Republican Party Civil War Playing Out In Utah

The A.P. headline played up the Republican bloodletting on TV yesterday: Split Threatens To Rupture Republican Ranks, although I suspect that the main battles have already been fought and that the war is pretty much just a series of cleaning up actions. Ostensibly the radical right, lead by dark, divisive characters like Cheney, Rove and Limbaugh, has already won, which means the Republican Party has lost-- big time. Right-wing extremists whose vision of America is so far from the mainstream that there are few states outside of the old Confederacy and the Mormon West where they will be competitive electorally. And last year they managed to lose 3 ex-slave-holding states (Florida, North Carolina and Virginia) as well as two key Mormon states (Nevada and Colorado).

There is probably no state further from the Democratic vision of the country than the heartland of the Mormon theocracy: Utah. But even in what is arguably the most socially backward place in America, the winds of change are starting to rustle. Last year even the incredibly inclusive and optimistic Obama wrote off Utah and, basically, the state wasn't contested. It's still interesting to compare McCain's victory last November to Bush's win in 2004.

2004

Bush- 663,742 (72%)
Kerry- 241,199 (26%)

2008

McCain- 596,030 (63%)
Obama- 327,670 (34%)

That hardly looks like a promising trend for the Republicans-- and in the reddest and most authoritarian and reactionary state in the country. It's especially grim for the GOP because it was younger voters, especially first-time voters, and the state's rapidly growing Hispanic population that went for Obama. And in Salt Lake County, Obama actually beat McCain!

There's been a lot of talk about how the mainstream conservative son of a Mormon billionaire, Jon Huntsman, Jr., was bringing change to Utah. Earlier this year, even as his job approval rating (84%) wound up higher than any other Republican governor in America, right-wing extremists began flagging him as unreliable and untrustworthy for true believers. He was kicked off a speaking bill at a Michigan Republican Party function, serving notice that the party was not going to get behind anyone with an outspoken mainstream agenda, not even a conservative one. He's since taken a job with the Obama Administration as ambassador to China. But what happens with a post-Huntsman Utah?

Scholars say that Utah’s demographic portrait is changing, especially with the fast growth of the Hispanic population, but that only time will tell where those changes go and how prescient Mr. Huntsman proved to be.

His would-be successor, Lt. Gov. Gary R. Herbert, is regarded as a staunch conservative and is already distancing himself from some of Mr. Huntsman’s positions, including support for same-sex civil unions. Supporters say Mr. Herbert, who has said he will run in a special election next year to fill out the rest of Mr. Huntsman’s second term, through 2012, will lead the party back to conservative orthodoxy. Other conservatives have said they may challenge him for the nomination if he does not.

Democrats think Herbert is too far to the right for "the evolving, diverse, urbanized state that Utah is becoming." And they think he's making a big mistake by distancing himself from Huntsman and even taking potshots at him. If Blue Dog congressman, Jim Matheson, who is very popular among Republicans, runs against Herbert there's even a chance he could beat him. And Herbert is facing the same dilemma Republicans are facing nationally. His first move will be selecting a Lt. Governor. If he picks a right wing extremist, the party base will be placated. If he picks a mainstream conservative who could help him beat Matheson, the fanatics could turn on him. Among the right-wingers he's thinking about are Rep. Greg Hughes, Josh Romney (yep, son of Willard), Rep. Becky Lockhart, and two powerhouses who already have better jobs than Lt. Governor, Speaker David Clark and state Senate President Michael Waddoups (a real kook).

If Herbert goes for a more mainstream pick who could help him win in 2010, state Senator Greg Bell will get the nod. But if Herbert shows any signs of going in a mainstream direction, ala Huntsman, you can be certain that a wingnut, probably the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce president, Lane Beattie, (a former state Senate president) will jump right in and challenge him. To understand Mormon politics, try to grasp the ideas in this short film that has been banned by the cult: [UPDATE- The Mormons got YouTube to take the video down. YouTune is sooooo fucked up. Anyway, this'll give you a pretty good idea of the Mormon mindset too]



Now, it isn't only the Mormons who are dangerously delusional and whose primitive superstitions are hazardous for normal folks. Former French President Jacques Chirac has confirmed a story that has been circulating for years that Bush tried persuading him to join in his crusade against Iraq by invoking Old Testament gobbledygook about Gog and Magog and the Apocalypse. Chirac thought he was deranged and had to get a scholarly translator to explain what the hell Bush was babbling about.

Chirac is said to have been stupefied and disturbed by Bush’s invocation of Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs."

In the same year he spoke to Chirac, Bush had reportedly said to the Palestinian foreign minister that he was on “a mission from God” in launching the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and was receiving commands from the Lord.

There can be little doubt now that President Bush’s reason for launching the war in Iraq was, for him, fundamentally religious. He was driven by his belief that the attack on Saddam’s Iraq was the fulfilment of a Biblical prophesy in which he had been chosen to serve as the instrument of the Lord.

Many thousands of Americans and Iraqis have died in the campaign to defeat Gog and Magog. That the US President saw himself as the vehicle of God whose duty was to prevent the Apocalypse can only inflame suspicions across the Middle East that the United States is on a crusade against Islam.