Also, a "Washington insider", Tucker Carlson, assures us that Evangelicals are waking up to the fact that they are clay in the hands of the GOP, and a clay that the GOP washes their hands of after every election cycle. See below for the full-text.
I really hope this is true. If only this is true.
From the transcript of the Oct. 8th Chris Matthews' show (HT: DefCon):
President GEORGE W. BUSH (September 16, 2004): This is a time that requires firm resolve, clear vision and a deep faith in the values that makes us a great nation.
MATTHEWS: But those pillars seem to be crumbling with the page scandal and the declining trust on Iraq. First, the Foley scandal, threatening the party's reputation as the defender of family values.
Andrew, the Republican Party of today, the 21st century, is based on a coalition of regular Republicans, the establishment, and these Christian conservatives have joined them as allies. Will this cause a divorce in that group?
Mr. ANDREW SULLIVAN (New Republic Senior Editor): Well, I think what you see is that a party that basically stoked fear of homosexuals as a way to win power--in Ohio, for example, it was critical, I think, in turning that state and winning the presidency--is now revealed in fact as hypocrites as they actually not only knew that Mark Foley was a closeted homosexual but he was also acting out in extremely inappropriate and appalling ways and did nothing about it. And so the homophobia that they stoked is finally coming back and hitting them, and that's the karmic payback here. That--you know, they rode this tiger, and now it's dinner time for the tiger.
MATTHEWS: Is this one of your themes of the book?
Mr. SULLIVAN: One of my themes is that in fact you can't have all-star conservatives and limited government, live and let live. The leave-us-alone coalition exists alongside an increasingly intolerant fundamentalist Christian base. That is breaking up. This is a sign that the breakup is going to be intense and is going to continue, and the Republican coalition is fracturing fast, and someone has to put it back together again.
MATTHEWS: Tucker:
TUCKER CARLSON reporting:
I don't know. I think it's a little more complicated than that. I mean, clearly gay marriage helped the Republicans in the last cycle.
MATTHEWS: In Ohio especially.
CARLSON: That's right, and I think around the country. On the other hand, this president has had a pretty aggressive, for a Republican, gay outreach for one. I mean, they actually had an office of...
Mr. SULLIVAN: Are you kidding me?
CARLSON: That's true. Federal agency...
Mr. SULLIVAN: Well, he never reached me, Tucker.
CARLSON: I'm sure. Every federal agency in Washington, all presided over by President Bush, has a Gay Pride day, every single one of them. So the point is, look, I don't think it's gay rights that is alienating the right. It's immigration and it's abortion. This president has done nothing to curb abortion and that infuriates evangelicals and he's aggressively abetted the illegal immigration, which means the rest of the real conservatives angry.
Mr. SULLIVAN: Well, the other thing is he's presided over this enormous spending...
CARLSON: Which has made the libertarians mad.
Mr. SULLIVAN: ...which has made people like me absolutely apoplectic.
CARLSON: Right.
Mr. SULLIVAN: I mean, we have 40--he inherited $20 trillion worth of debt and he's made it $43 trillion in four years.
MATTHEWS: Am I in a cuckoo land here? Tucker--Norah, back me on this--the biggest issue--cultural issue in the last campaign in 2004 was those 13 states that had initiatives banning gay marriage. That drove out 122 million people to vote...
CARLSON: Right, that's right.
MATTHEWS: ...so it drove the Christian Coalition into the voting booths to vote Republican on the issue of gay marriage.
CARLSON: I just don't think...
NORAH O'DONNELL reporting:
And this is exactly what many Republicans that I spoke with this week were concerned about, is that because of the Mark Foley scandal, their congressional page scandal, that many of these value voters that in fact helped the Republican Party are going to stay home. I spoke with several leading social conservatives. None of them deny that their people will probably stay home, and in one scene a Republican with close ties to the White House says all the internal Republican polling that they've done shows that this is a big problem in part with suburban women because of the `ick' factor, and so they're really worried.
MATTHEWS: Yeah.
Mr. SULLIVAN: It's also the hypocrisy factor.
MATTHEWS: Maureen.
Mr. SULLIVAN: The man was actually passing the law to make this illegal while he was doing it. I mean, Chris, this is not about gay people. This is about closeted, screwed-up, abusive people.
O'DONNELL: Right.
Mr. SULLIVAN: And most gay people feel as appalled by this as any other person in the country.
MATTHEWS: I like the story that's been making the rounds all this week that at some time in the last several years, this guy, Mark Foley, was drunk one night around midnight over at the page dorm trying to recruit somebody to get them out of the building. We need concertina wire around that building now, according to this imagery.
Mr. SULLIVAN: And from what I hear, this was well known from like 10 years ago.
MATTHEWS: Well, that story would make its way to the speaker's office, I can tell you on the basis of experience.
Mr. SULLIVAN: If he didn't know, he should have known.
MATTHEWS: If you were a staffer for the speaker and you didn't tell him about that incident--let's check with the Matthews Meter.
In this, Maureen Dowd, I'm setting you up for the big kill here. This is one of those rare moments we have unanimity here. Twelve of our regulars on the Matthews Meter say the following. Will the Foley news depress Republican turnout? This one's unanimous: 12-zip. A lot of Republicans are going to stay home. In fact, we've got a new Time magazine poll just out at the end of the week that finds a quarter--that's 25 percent of voters--are now less likely to vote Republican for congressional candidates. Maureen, this is front page New York Times stuff now.
Ms. MAUREEN DOWD (The New York Times) : Yes, well, it's very disorienting that Republicans are becoming a party of gays and weak on defense, but I agree with Norah that this is a big deal with women. That Republican women are--see, Denny Hastert and Romney, these, you know, old codgers who are hiding the truth and hurting kids, kids in Iraq and kids in the page system, and I think that women will be really turned off by that...
MATTHEWS: You mean, they wouldn't...
Ms. DOWD: ...especially in races where women are running against men.
MATTHEWS: Yeah? Well, let me ask you what the bottom line is because I love your minds. You're all looking at me right now attentively, and here's the question. We know there's a rupture here between the traditional conservatives and the establishment types who've been apparently covering this thing up. Is this divorce for real? Is there really going to be a breakup now permanently? You write about this. And is there going to be a breakup now between the traditional values people who say, `I'm against gay marriage.' `I'm against gay teachers having my kids in the classroom. That's why I believe in homeschool and all that stuff.' I'm so against secularism. Will that break that away--that crowd away from the regular Republicans?
Norah, you want to go first?
O'DONNELL: No, because I think this is an issue about bad behavior. I mean--and this is what Democrats will argue, is that this is an issue about competence and power, and did the leadership cover up or were there aides who covered it up for their leaders in not taking action against someone who was potentially abusing children...
MATTHEWS: You mean...
O'DONNELL: ...and that's a larger issue.
MATTHEWS: ...they don't share the values of the liberals.
O'DONNELL: I think if the Republicans lose both houses of Congress, and inevitably that will cause the Republican Party to have some soul-searching that goes on...
MATTHEWS: OK.
O'DONNELL: ...but this issue is, in effect, about an abusive man.
Mr. SULLIVAN: This--and I think Norah's right. The real theme here is abuse of power, and so it ties in with corruption, the pork, the abuse of our troops in Iraq who have not been given the support they need or even a war plan to succeed.
MATTHEWS: OK, so everyone agrees here that this story, emblematic of whatever...
Mr. SULLIVAN: Just emblematic of abuse.
CARLSON: It goes deeper than that though. The deep truth is that the elites in the Republican Party have pure contempt for the evangelicals who put their party in power. Everybody in...
MATTHEWS: How do you know that? How do you know that?
CARLSON: Because I know them. Because I grew up with them. Because I live with them. They live on my street. Because I live in Washington, and I know that everybody in our world has contempt for the evangelicals. And the evangelicals know that, and they're beginning to learn that their own leaders sort of look askance at them and don't share their values.
MATTHEWS: So this gay marriage issue and other issues related to the gay lifestyle are simply tools to get elected?
CARLSON: That's exactly right. It's pandering to the base in the most cynical way, and the base is beginning to figure it out. (Unintelligible).
MATTHEWS: OK. Where are you...
Mr. SULLIVAN: The right is right to be mad about this. They have been duped by these people, and now they're venting and they have every right to vent.
MATTHEWS: I agree with you. Tony Perkins and those guys are very upset, seriously, not just politically. They don't like what's going on on the Hill.
It feels like Christmas. Wait...I'm "at war" with that day, nevermind, I mean it feels like, uh, Columbus Day, or something.
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