them!