Super Tuesday is over, and now that the dust has settled it looks like Clinton and Obama pretty much split things; Romney won his home states and little more; my favorite crazy man, Huckabee, cleaned up in the former Confederacy, once again proving to me that I never want to live there; and John McCain pretty much sewed up the Republican nomination.
Now there are plenty of those on the far right that are none too happy about this. Right wing blowhard pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt are all aghast that Senator McCain is the presumptive nominee, and the Religious right is apoplectic. In short the hard conservatives that backed Bush are seeing their own personal end of days.
Focus on the Family's James Dobson is a case in point. Yesterday he released a statement saying that if McCain's the nominee, he's going to take his ball and go home:
'...I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has at times sounded more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry's running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does not make the medicine go down. I cannot, and I will not vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience...'
Rush Limbaugh and the long list of other assholes have pretty much said the same thing. Of course, now these folks have found themselves in an interesting predicament, namely that they are stuck with McCain as the nominee. So what will they do? Flip flop, or stick with what they have said?
Their only real play is to stick with what they said. Republicans have long odds to take the White House come November, and if the blowhards flip flop and support McCain, their influence as the far right media circus or the far right religious circus will be hurt. If, on the other hand, they sit the election out, and McCain still loses, then they can spin that McCain lost because they didn't back him, and you all damn well better listen to us king makers next time.
This all speaks of an understandable collapse in influence of those who supported President Bush most strongly. And the religious right is especially afraid. Dobson's desperate. And when he doesn't get his way, he takes it out on wiener dogs:
'...Please don't misunderstand me. Siggie is a member of our family and we love him dearly. And despite his anarchistic nature, I have finally taught him to obey a few simple commands. However, we had some classic battles before he reluctantly yielded to my authority.
The greatest confrontation occurred a few years ago when I had been in Miami for a three-day conference. I returned to observe that Siggie had become boss of the house while I was gone. But I didn't realize until later that evening just how strongly he felt about his new position as Captain.
At eleven o'clock that night, I told Siggie to go get into his bed, which is a permanent enclosure in the family room. For six years I had given him that order at the end of each day, and for six years Siggie had obeyed.
On this occasion, however, he refused to budge. You see, he was in the bathroom, seated comfortably on the furry lid of the toilet seat. That is his favorite spot in the house, because it allows him to bask in the warmth of a nearby electric heater...When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie's way of saying. "Get lost!"
I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me "reason" with Mr. Freud.
What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!...'
That strange and demented tale of beating up a dachshund with a belt is and autobiographic quip from James Dobson's book, "The Strong Willed Child, a parenting handbook he wrote. This helps one understand the reaction of the religious right when they aren't obeyed. And it also explains the continued emnity between Wiener Dogs and the religious community:
So now Jesus has been kidnapped. The stakes are certainly getting higher.
