Minorities, Gays & Jews whipped into a white frothy mixture of Christian goodness

Democratic Party Chairman is getting his rectal a little early this year for making the mistake of forgetting that a Democrat can not get away with making blanket statements about Republicans (even if it's essentially true) the way the Reps can with the Dems (even when it's patently false). In case you missed it, Dean said that the Republican Party is "a pretty monolithic party" and that it's pretty much a white Christian party as well. The Reps have trotted out their party-line toting minorities in high poistions to show how diverse they are and Ken Mehlman respectfully disagreed by pointing out he made Bar Mitzvah, but the truth is, the Republican Party is overwhelmingly white and supports an overtly conservative "Christian"- based agenda. Republican leadership claim to be supporting people of faith (screw anyone who doesn't believe in G-d), pushing to legislate based on "Judeo-Christian" values (the "Judeo" is in there to accommodate the things strictly adherent Jews and Christians are in agreement about and to make people think they're inclusive) but it's a "people of faith are all of the same [fundagelical] point of view" attitude. If they think they're not, essentially, a party that directly makes an appeal as or viewed by their own as "Christian" they might want to check out this, this, or this (among a kijillion other links). The Christian Coalition, FoF and David Barton are among the many that are pretty damned sure the Republican Party is about keeping the US a Christian nation. Dean has a point that the Republicans are not very friendly to different kinds of people, despite their contention they really are welcoming of all sorts of people.

All one needs to do is take a look at the stances of the leadership in each party,

While prominent Democrats run the wide gamut from the near Euro-style democratic-socialist left (Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich and the Congressional Progressive Caucus) and traditional liberals (Russ Feingold, Nancy Pelosi, Dick Durbin and John Kerry) to the Dem center-right (Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh, Harry Reid and the New Democrat Network) to the GOP-style conservative right (Ben Nelson, Gene Taylor, and Allen Boyd) ... most fall somewhere into the pragmatic Democratic Leadership Council's "centrist" moderate-to-liberal style (Howard Dean, Mark Warner, Joe Biden).

Leading Republicans fall into several different ideological factions: traditional conservatives (President George W. Bush, Denny Hastert, Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and the Club for Growth), the Religious Right (Trent Lott, Sam Brownback, the National Federation of Republican Assemblies and the Christian Coalition), the old Nixon/Rockefeller "centrist" or "moderate" wing (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lincoln Chafee, It's My Party Too PAC and the Republican Main Street Partnership), and libertarians (Ron Paul and the Republican Liberty Caucus).

the overall diversity of each party, how the leadership addesses the needs of those registered in their party and how the actions of party leadership impact those who disagree with them to know Dean's statements are not too far off the mark.

Of course it's the the Republicans advantage to make Dean's statements a huge issue as it helps them continue to divert main stream media attention (which, granted, is not hard to do) from W's impeachable offense.

Tags:howard dean; Politics;republicans

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