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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forum"Six of the Right's Biggest Zealots" By Peter Montgomery, Alternet at Salon
Six of the Right's Biggest ZealotsBy Peter Montgomery, Alternet at Salon
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/29/six_of_the_rights_biggest_zealots/
"SNIP............................................
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 14th 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 masters thesis at Pat Robertsons 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 of Virginia, 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 years platform. When his name was floated as a potential V.P. pick, Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood decried his deeply troubling record on womens health.
2. Tony Perkins. Perkins heads the Family Research Council, whose Values Voter Summit is the Religious Rights most important annual conference, where 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 groups positions prove otherwise. Perkins has been aggressively exploiting the recent shooting at FRC headquarters to divert attention from the groups extremism by claiming that the Southern Poverty Law Center was irresponsible in calling FRC a hate group. Unfortunately for Perkins, the groups 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 Ugandas infamous kill the gays bill, which he described as an attempt to uphold moral conduct. Its worth remembering that Perkins ran a 1996 campaign for Louisiana Senate candidate Woody Jenkins that paid $82,600 to David Duke for the Klan leaders mailing list; the campaign was fined by the FEC for trying to cover it up.
..........................................SNIP"
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