Monday, February 27, 2012

It's Rick Mania Time

Rick Santorum maybe about faith and family, but freedom? Certainly not for all Americans.


Rick Santorum has managed to make himself topic du jour in the blogosphere this Monday morning, which is something considering the Oscars were last night. I'll have to join the Rick mania since I have not heard of most of the Best Picture nominees, much less seen any of them.  It seems lately if a movie isn't on Turner Classic Movies or the International Film Channel, I haven't seen it.  Ergo I have to write about Rick Santorum.  Well, bummer.

What makes Rick the topic du jour is his statement to George Stephanopulous that JFK's 1960 Houston speech on religious freedom 'makes him want to throw up'.  OK Rick, but you might also mention that JFK's speech to that suspicious Evangelical Houston crowd, helped pave the way for you to be the front runner in the Republican party some sixty years later. You actually owe President Kennedy and the Democrats a thank you for where you are now.  Actually that last thought makes me want to throw up.

I admit I have a very difficult time understanding why Rick Santorum, who also seems very willing to throw up on the entire social justice teaching of the Catholic Church,  is receiving any support from our Catholic bishops.  Seriously, I have been giving a lot of thought to what the USCCB is really up to and why Ricki Sanctimonious is so important to their plans, and the plans of the Republican Party.  But God is good and He does provide, and in today's blogo mania about Rick there have been some real nuggets that have helped my understanding.  The first nugget was an article entitled "Why 2012 Is the Republicans Last Chance."  It's written by Jonathan Chait for New York Magazine.  It deals with demographics and how those demographics spell doom for the current Republican Party. The following excerpt is from the opening paragraphs:


......Rick Santorum warns his audiences, “We are reaching a tipping point, folks, when those who pay are the minority and those who receive are the majority.” Even such a sober figure as Mitt Romney regularly says things like “We are only inches away from no longer being a free economy,” and that this election “could be our last chance.”

The Republican Party is in the grips of many fever dreams. But this is not one of them. To be sure, the apocalyptic ideological analysis—that “freedom” is incompatible with Clinton-era tax rates and Massachusetts-style health care—is pure crazy. But the panicked strategic analysis, and the sense of urgency it gives rise to, is actually quite sound. The modern GOP—the party of Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes—is staring down its own demographic extinction. Right-wing warnings of impending tyranny express, in hyperbolic form, well-grounded dread: that conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests. And this impending doom has colored the party’s frantic, fearful response to the Obama presidency.

The GOP has reason to be scared. Obama’s election was the vindication of a prediction made several years before by journalist John Judis and political scientist Ruy Teixeira in their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. Despite the fact that George W. Bush then occupied the White House, Judis and Teixeira argued that demographic and political trends were converging in such a way as to form a ­natural-majority coalition for Democrats.

The Republican Party had increasingly found itself confined to white voters, especially those lacking a college degree and rural whites who, as Obama awkwardly put it in 2008, tend to “cling to guns or religion.” Meanwhile, the Democrats had ­increased their standing among whites with graduate degrees, particularly the growing share of secular whites, and remained dominant among racial minorities. As a whole, Judis and Teixeira noted, the electorate was growing both somewhat better educated and dramatically less white, making every successive election less favorable for the GOP. And the trends were even more striking in some key swing states. Judis and Teixeira highlighted Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona, with skyrocketing Latino populations, and Virginia and North Carolina, with their influx of college-educated whites, as the most fertile grounds for the expanding Democratic base.

 Obama’s victory carried out the blueprint. Campaign reporters cast the election as a triumph of Obama’s inspirational message and cutting-edge organization, but above all his sweeping win reflected simple demography. Every year, the nonwhite proportion of the electorate grows by about half a percentage point—meaning that in every presidential election, the minority share of the vote increases by 2 percent, a huge amount in a closely divided country. One measure of how thoroughly the electorate had changed by the time of Obama’s election was that, if college-­educated whites, working-class whites, and minorities had cast the same proportion of the votes in 1988 as they did in 2008, Michael Dukakis would have, just barely, won. By 2020—just eight years away—nonwhite voters should rise from a quarter of the 2008 electorate to one third. In 30 years, nonwhites will outnumber whites......

These numbers explain why the USCCB has become so important to the Republican party and why Ricki Sanctimonious is running on a platform of 'faith and family values'.  It's called the Hispanic vote.  It's the reason the New Apostolic Reformation is losing it's political ascendancy in the culture wars.  Hispanics are Catholic.  The Newt has been working for last six years on his cementing his 'Catholic' qualifications, which should have been a big tip off since Newt has always been about Newt's political ambitions.  Unfortunately for Newt, by the time he 'found' Catholicism, he had cycled through two wives and three adulterous relationships and somehow failed to engender any child units. Rick, on the other hand, has  had one wife and seven child units.  Hmmmm, apparently one can only take religious hypocrisy to a certain level--even in the Republican party.  Newt has suddenly found himself way behind Rick.

The USCCB gains by becoming thee voice in the culture wars.  This certainly helps undercut the global plans of the apocalyptic home of Sarah Palin, the  New Apostolic Reformation, and their not so secret plans for creating their Earthly Kingdom for Jesus before Jesus comes with His nuclear/biogenic angelic army. Since various and sundry units of the NAR are wreaking havoc amongst the Catholic population in South and Central America and Africa, the Vatican gains even more if the USCCB can cement itself as the loudest moral voice in the US, because the US is where most of the money fueling the NAR is coming from.  And one should never forget that Rick is not just closely connected to Opus Dei, he's also closely connected to The Family who is closely connected to the NAR. Hmmmm, kind of makes one wonder where Rick's godly allegiances really lay.  In any event, it's certainly not to the US Constitution and it's silly notions of the separation of Church and State.  That makes him 'throw up'.  Whether he's uber Catholic or some Evangelical hybrid mix, Rick is a Dominionist, and Dominionism is not Catholic, and that is not where this country or this world needs to go.  It's the longest running fear based human delusion of all time.

I encourage readers to ponder the entire linked article.  It's worth the read.  I also encourage readers to check this article by Frank Cocozzelli over at Open Tabernacle, and Bill Lyndsey's musings at Bilgrimage. Both articles have links worth chasing down.

11 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks Kathy. I'm just glad to see that while Rick is all over the internet so is Jonathan Chait's article because Jonathan explains why Rick is all over the internet.

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    2. Chait's article is very insightful, but I don't think the bishops are reading it. They would rather recreate the glory days of Cardinal Spellman, who has been dead for over 40 years! Kudos also for using my favorite name for Rick, Ricky Sanctimonious.

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  2. This is a very good analysis. I think the freedom thinking people of the USA are not going to go for NAR.

    St. Rick seems to be tapping into a deep vain of fear in the country, that unfortunately the USCCB supports. To me it sounds like the 1950's. There are enemies everywhere. Communists. Our sacred institutions are under attack. St. Rick is the righteous one supported by many a bishop from Catholic Inc. who will restore everything to its pristine glory.

    The other reality is that the USA continues to mature under the steady leadership of the president. The USA is not some religious banana republic up for grabs by fear mongers, St. Rick, or the rc bishops.

    Oh, if only the rc bishops would get back to the gospel.

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    1. I think you are right about going back to the fifties, but it's more than finding a substitute for communism. That substitute is obviously secularism. I think it's more weird or something. It's like trying to convince whites they still are the ascendant folks while not alienating Hispanics on the way up the ladder.

      In the old days this would be the open, everyone has a chance American dream. This time around, there's a kind of nightmare quality about what Santorum and the USCCB seem to be about. It's not equality amongst all people. It's something different, more along gender rather than race lines.

      I used to be a bail agent in Salt Lake City when Mint Romney was assuring everyone the 2000 Winter Olympics were staged with nary an illegal immigrant. I found that surprising since I was posting bail for a lot of illegals trying to avoid the weekly INS sweep in the Salt Lake County Jail. The over riding memory I have of this time is that the women could not believe their men could be thrown in jail for beating them up--neither could the men. The women really thought this was way cool, the men, thought American society was, I'd give the Spanish term, but will only say here, 'sissified' and bitched like hell.

      Catholicism in the US is a really mixed bag. The Irish version is giving way to the Latino version and they are not the same at all. It will be fascinating to see how this all plays out, but I have zero hope our bishops will collectively get back to the gospel. Zero hope.

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    2. "Our sacred institutions are under attack. St. Rick is the righteous one supported by many a bishop from Catholic Inc. who will restore everything to its pristine glory. The other reality is that the USA continues to mature under the steady leadership of the president....."
      "
      The GOP , of which I used to be a member of, in it's current campaigning reminds me of this quote from Chesterton...
      “He admires England, but he does not love her; for we admire things with reasons, but love them without reason. He admires England because she is strong, not because she is English.” With the exception of Ron Paul, all of the Repub canidates have blasted Obama for his weak, apologetic foreign policy. Note also that Ron Paul has not taken the lead in the GOP's Anybody But Romney Contest this year because of it. Most of the GOP constituents are fearful of no longer being able to wave their USA #1 Foam Fingers anymore. Whites will still be a majority but not as much as they used to be and that worries them. In an arriving era of rising energy and commodities costs our consumer lifestyle , the American Way of Life,will have to readjust and that worries them. As the Iraq and Afghan wars show that even the most sophisticated and capable military still has it's limitations. Whereas Obama and to an extent Paul is trying in vain it seems to show that diplomacy has strengths of its own in promoting the common good. The GOP will hear none of it though.

      That's what unnerves me about Santorum and the USCCB is the apocalyptic rhetoric that they are engaging in. As our nation and the world is changing we need vision not fear "...my people perish for lack of vision." No longer being the Superpower isn't such a bad thing, but Santorum, Gingrich and Romney think otherwise. While I did have disagreement with the contraception mandate I think the Obama administration has been amenable to the moral concerns of Catholics and other pro-life Christians. The Bishops actions just seem to be stirring up more acrimony against the President.

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    3. John your middle paragraph is pretty prescient. I too used to be a Republican until St Ronnie's second term. I think I finally woke up to the fact America could not sustain it's consumption, nor our military, at the expense of the rest of the world.

      I too find it interesting that Ron Paul has not ascended to the next 'not Mitt' Republican candidate, but then Ron is 'not quite Republican'. He reminds me more of Ross Perot than a Republican. I just find it fascinating that he was the Tea Party's best Tea Partier until......uhmmm I don't know, maybe until the religious right realized they had been trumped by the Koch brothers and rolled up their sleeves and reasserted themselves.

      Santorum is scarey precisely because of his apocalyptic rhetoric. That's all Dominionism and that's not remotely Catholic. Actually it's heresy, but I doubt the USCCB will be excommunicating Rick any time soon.

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  3. The bishops are counting on distracting the people in the pews from the impending trial of Msgr. Lynn in Philadelphia, at which Trial I expect to see a lot of dirty linen aired in the open.

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    1. I do too Kathy, tons of dirty linen and the dirt will be from Rome as well as Philadelphia.

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  4. Interesting article here. I wonder how well Santorum will do in our PA primary. I still think that Romney will get the nomination. I don't think that Santorum's outspokenness about birth control will gain him many votes. The conservative Catholics will probably go for him but in the general election I don't see how Santorum can pull off a win. Mark

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    1. To be honest Mark, I don't see how Mitt can either. I think Jonothan Chait's analysis is dead on, which is why the Republicans need the USCCB to pull in the Hispanic vote over family issues.

      And one other note, the Republicans are now suddenly all about dismembering public education in favor of private religious schools, charter schools, and other 'competition'. This is a very transparent attempt at manipulating voter regestration amongst younger generations. Next thing you know States will be passing laws demanding a certain SAT score in order to register to vote.

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