The Great Rift

Officially I gave up trying to understand the religious right years ago; their astonishing irrationality and breathtaking inconsistency (combined with their cagey political success) were bad for my stress levels until I reserved myself to the fact that they're just bat-shit-crazy ideologues who don't deserve the normal human right of an opinion.

The latest head-scratcher, while good news for anyone who wants to see the Republican party shear off large chunks of Focus on the Family flakes, concerns not just the backroom deal to 'consider' putting up their own candidate should Sir Rudy be given the Republican nod, but also their silence toward the Deciderer. There's no way, they reason, that they should have to put their incredible clout behind a pro-choice conservative. This, from the folks that put W in office, presumably so that he could take action to eviscerate Roe V. Wade. Given the Republican majority in Congress at the time, they must've been falling down in ecstatic anticipation of the changes afoot.

But those changes never happened. No Roe V. Wade gutting. Very few challenges to abortion rights at the federal level (and none that were successful, I believe). Very few challenges at the state level (though a few successful ones). With a born-again President and a majority in Congress indebted to the anti-abortion lobby, nowhere near the rollback I expected in January 2000 was actually carried out. But I haven't heard a peep from Dobson, Limbaugh, or the rest of their ilk regarding their boys' failure. In fact, I've heard pretty little about abortion at all outside of election cycles.

I think this means two things:

1) Most Republican politicians don't actually agree with the hard line stances they profess in order to garner support; more likely they agree with Bill Clinton that abortions should be safe, legal, and rare.

2) The tremendously powerful conservative political movement in the U.S. is on the ropes not due to their own failures, but thanks mostly to the Republican party's stellar failures of the past six years. But they're between Bill O'Reilly and another rock: they can't effectively chastise the very politicians they need to succeed. If the wingnuts stick to their ideological guns and back a third-party candidate, his (of COURSE it will be a man) run will be laughable at best, and will do for whoever the Republicans choose what Nader did for Gore. So they can either realize that their minority status and the War of on Terror have conspired to strip them of power for the next few years, or they can deny that truth, and embarrass themselves on a well-lit stage. (Following that, an effective and sustained offensive (but from whom?) could marginalize their voice for the extremist, anti-American, reactionary nuttiness that it is. Granted, you shouldn't hold your breath for that, but one can always dream.)