White Christian Party

Howard Dean didn't get it quite right, regardless of whether his comments were offensive. He could have made an irrefutable argument that the Republican Party has a history going back at least to Nixon's "southern strategy" of adjusting its message to capture the votes of whites agitated by the civil rights movement. There are numerous bits of evidence to cite. Remember Willie Horton? What about "faith-based initiatives?" The best and most sophisticated appeal to the fears of white Christians may be Dobson and Frist's accusation that trying to block neanderthal judicial appointments amounted to an attack on people of faith. Todays Republican party resorts to racial fear, homophobia, objection to women and their physicians making decisions without government regulation, religious paranoia, and several other cynical tactics that have nothing to do with anything positive the Republicans offer.

You might think Bush would have touted his first four years in the election last year. What really happened was that he put all his resources into trivial attacks on Kerry. Disappointingly, the corporate media must not have noticed. The Republican party does not behave in any Christian way I recognize, but clearly is where it is today because of its romance with conservative Christians.