The GOP heads over the falls

Frist is rowing the boat:

Talking Points Memo covers this well:

Bill Frist is going to participate in a big anti-filibuster telecast, sponsored by the Family Research Council, in which Democratic opposition to President Bush’s most conervative judicial appointments will be cast as a Democratic war against believing Christians.

A flier advertising the event refers to “the filibuster against people of faith” and says: “The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith.”

So Frist wants to cast this, literally, as a war between the believers and the unbelievers. I guess this is part of toning down the rhetoric.

(How much do we have to endure so that this guy can run for president?)

Also on hand for the event will be arch-wingnut and SpongeBob persecutor James Dobson, a man with hands about as clean as Torquemada’s, Chuck Colson and various others.

I don’t know which is more amusing – the wingnut jihad against a federal judiciary that is already predominantly Republican or the fact that the intellectual and often literal descendents of the upholders of Jim Crow now seek to enlist the dark legacy of segregation as some sort of arrow in their rhetorical quiver.

Actually, perhaps it’s even more amusing that the same folks spent the 1990s using the same methods to thwart numerous Clinton judicial appointments.

Unfortunately, not before they destroy the economy, the environment, and our national security…

Why couldn’t they get a real bible and gavel for the kid to hold? Or, alternately, why couldn’t they get a pair that didn’t look so clearly photoshopped? And speaking of photoshopping, could they possibly have picked a poster that begs more for photoshopping? It probably took less than 30 seconds for the first variant that had the kid holding dicks showed up.

In a private letter to Frist, NEWSWEEK has learned, 31 of the 165 members of his medical-school class accused him of using his medical degree improperly. Frist’s office declined to comment; according to public records, at least 13 of the 31 had donated money to Democrats in the last five years. Still, Dr. Lewis Rose, an oncologist who said he voted for Bush last year, insisted Frist had overstepped. “He had no right to use the cloak of the Hippocratic oath, no matter who was right,” Rose told NEWSWEEK. “He’s got medical training and a medical perspective, but he is not a practicing physician and has no business using that in politics. Period. If he does, he won’t get any of his classmates’ votes who signed this.”

For now, for Frist, wooing Harvard alumni is the least of his concerns. Far more urgent is winning the pre-presidential allegiance of the Republicans’ grass-roots Christian soldiers. With no obvious successor to Bush—except for brother Jeb in Florida, who may be a little too obvious for his own good—the competition for this crucial constituency already is as ferocious as a last lap at Talladega. There are plenty of less-encumbered competitors eager to outdo Frist. The potential list includes fellow Southerners such as Sen. George Allen of Virginia, Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi. Another is Frist’s third-in-command, Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. He told NEWSWEEK that he would consider impeachment proceedings against the federal judges in the Schiavo case; that he favors term limits (rather than lifetime appointments) for federal judges, and that he would consider redrawing the boundaries of judicial districts to break up the liberal Ninth Circuit. Frist, aides said, does not support any such ideas.

Frist’s solution to an “out of control” judiciary is limited to easing the filibuster rule. But winning the vote to do so is a difficult task even though he has a 55-vote majority. Three Republicans have abandoned him—including John McCain—and several more have made noises about doing so.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7529448/site/newsweek/page/2/

So, like, Dr. Evil is running the GOP right?

Every time I hear one of them make their opinions known about virtually any issue, I can’t help but picture an evil man petting a cat looking at a thousand TV monitors and saying “Eeeexcellent”

Frist is carrying tons of baggage, and he’s a Senator. Good luck on that Presidential run Senator.

Do you like cats, Mr Frist?

Frist’s raw pandering to the American Taliban puts him in hot water with his own denomination:

As the Senate battle over judicial confirmations became increasingly entwined with religious themes, officials of several major Protestant denominations on Thursday accused the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, of violating the principles of his own Presbyterian church and urged him to drop out of a Sunday telecast that depicts Democrats as “against people of faith.”

Dr. Frist’s participation has rekindled a debate over the role of religion in public life that may be complicating his efforts to overcome the Democrats’ use of the filibuster, a parliamentary tactic used by Congressional minorities, to block President Bush’s judicial nominees.

Really shows how skillful Bush is at riding the edge with the zealots.

And how incompetent the Democrats are at pointing out this has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with Bush nominating crackpots.

Lets not be too hard on the dems. They’ve been talking, but you can’t force the press to report it.

Mark Pryor lashed out Wednesday at the Christian evangelicals who have joined the attack on Democratic filibusters of President Bush’s judicial nominees.

Their tactics threaten “to make the followers of Jesus Christ just another special-interest group,” Pryor said in a conference call with Arkansas reporters. “It is presumptuous of them to think that they represent all Christians in America, even to say they represent all evangelical Christians,” added Pryor, 42, a first-term Democrat who has considered himself an evangelical Christian for 25 years.

The term generally refers to members of conservative Christian denominations who believe that proselytizing is an essential part of the religious experience.

Pryor said he was “very disappointed” that some of the movement’s leaders “have entered into this fray.”

Pryor’s comments come at a time when the “religious right” is exerting a stronger influence in national politics, with many Republican lawmakers willing to fight for its agenda and most Democratic congressmen loath to speak out against it.

[url=http://insidedenver.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN_21_3717209,00.html]Here’s Salazar:

Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., lashed out at Focus on the Family on Thursday, saying the group is using “un-Christian” political tactics in the fight over White House judicial appointments.

Salazar defended Democrats’ right to filibuster what they consider objectionable nominees and blasted the Colorado Springs-based evangelical Christian group for recent ads urging him to “STOP the nonsense.”

“I do think that what has happened here is there has been a hijacking of the U.S. Senate by what I call the religious right wing of the country,” Salazar said at a Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday.

He singled out Focus on the Family by name, objecting to full-page newspaper ads that the ministry’s political arm recently placed, targeting 20 senators in 15 states.

“I think what has happened is Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and become an appendage of the Republican Party,” Salazar said in an interview. “I think it’s using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way.”

I’m sure you’ll be surprised to find that Family Research Council are utter hypocrits:

As a last measure of the defense of the minority, it has had many supporters over the years, like the very people of faith who sponsored yesterday`s Justice Sunday, the group Family Research Council.

Yesterday it was opposed to filibusters. Seven years ago, it was in favor of them. Thats when Clinton and a then-Democratic plurality in the Senate wanted a man named James Hormel to become the ambassador to Luxembourg. Hormel, of the Spam and other meats Hormels, was gay, as the Senate minority bottled up Hormels nomination with filibusters and threats of filibusters, minority relative to cloture, to breaking up a filibuster.

They did that for a year and a half. The Family Research Council`s senior writer, Steven Schwartz, appeared on National Public Radio at the time and explained the value, even the necessity, of the filibuster.

“The Senate,” he said, “is not a majoritarian institution, like the House of Representatives is. It is a deliberative body, and its got a number of checks and balances built into our government. [b]The filibuster is one of those checks in which a majority cannot just sheerly force its will, even if they have a majority of votes in some cases. Thats why there are things like filibusters, and other things that give minorities in the Senate some power to slow things up, to hold things up, and let things be aired properly.[/b]”

From Countdown.

I dont get it, the kid has a book and a hammer! what more could he want?

A sickle.

and some boots too.