What makes Palin popular with the right?

Palin is a right-wing populist. That's Dave Neiwert's story.

Palin is a right wing populist in the tradition of the Ku Klux Klan of 1915 - 1920 and of the militia movements of the 1990's. One of those movements what the Alaska Independence Party which supported Palin for Governor the first time she ran. The AIP and the militia movements of the 1990's were fringe movements, but the KKK of the early 20th century was a powerful force in American politics in many states for the first half of the century. So why isn't Palin just another fringe right-winger? Here is
Dave Niewert's description of that right-wing fronge movement in the twentieth century:

This Klan crumbled in the late 1920s under the weight of internal political warfare and corruption; many of its field organizers later turned up in William Dudley Pelley’s overtly fascist Silver Shirts organization of the 1930s. After World War II, most of these groups – as well as the renowned anti-Semite radio preacher Father Charles Coughlin, and lingering American fascist groups like George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party – were fully relegated to fringe status. So, too, were subsequent attempts at reviving right-wing populism, embodied by Willis Carto and his Populist Party, as well as other forms of right-wing populism that cropped up in the latter half of the century, from Robert DePugh’s vigilante/domestic terrorist organization The Minutemen in the 1960s, to the Posse Comitatus and “constitutionalist” tax protesters in the 1970s and ‘80s, to the “militia”/Patriot movement of the 1990s. As it had been since at least the 1920s, this brand of populism was riddled with conspiracist paranoia, xenophobic white tribalism, and a propensity for extreme violence.

Yet beginning in the 1990s, as mainstream conservatives built more and more ideological bridges with this sector – reflected in the increasing adoption of far-right rhetoric within the mainstream – the strands of populism became more and more imbedded in mainstream-conservative dogma, particularly the deep, visceral, and often irrational hatred of the federal government. One of the more popular "mainstream" figure among this bloc in the 1990s was Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. And so when he created something of a sensation with is campaign for the Republican nomination in 2008, it meant that these ideas and agendas started receiving widespread circulation among the mainstream Right -- and with it, an increasing number of conservatives who called themselves "libertarians", when what they really meant was "populists."

So Niewert points to George W. Bush, to Rep. Ron Paul, and to John McCain as the culprits for creating Sarah Palin as the new face of the modern Republican Party. The Republicans have flirted with the the fringe right-wingers, but they didn't invite them in to take over. But then came the collapse of mainstream and Wall Street Republicanism in the wake of the disaster of the Bush years. Ron Paul had run for President on the mildly sanitized right-wing fringe ideas and had introduced those ideas to mainstream Republicans in 2008 even as those Republicans recognized the disaster that mainstream Republicanism was facing in the next election. When John McCain ran for President he was rather soundly rejected by even most of the Republicans. So he reached out and pulled in the right-wing fringe cult figure from Alaska, Sarah Palin.

Palin probably saved the Republican national campaign from a Goldwater-level disaster. She didn't win the campaign, but she helped it avoid total electoral ignominy. In the process, she became the right-wing celebrity superstar of the moment. She did nothing, however, for mainstream Republicanism or for John McCain. They are down the tubes because the entire Republican - Wall Street message has been discredited. So Sarah Palin has stepped in to fill the vacuum.

The actual takeover of the Republican Party occurred on April 15th, 2009 with the beginning of the tea-Bagger mob actions. Since that time, as though by magic, the mainstream Republican politicians have been dancing to the tune called by the spokespeople for the tea-baggers, and Sarah Palin is the celebrity face of the tea-baggers.

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What Niewert has not discussed in this article is the association/alliance of the Dominionists with the right-wing extremist groups. These are the extremist fundamentalist christians who are behind the political effort to teach creationism in the public schools. This is one step in their effort to change America into a nation that is governed under their understanding of Biblical law.

A few of the better known Dominionists are "James Dobson and Focus on the Family, Tony Perkins and the Family Research Council, Louis Sheldon and the Traditional Values Coalition, Don Wildmon and the American Family Association." Pat Robertson is another. There are a number of others, especially TV evangelists.

The Dominionist anti-science anti-Gay religious extremists appear to me to be a separate thread of right-wing fringe group. But it appears that Sarah Palin represents them also, as did Florida's Katherine Harris. Theocracy Watch keeps track of the Dominionists.

The connection of these groups to The Family AKA the Fellowship is also not clear to me. The Fellowship is the secretive fundamentalist organization currently led by Douglas Coe, the owners and sponsor of the C Street house for "Christian" politicians and the reputedly most politically powerful evangelical group in America. This connection is another question that needs to be answered. Sen. Ensign, Sen. Coburn, Sen. Inhofe, Rep. Pitts, Rep. Stupak, and Governor of South Carolina Mark Sanford are all members of The Fellowship. There are others.

Huck's theocracy demand

My, my. It seems that Huckabee thinks that the U.S. constitution has to be changed to agree with his view of what God requires. I've said before that he is a Dominionist, and here he admits it up front in a Presidential debate. All Hail the American Theocracy!

From his debate as reported by MSNBC in which he discussed at length two topics which regularly are discussed in his stump speech, but not with this degree of specificity. I'll skip his discussion of illegal immigration, but here is his discussion on "Christian values in which he is

... elaborating on his belief that the constitution needs to be amended.

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards," Huckabee said, referring to the need for a constitutional human life amendment and an amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

He offers no secular reason for those amendments at all. He simply asserts that the basic law of America needs to be changed to meet the greater "Standards" of his God. The only apparent reason is that he reads the Bible (or his God whispers uniquely into his ear, who knows?)

History has clearly shown that what he proposes is a really, really bad idea.

It has been shown, over and over, that church government it bad government. Anyone who watches the recent Kate Blanchard film "Elizabeth" will recall that it starts in 16th century England with Queen Mary burning three people to death because they dared worship God the wrong way. The climax of the film was when Elizabeth sent people to kill or imprison a whole series of Lords whose crime was to try to assassinate Queen Elizabeth at the request of the Pope. The events portrayed in the film were not fiction.

Europe did not learn from Elizabeth's tolerance of religions other than the Church of England. The Thirty Years War was fought between 1618 and 1648 over much of Germany and parts of Italy and the Low Countries causing extensive death from war, famine and disease for no better reason than to determine which of several ways of worshiping God would monopolize each nation through its government. Theocracies fight wars over God.

The English were not immune to the call of theocratic war in the 17th century. They fought the English Civil War. The war was fought between the armies of the Catholic monarch and the Protestant Parliament and ended when King Charles I was decapitated, his son exiled, and the monarchy was replaced first by the English Commonwealth, then by the Protectorate under Cromwell. The Civil Wars were also about the power of the Parliament to restrict the actions of the Monarch, and established that the King could not "govern without the consent of Parliament." That made the Parliament into the equal partner with the King, something that became even more significant when Parliament overthrew King James II (because he was trying to force England back into the Catholic Church) and replaced him with the Protestant William of Orange.

Two centuries of wars and civil wars were fought over whether the monarch could enforce his religion on his people, and conquer others in the name of religion. Those two centuries have all the English-speaking peoples the tradition that 1. Religious leaders could not use the powers of government to enforce their religious doctrine and 2. the People of the nation were sovereign over the executive (King or President) through the democratically elected Parliament or Congress and the enforced Rule of Law in which no man was above the law.

Huckabee and the American Dominionists (as well as George bush) do not accept either lesson 1. or 2. Should Huckabee actually gain power nationally the result will be a police state that resembles Iran or Saudi Arabia. That's what Huckabee means when he says the Constitution should be changed to bring it in line with "God's values."

One of "God's values" - as expressed by Priests and Preachers - is that others should die or be imprisoned if they violate those people's religious pronouncements asserting "God's values." Huckabee is no better than any other theocrat. He doesn't belong in American government at any level.

Supreme Court deals loss to women's reproductive Rights.

The Supreme Court has effectively outlawed the surgical procedure called technically "intact dilation and extraction" or politically called "partial birth abortion" by the anti-abortionist's. See Kevin Drum for a short discussion and relevant links.

Ed Kilgore provides an interesting analysis of today's 5 to 4 decision upholding the federal law banning the so-called Partial Birth Abortions:

Ginsburg's opinion for the four dissenters is a model of comprehensive clarity, nailing the majority opinion (penned by that perennial abortion rights weathervane, Anthony Kennedy) for its stealth attacks on the Court's precedents, especially the health exception, the viability standard for scrutiny of abortion restrictions, and the treatment of evidence about the "medical necessity" of various abortion methods.

And the incredibly succinct Thomas-Scalia concurrence, which simply and directly attacks Roe, also challenges the majority to come out of the closet and reverse abortion rights.

There's no question that the majority opinion erodes some of the underpinnings of how the federal courts have applied Roe and Casey. And it opens the door to further abortion restrictions.

But on the basics, this decision may prove to be a pyrrhic victory for the anti-choice forces. Every time the Roberts Court validates a technical and largely marginal exception to abortion rights by claiming to respect abortion rights, it will become more difficult to overturn those rights altogether. If, however, a Republican replaces Bush in 2008, and gets another chance to reshape the Court, then I have no doubt future appointees will find a way to get the job done.

While this may open the way to other state laws that chip away at the forms and conditions for surgical abortions, the inability of the five Justices to agree on a joint rationale for approving it will not make the anti-abortion forces at all happy.

In the meantime, all the younger women who did not consider themselves feminists may suddenly realise that their control of their own bodies is under serious attack.

The result is that this decision offers two possible futures. It may be the breakthrough the anti-abortion forces were looking for and lead to doing away with legal abortions (Digby thinks this is the future,) or it may be the high-water mark for the anti-abortionists that activates the opposition into a force that relegates them back to the shadows where they belong.

I suspect the decision regarding which direction the future is going to take will, like many other things, be revealed in the 2008 elections.