Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

or "moderate" influence in forty-four Republican state committees—compared with thirtyone
committees in 1994, the last time the survey was conducted. They are weak in only six
states. Guess what region of the country all those states are in? If you said "the South," you'd
be so wrong. No, those six states are in the Northeast.
The point is, they're big and they're growing.
Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition executive director, is now chair of the
Georgia Republican party and probably the second most powerful Republican operative outside
the White House. The most powerful is Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform,
who once declared, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to
the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Tough talk,
Grover. But not very Christian-sounding talk.
Bush has managed to form a coalition between Christian conservatives like Reed and
mean antigovernment conservatives like Norquist. And hawkish Jewish neo-conservatives.
The neo-cons and the Christian Right have formed a close bond on Israel. Though for slightly
different reasons. Neo-cons support the Jewish state for the same reasons I do: because it is
the only democracy in the region, and because they're Jewish. Evangelical Christians fervently
support the survival of Israel in order to fulfill the prophecy of the Second Coming,
which, of course, will lead to the fiery death of all Jews. At that point, Bush's coalition will
collapse.
During Bush's first campaign for governor of Texas, he told an Austin reporter that
only people who accepted Jesus Christ as their savior could go to heaven. While most of the
press felt it was a gaffe, Rove knew it was the best thing his candidate had said so far. It let
the people who like to exclude others from heaven know that he was one of them. That's why,
in 2000, they kicked off South Carolina at Bob Jones University.
Rove likes to point out that four million Christian conservatives who voted in 1994
failed to vote in 2000. In a close political campaign, four million votes can mean the difference
between winning and losing. That's why one of Bush's first acts as president was to cut
off money for international family planning organizations that even mention abortions. And
that's why Bush imposed restrictions on funding stem cell research, impeding the search for
cures for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and Lou Gehrig's disease, and in the
process misleading everyone on how many viable stem cell lines existed. He said there were
over sixty; there are fewer than ten.