Ya Think? The impact of Republican Extremism

The amazingly, huge gender gap and the obvious lack of support by Hispanic Americans for Romney and other Republicans is troubling the party’s establishment. Republicans have also lost the vote of young people who don’t understand why state officials are obsessed with every one’s personal sex life.  Republicans have been denying the party has escalated their attempts to eradicate women’s constitutional rights to abortion but the number of laws introduced by states in the last two years has been monumental.  They have moved to directly attacking other women’s preventative health services like birth control access and funding of Planned Parenthood.   They’ve passed laws that allow law enforcement to stop folks on the street based on no other reason than they might possibly “look” illegal and demand proof of citizenship.  They’ve chipped away at labor bargaining rights, citizen voting access, and science education by supporting bogus religious-based claims on climate change and evolution. They’ve tried everything possible to deny basic civil rights to GLBT Americans by passing laws that use a purely religious definition of marriage and parenthood.

In the last two years, there’s been a surge in legislation that seems squarely aimed at inserting religious dogma into law and enacting privatization schemes for prisons, schools, and all levels of public services.  There’s also been noticeable defunding of public education and public health access.   They’ve insisted they’ve been focused on the economy.  However, even there, the sole focus appears to be taxing poor people, providing tax breaks to the rich and corporations, and decimating public services at all levels of government.  The nation’s infrastructure has never been in worse shape.  It’s at the point where it’s not only dangerous but it threatens our commercial competitiveness.  Our transportation, telecommunications and power infrastructures are antiquated and falling apart.

So, now they are scrambling to get back to an “economic” message to ramrod right wing panderer Willard Romney into the White House.  They think we’re all stupid and we’re going to forget two years of legislation aimed at driving us back into the dark ages.

Here’s a snippet of a NYT article that catches the party elite grumbling about state efforts to turn the country into something that resembles a theocratic, corporate state.  Considering they’ve gotten in bed with these reactionaries to win elections in the past, they really shouldn’t grumble now that the party’s been purged of all but the most extreme.

But this year, with the nation heading into the heart of a presidential race and voters consumed by the country’s economic woes, much of the debate in statehouses has centered on social issues.

Tennessee enacted a law this month intended to protect teachers who question the theory of evolution. Arizona moved to ban nearly all abortions after 20 weeks, and Mississippi imposed regulations that could close the state’s only abortion clinic. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed a law allowing the state’s public schools to teach about abstinence instead of contraception.

The recent flurry of socially conservative legislation, on issues ranging from expanding gun rights to placing new restrictions on abortion, comes as Republicans at the national level are eager to refocus attention on economic issues.

Some Republican strategists and officials, reluctant to be identified because they do not want to publicly antagonize the party’s base, fear that the attention these divisive social issues are receiving at the state level could harm the party’s chances in November, when its hopes of winning back the White House will most likely rest with independent voters in a handful of swing states.

One seasoned strategist called the problem potentially huge.

No amount of cajoling is going to get me to vote for a single Republican right now.  Remember, I’m an independent who used to be a Republican back in the 1980s and most of the 1990s.  I’ve been horrified at what’s been going on in the state I live in now (LA) and the state where I grew up (NE).  The Red states have gone crazy passing laws that favor narrow religious tenets and economics policies that do nothing but benefit donor interests.  It’s appalling.

The risks of focusing on social issues were highlighted this week when the American Legislative Exchange Council, a business-backed group that pushes conservative laws at the state level, announced that it would be refocusing its efforts on economic issues. Several sponsors had recently withheld their support after the group came under public pressure for advocating voting restrictions and self-defense legislation modeled on Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which became an issue after the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

It is not only Republican-led states that have turned to social issues as some of the immediate pressures of the fiscal crisis have begun to ease: Washington and Maryland, which are controlled by Democrats, both enacted laws legalizing same-sex marriage this year, and Connecticut voted this month to repeal its death penalty.

But Republicans have more states: recent election victories have left them in control of both the executive and legislative branches of 21, while Democrats control both branches in only 11, and power is divided in the others.

The article focuses on Tennessee which recently passed an anti-science agenda dripping of fundamental religious myths.  It also focuses on Virginia which has become synonymous with Vaginal Ultrasound State Rape.  Both governors are having difficulty getting economic messages out because of these measures.

After Tennessee’s Republican-led Legislature passed a bill to protect school teachers who review “the scientific strengths and weaknesses of existing scientific theories” in areas including “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning,” it drew denunciations from a number of scientists and civil libertarians. Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, decided this month to let the bill become law without his signature.

Mr. Haslam said in an interview that the law had passed by a wide margin, so the Legislature could have easily overridden a veto. And he said that while he feared that the law would muddy state policy for teachers rather than clarify it, he had been assured by state education officials that it would not actually change the way science is taught in Tennessee.

But he said he also worried that the law could damage the reputation of a state that was home to another famous legal battle over the teaching of evolution, the Scopes “monkey trial” of 1925.

“One of the things as governor, you’re always out — I’m out selling Tennessee all the time to businesses and other folks,” Mr. Haslam said during a recent visit to New York, adding that the state had heavily focused on the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics in recent years. “So you worry about misperceptions, sure. I wouldn’t be honest if I said I didn’t do that. But if I thought it was actually going to harm the scientific standards, I would have vetoed it.”

When Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, appeared on the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” last week to talk about his state’s successful efforts to lower its unemployment rate, he found himself facing a number of questions about something else: the law he signed requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before getting an abortion, which received a great deal of attention this year.

“We had 860 bills this session; one of them reached my desk on abortion,” Mr. McDonnell said. “So to say that it was some broader trend is not the case.”

So far this year, 75 bills placing restrictions on abortion have passed at least one legislative chamber, which is more than normally pass in an election year, according to a tally by the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization. But it is below the pace established last year, when Republicans first won control of many statehouses and a record 127 restrictions were passed by at least one house of the legislatures during the first quarter.

Bills expanding gun rights have passed in a number of states. Maine recently joined several others that passed a bill prohibiting restrictions on the right to carry or sell firearms during a declared state of emergency. Arizona enacted a law requiring law enforcement agencies to sell forfeited guns within a year, rather than destroying them, as many local agencies do. Oklahoma enacted a law that will limit the liability that gun ranges face for accidents.

Now, as legislative sessions continue in many states, social issues continue to be debated and, sometimes, passed. On Tuesday, a Tennessee legislative committee advanced a measure that some have dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill because it “prohibits the teaching of or furnishing of materials on human sexuality other than heterosexuality” in elementary school.

If I were the governors of these states, I’d be worried about attracting businesses and professionals to the state.  My Ob/Gyn daughter wants to flee Nebraska as soon as she finishes her residency.  Can you imagine living in a state where doing your job of saving your patient’s life could lead to a murder charge because a dying fetus wasn’t sufficiently dead?  What sort of state dictates what manner of care a doctor can provide in life or death situations?  Can you imagine the liability insurance on that situation?  Neither of the girls are interested in staying in Louisiana for similar reasons.  My youngest has been complaining the last two years about what the Governor’s jihad against public universities has done to class availability and size at LSU. I’m looking to get out too.  Is the gender, age, and race voting gap any surprise to any one?  I can’t imagine it is.

Here’s evidence of Republican extremism in North Carolina.

Lawmakers passed the one of the most extreme and intrusive anti-choice bills in the country that will force teenage rape victims who become pregnant to watch an ultrasound before they can decide to end the pregnancy.

The marriage discrimination amendment on the ballot May 8 is one of the most extreme and broad in the country with its potential impact on domestic violence statutes, employee benefits and a host of other laws, not to mention that it will write discrimination into our constitution.

Then there are the deep cuts to education and environmental protections, restrictions on voting rights, allowing for profit virtual charter schools to operate in the state, allowing concealed weapons in parks and playgrounds, and the abolition of highly successful programs from the N.C. Teaching Fellows to state drug courts.

And that’s short list. Evidence abounds that extremists are running the Republican Party and party leaders know they need to tone things down as the general election approaches.

But they can’t seem to help themselves.

The leading candidate in the Republican primary for the 8th District congressional race is Richard Hudson, who was a top staff member for former Congressman Robin Hayes.

Hudson is raising the most money and is clearly the choice of the establishment of the Republican Party to run against Democratic incumbent Democrat Larry Kissell in the fall in what is a very winnable district thanks to the gerrymandering of the district lines by the General Assembly.

But Hudson appears to be a “birther,” a moniker given to extremists who question the citizenship of President Obama.

Roll Call reported this week that Hudson said at a Tea Party forum that there is still some question about whether or not Obama was a citizen. Hudson told Roll Call “I think there’s a lot of people that think that he’s not a citizen. I don’t know.”

Hudson also said he hadn’t seen Obama’s birth certificate. And this is the choice of the mainstream of the Republicans.

And it that’s not enough, the keynote speaker at the Union County Republican Party Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner is the infamous Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio is currently under investigation by the U.S Justice Department for possible corruption.

He has also been holding news conferences lately claiming that President Obama’s birth certificate is a forgery, much to the delight of the fringe far-right groups who seemed to be the only ones paying attention to Arpaio until the Union County Republicans and Richard Hudson stepped up.

Even swing states like Michigan are experiencing religious and social jihad from extremists.

In the 2010 mid-term elections in Michigan, voter turnout declined and Republicans captured a veto-proof majority in the state Senate and a large majority in the state House. In addition, Republicans won races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general, and a majority on the state Supreme Court.

They have unleashed a brutal attack. Almost 90 bills curtailing the rights of labor and many more attacking democratic rights have been introduced.

With the current extremist crowd running the Republican Party, give them control of all three branches of government and they will go hog wild. The lesson of Michigan is clear: the far-right cannot be given the power to govern on the state or national level.

The Republican overreach is activating labor and democratic forces here that are determined to retake the state legislature. But as the following examples show, the damage from the bills they have rammed through will have a deep impact.

Attack on the unemployed, poor, working people and seniors

With double-digit unemployment, losing more manufacturing jobs than any other state and new jobs almost non-existent, the state legislature passed a retroactive 48-month lifetime limit on welfare cash assistance. Almost 40,000 people, the majority children, have been cut off. In addition, unemployment benefits have been cut from 26 week to 20 weeks. Other legislation will cut the amount jobless workers are eligible to collect.

One of the first acts of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder was to lower the corporate tax rate by almost $2 billion. The loss in revenue was made up by taxing seniors’ pensions, slashing the earned income tax credit for low-income workers and cutting funding of public schools.

While there is no evidence of voter fraud in Michigan elections, Senate Bill 754, part of an 11-bill legislative package unveiled by Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson called the “Secure and Fair Elections initiative,” places new hurdles on voting and voter registration campaigns. Individuals and organizations like the League of Women Voters, who have been registering voters for 90 years, would have to be trained and certified by the secretary of state before registering voters. Other provisions require completed registration forms to be submitted within 24 hours. Photo identification requirements for absentee ballots would make voting more difficult for seniors, the disabled and others.

Most of the bills come from boiler plates developed by ALEC, Citizens United for Life, and religious groups focused on discrimination against GLBT, women, and religious and racial minorities.  Here’s another example from Minnesota.

Sen. Dave Thompson (R-Lakeville) will introduce S2881, an Anti-Muslim Sharia Law bill, at the Capitol on Monday. His bill is a boilerplate copy-pasted verbatim from a far right policy group. The bill seeks to protect Minnesota from the ever-encroaching Phantom Menace of Islamic religious law.

Anti-muslim bigots claim fear of Muslims building mosques “all over” and wanting to take over the United States as justification.

Last time I checked, The United States allowed free practice of all religions.

Furthermore, Anti-muslim bigots mainly want to fear-monger that all Muslims are terrorists.

I can’t wait for Sen. Thompson’s speech on how dangerous all Muslims are and how they want to build mosques everywhere and take over. Hopefully, he’ll channel a little Michele Bachmann while he’s at it.

I hope someone questions Thompson about this bill because like most ALEC muppets, he’s likely to be quite ignorant on the subject.

Can Thompson point to a single ruling by MN judges which allowed Sharia Law to overrule a MN law?

Has Thompson considered how his bill might stop Minnesota companies from entering into contracts with foreign corporations or foreign governments?

Many of the front pagers here are focused on specific issues.  We’ve noticed an increase in boilerplate laws representing extremists positions in nearly all of our issues.  I think it’s important to focus on these groups, find out which pols introduce this type of legislation, and work like crazy to get them out of state, local, and federal office.  It may be more difficult in a state like mine.  Louisiana has switched from purple status to bright red since a lot of people were driven out after Katrina from the more Democratic areas of the state.  However, since these laws and candidates are popping up everywhere, it’s important to educate ourselves and our neighbors before it’s too late.  For example, join forces with those people putting pressure on corporations to drop ALEC.  That’s a good first step.