The Early Warning System
As with a tsunami, the early warning systems were there if people had just read them.
Back in 1991, Clarkson reported on his experience at a Christian Coalition Road to Victory gathering – a pep rally combined with nuts and bolts political organizing seminars held before national elections. “Believe!” Clarkson warned us in 1992:
[Christian Coalition] is certain to make 1992 much more interesting, and disturbing, than the conventional wisdom is ready to believe. Believe.How long has it taken for people to believe? Clarkson’s articles, written between 1991-1994, can be found on the TheocracyWatch website. When Clarkson told us to “believe,” he was writing about the elections of 1992. Could he possibly have anticipated the coup of 1994? Even today, do journalists understand what happened in 1994? The Republican Party won majorities in both Houses of Congress for the first time in forty years. I regularly read about Newt Gingrich’s contract with America as the main force behind that event, or disaffection with the Democrats. Rarely do I read about the pivotal role of the Christian Coalition. Today the Christian Coalition, described as a “sinking ship,” suffers from severe financial and morale problems. But the candidates it got elected to Congress are still running the show. At its zenith, the Coalition, founded by Pat Robertson in 1989, actually made the cover of Time magazine Time credited the Christian Coalition with roughly half of all the Republican victories in 1994. Ralph Reed, the Coalition’s former executive director, is featured as “The Right Hand of God.” :
From the Mouths of Babes San Antonio, Texas: The GOP Becomes A Religious Cult "The Grand Old Party is more religious cult than political organization" wrote the President of the Alamo City Republican Women's Club in her letter of resignation. Houston, Texas: Falling through a time warp One long-time Republican couple told Joan Lowy, a reporter from the Scripps-Howard News Service, "We honest to goodness felt like we had fallen through a time warp into a Nazi brown-shirt meeting,"
In cities and towns across the country, the precinct-by-precinct battle for control of the GOP between mainstream Republicans and conservative Christian activists is going full-tilt. These articles and more, written between 1991-1994, can be found on the TheocracyWatch website. Where were you between 1991 and 1994? Were you among the somnambulant masses or one of the few whose eyes were wide open? Please use the comment section below to take credit and claim your rightful place in this troubling history.
Coming next - Methodology: nuts and bolts of taking over the party.
[ed: Joan Bokaer's four part series is:
While We Were Sleeping | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 hidden)
While We Were Sleeping | 16 comments (16 topical, 0 hidden)
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