Scientology for Rednecks: What the GOP Has Become Michael S. Lofgren, Former Republican Congressional Staffer
As with many religions, political parties have a tendency to start as a movement, transform into a business, and finally degenerate into a racket designed to fleece the yokels. One organization which has gone out of its way to illustrate this evolution is the Republican Party. And it has done so with a national scope and fundraising apparatus that would have made Jimmy Swaggart or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker mute with awe.
By "Republican Party" I mean both the formal party and its extended apparat: talk radio and the Fox News empire, pressure groups like the Family Research Council, allegedly "educational" 501(c)3 organizations like the Heritage Foundation, direct mail outfits descended from the original Richard Viguerie mother ship, polling firms like Rasmussen's, and the Tea Party itself (the latter nevertheless asserts its non-affiliation with the GOP despite its having sponsored the Florida Republican presidential candidates' debate in 2011).
Unchastened by its electoral drubbing in 2012, the GOP circled the wagons once again. Is their former colleague, the war-disabled Bob Dole, pleading with the Senate GOP to ratify a harmless United Nations treaty recommending international standards for treatment of the handicapped? No way, the UN's black helicopters might descend on America! Are hurricane victims still out of their homes in the depth of winter? Screw 'em, they're not our constituents. Is the GOP's filibuster of a nominee for secretary of defense (and a former GOP colleague to boot) unprecedented? Precedents were made to be broken, and traitors have to be punished. Indeed, freshman Senator Ted Cruz, visually and substantively reprising the role of Joe McCarthy, has even implied treason, slyly insinuating that nominee Chuck Hagel might be in the pay of North Korea or Iran. It doesn't even end there: the lunatic Right is now suggesting that John Brennan, the CIA Director-designee, and certainly a man involved in killing his share of Muslims, is himself a secret Muslim convert, just like his boss, the president!
