By Sikivu Hutchinson
Now that the GOP has declared open season on human
rights its surrogates are out in full force, shoring up the Party’s ground game
with the deadly zeal of an old time Christian tent revival. After months of anti-abortion backlash from
Republicans on Capitol Hill, yet another right-wing influenced anti-abortion terrorist
gunned down and murdered several people at a Colorado Springs Planned
Parenthood. After weeks of Fox commentators demonizing Black Lives Matter
organizers, several activists were shot during a peaceful demonstration in
Minneapolis. And after a steady drumbeat
of post-Paris anti-Muslim tirades from Donald Trump and his GOP clown car compatriots,
members of a local mosque in Fredericksburg, Virginia were verbally attacked by
residents for being part of an “evil cult”. While the GOP
vilifies the dark Other of heartland nightmare, the national security threat of
armed red-blooded white American males—the NRA’s “good
guys” with guns—remains unaddressed.
The GOP’s racist, sexist, xenophobic platform of
religious extremism has created a climate in which the public rhetoric and apparatus
of state violence are in perfect alignment. Trump has been the Party’s most potent
mouthpiece for Christian white supremacy.
His call for a national registry to track Muslims, as well as
surveillance of “certain” mosques, is merely the natural progression of the
nativist platform he articulated this summer.
As has been widely noted, his vociferous stance on immigration almost
singlehandedly shifted the debate to a national security pissing contest over
which Republican candidate is macho enough to take on the border, and now,
ISIS. In a recent CBS
poll, Republican voters say that, “ISIS has become a litmus test for
candidates … and immigration a deal breaker”.
The increasing “hawkishness” of the Republican electorate has ominous overtones
for a renewed military push in the Middle East.
Yet, nipping
at Trump’s heels is radical right attack dog Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Due to his strong coalition building among
Christian evangelicals and bully pulpit in the Senate, Cruz poses a more credible
long term threat than Trump. According
to new polls,
Cruz has surged to number two in Iowa. The
Paris attacks have made early voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina
more receptive to his slicker brand of demagoguery. As Trump’s loyal wingman, Cruz has reportedly
been biding his time until Trump falters. Aping Trump, Cruz’s rise would seem to validate
his toxic Christian fascist, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim propaganda.
Once viewed as a third rail candidate, Cruz is now a
“viable” prospect to take up Trump’s mantle, enlisting his evangelist father
Rafael Cruz to solidify his lead with Christian fundamentalists. It was Cruz, after all, who tried to force a
government shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding. In the Senate, Cruz was one of the loudest
voices demanding that Planned Parenthood should be prosecuted for its alleged mining
of fetal body parts for profit. On the campaign
stump this summer, Cruz and the other GOP candidates viciously maligned Planned
Parenthood and called for blood. Nationwide,
hundreds of Republican-sponsored bills that place draconian restrictions on
abortion and contraception have put women’s lives and health in jeopardy. Because of the GOP’s attacks on women’s right
to abortion and contraception, Missouri only has one
abortion clinic left in the entire state.
As per the claims of most violent religious
extremists, “God” is on the GOP’s side.
In his bid to lock up the white evangelical vote,
Cruz has announced plans to organize
a “national prayer team”. According to Cruz, this group would “establish a direct line of communication
between our campaign and the thousands of Americans who are lifting us up
before the Lord.” With this “direct line” of communication to Christian
soldiers, Cruz is consolidating the faith-based audience for his bigotry. In
the propaganda wars, the biggest national security menace is the GOP and its loyal
surrogates, fanning the flames of religious hate in “secular” America.
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