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May 30, 2007

That Isn't God You're Hearing, Tom

Jeffrey Goldberg has a new article, "Party Unfaithful: The Republican implosion," in The New Yorker that is quite interesting, particularly with regards to Tom DeLay. You've got to read it. Now before you scold me for writing about DeLay because he's "irrelevant" or some such thing, remember that a whole lot of disgraced Republicans are still out there moving and shaking the political world. And it looks like DeLay, despite his current well-deserved woes, may become one of them. Particularly since he now claims to be having one-on-one chats with God.

Goldberg says that Karl Rove told him that "two or three societal trends" are driving the Republican Party into "an increasingly deep center-right posture" (one of those trends is a growing openness to spirituality). Interestingly, Newt Gingrich, though himself a right-winger, has criticized Rove for driving the center away by fostering a strident tone in the base. Gingrich is trying to appeal to the "center-right" voter as a means of strengthening the power of the Right, and Tom DeLay has been all over him for it, believing instead that the Republican Party should stay far right. Understand that Gingrich and DeLay have bad blood going back a lot of years, so DeLay supporting anything Gingrich does is about as likely as Grover Norquist supporting John McCain. But the point is, a lot of heavy-hitters on the right are trying to appeal more to the center, and DeLay is determined to undermine that effort. That's why we need to pay attention to him. That, and the fact that a lot of right-wingers believe God wants the Republican Party to stay right-wing.

DeLay says that when, in the coming years, he is not fighting the indictment in Texas (he insists that he is not guilty) he will be building a conservative grass-roots equivalent of MoveOn.org. “God has spoken to me,” he said. “I listen to God, and what I’ve heard is that I’m supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the conservative base of the Republican Party, and I think we shouldn’t be underestimated.” He said that Republicans should spend their impending exile reminding themselves what they stand for. “I see this as a cleansing process, where you can return to your principles, which are order, justice, and freedom—the basic principles of the conservative movement. We have to redefine government based on conservative principles, we have to win the war against our culture, and we have to win the war on terror.”

Reasonable people will look at this and right away know that DeLay has no credibility and isn't going to be able to pull off being the savior of the Republican Party. But here's the problem. Enough people will support him that he will be encouraged to continue his efforts, thereby weakening the Republican Party by continuing to bring disgrace upon it. And his invocation of God will also continue to bring disgrace upon Christianity. Though I am neither Republican nor Christian, I find both outcomes extremely upsetting.

We cannot have healthy debate in this country when the only credible participants are the Left and the Center. We really need the Right to have its act together and be capable of engaging rationally in the conversation. And unfortunately, too many members of the right wing are convinced that every Republican crook that is taken down is actually a martyr for the cause, particularly when so many of those crooks claim to be Christian. Those individuals – the same types who continue to prop up the Christian Republican Bill Sizemore as a credible spokesman – are never going to be open to legitimate debate and efforts to work together as Americans so long as they are convinced that no other point of view has any validity. When their martyred leaders encourage them to stand firm in their rightness, and particularly when they indicate that's what God wants them to do, they become immune to reason and incapable of participating in a democracy.

For that reason, I do not believe for a second that the voice in Tom DeLay's head is that of God. It is much more likely that he's hearing the whispers of that old un-converted power-hungry conniving Hot Tub Tom – the one he thought was safely squished down into a dark corner by the shiny new peaceful born-again Tom DeLay. That bad boy wants to be important again, but knows he's got to make the new Tom and all his loyal sheep feel morally good about it first.

Posted by Becky at May 30, 2007 12:48 PM