Freeper Coalition

by digby

Well, Obama may not have pleased his liberal base the last couple of days, but he has made great strides with the Freepers. Pam Spaulding ventured into the slime and came back with this:

I LOVE IT! Nothing so much pleases me as seeing the queerly beloved get angry at Rick Warren over his endorsement of Proposition 8! BRING IT ON!!!

“Furious” and “fierce” are two more words that now belong exclusively to the “gay” emotional typology.

great isn’t it to see these homo’s get done over, the idiots actually thought he was going to give them marriage right off the bat. maybe they never heard Biden or knew in the black community or the area of chicago homo’s are not well received. Not only that but did they take no notice of the church he went to for 20 years

obama is actually pissing the left off more than the right and it is great to see

Is B Hussein telling the rumpriders to pound sand instead of each other?

Did the gays finally realize what Muslims do to homos? Well, they elected a muzzie.

These f@gs are fascists and way over the top. I have always said there is no difference between sex-preference and racism, and the language of sexual-orientation goes right ahead with advocacy of bestiality and other abominable degenerate orientations.

There's more if you can stomach it. (The sad truth is that most of this is just a cruder version of what Rick Warren said.)

I think Ezra got exactly why this hits such a nerve:

The going explanation for Warren's presence on the inauguration podium is that "this aims to be the most open and inclusive inauguration in history," as Linda Douglas, a spokeswoman for the inauguration committee, told Politico. It's a peculiar definition of "open and inclusive." Warren, after all, is the only preacher giving the invocation. He will not share the stage with a rabbi, an imam, a monk, and an episcopalian. And Warren is not being chosen because he himself is open and inclusive. He thinks abortion a "holocaust" and urged his flock to vote for Prop 8. He compared gay marriage to incest and polygamy and pederasty, and when asked if he really thought those things "equivalent to having gays getting married," he replied, "Oh, I do."

The tolerance Obama is asking for, in other words, is not from Warren. It's from the LGBT community, and women. He is asking them to be tolerant of Warren's intolerance. It's a cruel play, framed to marginalize the legitimate anger of those who Warren harms and discriminates against.

And Jesse at Pandagon nails what else about this is so frustrating to those of us who've been out here battling with these people for years:

It’s the wholehearted embrace of the old right-wing complaint that calling out intolerance is the actual intolerant act ...

The right has just had their phony victimization validated by the new Democratic president and as you can see from the Freepers, they are thoroughly reveling in it.

I also came across this little tid-bit about Obama's relationship with Warren from Mark Ambinder, which I found quite astonishing:

The good pro-life theologian first met Obama in 2006 at a Saddleback AIDS forum in California. Obama used the occasion to press the evangelical pastors present to embrace "realism" when they considered the issue; preach abstience, yes, but preaching against contraception can kill. (Here's some of what Obama said that day: "I know that there are those who, out of sincere religious conviction, oppose such measures. And with these folks, I must respectfully but unequivocally disagree. I do not accept the notion that those who make mistakes in their lives should be given an effective death sentence.")

When I interviewed Obama last year, he told me that the moment was integral to his decision to run for president; when was the last time, he had asked himself, when a Democrat had had such dialog with pastors about AIDS?


I'm sure Obama doesn't really think he invented this Democratic "outreach and dialog" stuff with the evangelicals. That would be bizarre (and more than a trifle egotistical .)

Here's an excerpt from Jim Wallis' Sojourner Magazine from 1996:

Nationally known religious leaders are being invited who don’t agree on everything, but who have important things to say about faith and political responsibility during this election year. Both Republican and Democratic leaders will be discussing politics and morality and the need for new solutions that lead us beyond our present impasse.

Leaders from the evangelical world, the Catholic Church, the black churches, and the mainline denominations will discuss their efforts to offer an alternative to both the Right and the Left and to create a movement for a new and more spiritual politics in this country. We will profile some of the most effective groups who are already doing that and providing critical leadership in areas such as transforming poverty, protecting the environment, healing our racial divides, rebuilding families and communities, and restoring moral values. And we will be uplifted by some of the best gospel music in the country.

Speakers will examine fresh ideas for forging new partnerships between religious communities and all levels of government, for the sake of our children and the poor. Members of Congress from both parties will reflect on the moral and spiritual challenges they face. We’ll hear from organizations that are already working to create a new politics—from the Christian Community Development Association and Bread for the World to the Children’s Defense Fund and the Ten Point Coalition.

Prominent journalists have been invited to discuss the role of the press in covering politics and religion. We’ll all have the chance to talk with other activists, organizers, pastors, and community leaders from around the country.

Sound familiar?

Clinton held the first white house conference on AIDS in 1995 and invited many religious types to talk about it. (In those days the religious right was appalled and disgusted by AIDS. It was only when it presented conversion opportunities in Africa that they got interested.)

And everyone was always whining about civility. Always. Here's an article about the Wallis event with a quote from a prominent Democrat:

Senator Bill Bradley (D., N.J.), who is retiring at the end of the year, told Call to Renewal that he finds "a yearning out there in America that is deeper than the material [things] in our life" but also, at times, "an unwillingness to hear the message." Americans, he said, are tired of the "mind-numbing shouting match between two opposing parties" and of a politics controlled by special interests, the ambition of politicians and the political slogans that emerge from focus groups.

Plus ca change and all that.

It's not a crime for Americans to disagree on important issues and a political party can't possibly be all things to all people no matter how big the tent. Some things are irreconcilable. A belief in the right to choose abortion vs those who believe it is murder is one of them. The right for gays to marry vs those who think it's comparable to pedophilia is another. That's ok. We have a political system and a wider culture that can accommodate that. But no single political party can and it's a fools errand if Democrats think their majority can be enlarged by appealing to people who believe so differently.

Roosevelt's New Deal coalition was made possible by the agreement that he would not pursue civil rights. And we all know that the New Deal coalition fell apart because of it. I would hope that we've come far enough as a country that Obama's new majority is solid without having to make a similar soulless compromise. We may be looking at an economic crisis of 1932 proportions, but there's no need to accommodate people who would take the culture back to 1932 as well.


Update: Here's an interesting little piece I turned up from the New Yorker about Bill Clinton's relationship with Billy Graham -- and his son Franklin. It's very telling.

Update II: Joan Walsh makes the case against Warren on a whole host of issues, including some of which I was unaware:

I tried to keep an open mind when Obama began courting Warren three years ago; Salon sent a reporter to cover the popular young Democrat's first visit to Saddleback Community Church, to talk about its laudable AIDS work, in 2006. I believe in seeking common ground, and I was curious to see what Warren – and Obama – were up to. I watched carefully when Obama went to Saddleback for a presidential forum in August, along with John McCain. As I wrote at the time, I think Obama got punked; Warren spent an inordinate amount of time at the forum on issues like abortion and gay rights, and the promised focus on poverty reduction and social justice got short shrift. At Saddleback services the next day, Mike Madden didn't find one worshiper planning to vote for Obama. One day after that, a self-satisfied Warren told Beliefnet he couldn't say for sure whether Obama could compete for the evangelical vote, but he insisted that an antiabortion voter backing a pro-choice candidate would be like a Holocaust survivor voting for a Holocaust denier.

More at the link...

Update III: Greenwald is on the same wavelength.

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