It’s no news to us in Liberal America that since the turn of the century, the Republican Party has been on a double-time march to the right. But a recent article in Newsweek suggests that we may have underestimated the speed of the march. A number of Republican politicians have begun openly embracing policy goals that have long been mainstays of the militia movement.
The most recent example of this has been the recent hooey in Texas over Jade Helm. Remember, worries about this being a prelude to an armed invasion of Texas that Governor Greg Abbott went as far as to promise to keep an eye on the military. However, according to Tarso Ramos of Political Research Associates, this spike in supposedly mainstream GOP politicians embracing militia movement shibboleth dates back to President Obama’s election. When Obama took office, Ramos says it started “a whole new wave of Patriot activity.”
A recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that since Obama took office, the number of armed anti-government extremist outfits has jumped to 874–16 more than the previous high of 858 at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. The difference, according to Ramos, is that this extremism is now being channeled into the Tea Party, which he describes as “a coalition between those working in the formal system and those focused outside.”
How crazy has it gotten? Well, in 2012 the Republican Party officially went on record as embracing at least one conspiracy theory. You may recall that last year, I told you that now-Senator Joni Ernst was caught on tape ranting about the dangers of “Agenda 21,” a sustainable development plan adopted at Earth Summit 1992. She claimed it was intended to force farmers off their land and herd them into the cities, where they could be more easily controlled.
However, this can’t be easily dismissed as an unhinged rant from Iowa’s Sarah Palin. At the 2012 Republican convention, the Republican National Committee declared Agenda 21 a “destructive and insidious scheme” intended to force a “socialist/communist redistribution of wealth.” The Republican platform included a similar statement, which declared Agenda 21 would be “erosive of national sovereignty.” I guess this means former president George H. W. Bush is a pinko. After all, he signed a statement embracing Agenda 21, along with 177 other world leaders.
We’ve also seen a number of attempts to revive the utterly discredited theory of nullification–the idea that a state can simply refuse to enforce a federal law or court decision that it considers unconstitutional. Legislators in dozens of states have introduced laws to exempt their states from federal gun laws, Obamacare, and education standards, among other things. To give you an idea just how loony this is, the Federalist Society agrees that states can’t simply refuse to enforce laws they don’t like. The Federalist Society, people.
If the Supreme Court, as widely expected, declares marriage equality to be the law of the land, we may very well see a spike in laws nullifying any such decision–something that was actually encouraged last year by Christian apologist Frank Turek. Never mind that the Supreme Court stated rather firmly in Cooper v. Aaron that states don’t have the power to nullify federal law. That hasn’t stopped Oklahoma state attorney general Scott Pruitt to set up a “Federalism Unit” dedicated to fighting federal “abuses of power.”
Although some parallels have been drawn between this climate and the climate before the Oklahoma City bombing, Wichita State political scientist Neal Allen, an expert on nullification laws, thinks that the current breed of nullifiers presents a different problem from those who inspired Tim McVeigh to drive his truck into the Murrah Federal Building. Allen thinks that while this trend doesn’t encourage outright violence, it does make it impossible to accomplish anything.
I could have told Allen that, as someone who has studied the religious right for the better part of the last two decades. A significant portion of the Republican base believes you can’t sit and talk with those who disagree with you because it would be an opening for the devil. And now much of the GOP is also courting a base that thinks Washington is actually the enemy. Is it any wonder that it doesn’t seem anything can get done in Washington these days?
