KATHLEEN PARKER TAKES ON THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT....

[ProSense]

KATHLEEN PARKER TAKES ON THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT....

In September, Kathleen Parker, a conservative syndicated columnist, raised quite a few eyebrows when she explained that Sarah Palin had no business running for national office. "If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself," Parker said, before urging Palin to quit the Republican ticket. She was rewarded with literally thousands of angry right-wing emails.

Parker, to her enormous credit, continues to push back against conservative orthodoxy. In a Washington Post piece today, she encouraged the Republican Party to realize that its religious-right base is a leading cause for the party's electoral troubles.

(T)he evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth -- as long as we're setting ourselves free -- is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

The choir has become absurdly off-key, and many Republicans know it.

But they need those votes! So it has been for the Grand Old Party since the 1980s or so, as it has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners.

Parker is surprisingly candid in her assessment, criticizing the Republican Party for having "surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows." By becoming the party of the Dobsons and Robertsons of the world, the GOP, Parker insists, has alienated "other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle."

She concludes that the Republican Party may ultimately "die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs."

link

(emphasis added)

:rofl:

[ddeclue]

1. As someone who has often railed against Parker in the Orlando Sentinel

I find her public disapproval of Palin to be stunning. She has been a blatant apologist for the right wing in the past and I just don't know what the world is coming to if Kathleen Parker and I are on the same side of an issue.

:hide:

[RagAss]

9. Sometimes the most unlikely folks agree on what is dangerous...

It renews my faith in my fellow Americans when this happens !

[Aviation Pro]

11. Parker evaluates Palin....

...and finds her...wanting.

I have no doubt in my mind that Parker looks at her and sees an airhead beauty queen whose verbal flatulence offends the nearest brick. (No offense to bricks).

[Jade Fox]

13. She seems to have undergone some sort of sea change.....

The few times I've read Parker's columns what most impressed me was how naive she seemed. I wrote her off as another blond tapped by the right to serve the role of hot-gal conservative mouthpiece.

Now she's all snarky and sassy and hanging with Steve Colbert and Bill Maher. What gives?

[redqueen]

2. Pity she didn't mention Sun Myung-Moon. (nt)

[Ian David]

5. The Moonies have nearly as many ties to Democrats as they do to the Repukes.

The Moonies are a bipartisan taint, although George H. W. Bush may as well be keeping a special washcloth next to his bed for Rev. Moon.

[redqueen]

8. I don't mean just ties to politics... but his push towards religiosity,

and desire for theocracies.

[Ian David]

3. No, she's COMPLETELY wrong! The GOP needs to keep doing exactly what they've been doing!

In fact, they need to make it a platform of their party that only heterosexual white chrisTian males are allowed to run for office as Republicans.

We should all register as Republicans and attend local committee meetings and caucuses and push for that ourselves.

[uponit7771]

17. +1

[RedLetterRev]

25. I thought about it

but I just can't do drag even for a noble cause. :D

[camera obscura]

4. The Corner is apoplectic about her new column!

I had to peek in, they're losing it!

[Starry Messenger]

6. Happy to rec.

I hope this trend continues. My Dad who worships at the altar of St. Ron has been complaining about his party's goofball-wing all year now. Maybe the new 3rd party is actually going to emerge from the right/center.

[olegramps]

20. Ron the Con

That bastard should have been in jail with the rest of his cabinet. How can anyone have any respect for people who still sing the praises of the Republican criminals, Nixon, Reagan and Bush.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. Aka "The 2010 Strategy."

[Starry Messenger]

10. I think I know what you mean, but I'm curious to hear your take on it.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

21. Their phony move to the center has commenced.

Not that they haven't been playing the oogedy-boogedy wing of the party as fools all along.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

12. The pubbies are mightily screwed.

The mouth-breathing, know-nothing, shriekin' Jeebus brigade is a majority of the party. The 'pubs can't get elected without them, and will never again be elected as long as the rest of the party kowtows to them and scares the living hell out of the moderates and centrists..

Had to go visit the FreeplePeeple looking for their reaction to this one. Wasn't hard to find. They are in high dudgeon, issuing FreeperFatwas against anyone brave enough to suggest that Parker may be looking at facts. Hysterical stuff.

[Jade Fox]

14. Link to original column....

http://www.postwritersgroup.com/archives/park081119.htm

[Berry Cool]

15. She's been writing some amazingly insightful columns lately.

She's taking the Repugs to task for letting the religious wingnuts and a confederacy of dunces and crooks co-opt the party to the point where intelligence doesn't matter, integrity doesn't matter--all that matters is, would people like to have a beer with you, and do you love Jeebus enough (or claim to). Seems to think that it's high time that brains and honesty mattered.

I sure hope the other Republicans aren't paying attention. Her advice is too on-target and truthful. If they actually followed it, they might turn themselves around a bit.

[AspenRose]

16. "Howard Dean was right."

DAMN that's a keeper.

[H2O Man]

18. Years ago,

she wrote some impressive things about fathers' rights and responsibilities. I didn't know anything about her at the time, and assumed that she was okay. As I read more of her writings, I found her to be off the mark on most other issues.

[BlooInBloo]

19. They're drowning! Quick - somebody throw them an anvil!!!

[Zorro]

22. She's doing this to save the Republican Party from itself

That's her motive.

I hope she doesn't succeed.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

23. She won't

but only because the base is becoming narrower and more rattling-the-bars-insane every day. Take a look at Freepleland. They see no cognitive dissonance between imperialist Neocons, batshit theocons, libertarian/Randian economic royalists and isolationist paleocons. Anyone who thinks these people all have common interests belongs in the laughing academy. Therefore, Freeperdom.

[AtomicKitten]

24. Can't wait for the GOP internal struggle to ensue.

I'm thinking blind-folded Edward Scissorhands.

:popcorn:

[RedLetterRev]

26. She had me at oogedy-boogedy

:rofl: