Movement Conservatism Jumps the Shark

The Republican party is learning that a deal with the devil is no deal at all. I do not think it is too ironic to suggest that the party's romance with the most extreme elements of the theocratic right amount to such a deal. It is not unlike going into business with the mob. You might get what you want in the short-term, but very soon, they are going to demand things of you that are simply too awful to contemplate. The price of not giving in, however, is too high to pay. Your very life could be at stake, in fact.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post gives us a glimpse of the true face of the modern conservative movement.

These are people for whom ideology is both the means and the end. They are not American patriots. They are not even, as many have concluded, nationalists. They are just narrow-minded, dangerous bigots who demonstrate no respect for the conventions of American law and society. They demonstrate no respect even for the institutions of American law and society.

Milbank reports from "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," a conference organized by a group called the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment (emphasis added)." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well (emphasis added)."

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles (emphasis added) drawn from foreign law."

Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.

The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem."

But, was the conference solely a daylong tantrum for a bunch of out-of-the-mainstream wingnuts? Hardly, according to the group's press release.

Keynote speakers will include House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who was instrumental in moving the Schiavo legislation through Congress, and David C. Gibbs, Esq. of the Christian Law Association, who represented Terri’s parents in their valiant efforts to save her life.

Other speakers at the Confronting The Judicial War On Faith conference (April 7-8) include: Senator Sam Brownback, former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, Alan Keyes, former Vatican Ambassador Ray Flynn, Rep. Steve Chabot, Rep. Todd Akin, Phyllis Schlafly and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

DeLay did not show, but many other so-called mainstream conservatives did. How can a United States senator and a former United States ambassador to the Vatican find common ground with people who imply that killing a Supreme Court justice would be one way of solving the "problem" of judicial decisions with which they disagree?