Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America

by John P. Avlon

  But there’s a secret beneath those numbers that reflects the Republican Party’s broader problem—nearly half of Rush’s listeners are over sixty-five.20 While he’s got favorable ratings from 60 percent of Republicans, only 25 percent of independents and 6 percent of Democrats agree.21 Unlike Republicans, Rush can afford not to care.

  After the 2008 election, Rush dubbed himself “the last man standing.” In the lead-up to inauguration, a magazine asked Rush to write 400 words on his hopes for the Obama administration. “I don’t need 400 words,” he told his audience. “I need four: ‘I hope he fails.’”22

  His opposition to Obama was alternately philosophic—seminars about the virtues of conservatism versus the evils of liberalism—and just plain weird. “We are being told that we have to hope he succeeds, that we have to bend over, grab the ankles, bend over forward, backward, whichever, because his father was black, because this is the first black president.”23

  As long as Rush was in the news, it was good for ratings. And the Obama administration initially liked it that way. In a “don’t throw me in that brier patch” moment, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said that Limbaugh was “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party.”24 It was a contrast that worked to their advantage.

  When newly elected RNC Chair Michael Steele was asked whether Rush was the de facto head of the GOP, he said “Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer” and described his style as “incendiary” and “ugly.” The blow-back among the base was so great that he was compelled to engage in an extended grovel of an apology. “I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele told Politico. “I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking. . . . I wasn’t trying to slam him or anything.”25 When he tried to phone in an apology Rush did not immediately take the call.

  Rush Limbaugh has political power without responsibilities. He does not need to worry about governing or winning elections, only keeping his audience engaged and enraged. He uses conflict, tension and resentment to increase his ratings. And his influence has inspired a new generation of Wingnut politicians who are choosing to follow the narrow but intense popularity of his model.

  These are the Limbaugh Brigades.

  In the past, they might have been blocked from office for being too extreme. But the rigged system of redistricting has helped push political power to the margins. The creation of safe seats has resulted in a 96 percent re-election rate,26 effectively ending competitive general elections. That makes the only real contest a partisan primary—and if only 10 percent of the electorate turns out, 5.1 percent makes a majority. It’s a paradise for activists, empowering ideological warriors who do not have to worry about winning voters in the center of the political spectrum. Instead, they can focus on playing to the base.

  Their extreme politics makes them popular in their party but deeply polarizing figures to the electorate-at-large—just like Limbaugh.

  The more angry and unhinged their claims, the more they are celebrated as courageous by activists in the base—just like Limbaugh.

  Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is a prime example. Elected to Congress in 2006, after she told supporters God called on her to run, Michele first made a national name for herself by declaring that Obama “may have anti-American views”—and calling for an investigation of other Democrats with “anti-American” views in October of 200827—the media fall-out casting Bachmann as a neo-McCarthy made her, if anything, more beloved by conservatives.

  She continued with a string of howlers and incitements in the first year of the Obama administration. On Cap and Trade, she urged Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back.”28 She opposed funding for AmeriCorps, saying she foresaw “a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service” with “re-education camps”29 (her son later voluntarily enlisted). On health care she urged an audience: “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. . . . Right now, we are looking at reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”30 She’s called for an “orderly revolution,” saying that “where tyranny is enforced upon the people, as Barack Obama is doing, the people suffer and mourn.”31 The media covers her because she makes great copy, and conservative populists love her because they think she’s talking truth to power.

  Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert was an early adopter of the “Kill Granny” arguments against healthcare reform, proclaiming “this socialist health care . . . is going to absolutely kill senior citizens. They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early.”32 He took to the House floor to argue against the hate crimes bill, saying if gays and lesbians were covered by the bill, then “if you’re oriented toward animals, bestiality, then that’s not something that could be held against you . . . which means that you’d have to strike any laws against bestiality. If you’re oriented toward corpses, toward children. You know, there are all kinds of perversions, some would say it sounds like fun, but most of us would say were perversions . . . and there have been laws against them and this bill says that whatever you’re oriented toward sexually that cannot be a source of bias against someone.” 33 He is also one of the eleven co-sponsors of the Birther bill in Congress with over 60 percent of the vote. First elected to his safe seat in ’04, he has been re-elected.

  Iowa Congressman Steve King earned a rebuke from John McCain in 2008 when he said that if Obama “is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.”34 He raised eyebrows as the only member of Congress to not vote for a resolution acknowledging the use of slave labor in the construction of the U.S. Capitol Building. In response to the “day without an immigrant” protests, King wrote in an op-ed for his local paper, “The lives of 12 U.S. citizens would be saved who otherwise die a violent death at the hands of murderous illegal aliens each day. . . . Eight American children would not suffer the horror as a victim of a sex crime.”35 And when commenting on Representative Joe Wilson, King argued that “The President threw the first punch” and then called Wilson “an officer and a gentleman and a patriot.” “God bless him,” King said. “He said what we were thinking.”36

  It is not just happening on the right. Increasingly, Wingnuts on the left are pursuing elected office with an angry activist mindset, a reflexive mirror of the forces that Limbaugh unleashed. In 2009, freshman Florida Democratic Representative Alan Grayson went on a search for hyper-partisan accolades as he tried to label himself “the congressman with guts.” In a speech on the House floor, he said, “The Republican health care plan is this: ‘Don’t get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.’” Days later he attacked Republicans as “foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who think they can dictate policy to America by being stubborn.” That was mild compared to what came next: calling Republicans “the enemy of America” and “certainly the enemy of peace.”37 He rounded out the diatribes by calling an aide to Fed Chair Ben Bernanke a “K-Street Whore” on 9/11 Truther Alex Jones’s radio show. Here’s what was most impressive: Grayson made all these comments in the space of one month.38 Even more impressive was the tough-talking congressman’s sensitivity to criticism. When a Florida resident from a neighboring district created a Web site titled mycongressmanisnuts.com, Grayson wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder accusing the site of lying and being “utterly tasteless” as well as “juvenile.” He concluded by asking that his critic be put in jail for five years.39 Seriously.

  This culture of unhinged commentary from the conservative Limbaugh Brigades may have been crystallized when Joe Wilson shouted, “You Lie!” But Wilson’s outburst was soon outdone by Arizona Congressman Trent Franks’s remark that President Obama “has no place in any station
of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.”40

  “An enemy of humanity”—let that roll off your tongue for a while. It’s hard to find a more global a condemnation than that—and yet the comment was brushed aside as overheated and unremarkable, just one more conservative getting carried away by playing to the base.

  Congressman Franks offered his impassioned rant in front of the How to Take Back America Conference, hosted in St. Louis by Wingnut matriarch Phyllis Schlafly (“Feminism is the most destructive force in the world”) and WorldNetDaily columnist Janet Folger Porter.

  To get a taste of the Take Back America crowd, take a look at some of the workshops offered to attendees: “How to counter the homosexual extremist movement,” “How to defeat UN attacks on sovereignty,” “How to Stop Feminist and Gay Attacks on the Military” and, inevitably, “How to recognize living under Nazis & Communists.” A companion DVD featuring a shadowy Hitler-like figure plotting a takeover of the U.S.A. was for sale under the title “Freedom to Dictatorship in 5 Years.”

  Given this lunatic fringe festival, you might imagine that few elected officials would attend for fear of guilt by association. But as you might have guessed by now, you’d be wrong.

  Once and future presidential candidate Mike Huckabee had taken time from his Fox News TV and radio show to give the keynote speech, railing against the U.N.: “It’s time to get a jackhammer and to simply chip off that part of New York City and let it float into the East River, never to be seen again!”41 After he spoke a power-point offered these parting wishes: “Where would America be today if Gov. Huckabee were President Huckabee? We sure wouldn’t be celebrating Ramadan . . . Huckabee 2012.”42

  Michele Bachmann brought the crowd to its feet by decrying the “gangster government” that was now running the White House, an alliterative riff off the “thugocracy” conservatives had predicted.43 She spoke of the dangers of a “one-world currency” and advocated defense of “American sovereignty, even if President Obama’s czars want to give it away.”44 And she promised that if Republicans took back Congress in 2010 “defunding the left is going to be so easy and it’s going to solve so many of our problems.”45

  Steve King was on hand to present Joe the Plumber with the coveted Golden Wrench Award (“for throwing a wrench in the works”) and a Golden Plunger (“to help flush out Washington”). King told the crowd, “I ran for public office because of what the government was doing to us, not because of what I wanted the government to do for us,” and warned that in the effort to stop liberals “every conversation matters; every prayer matters; every Tea Party matters.”46

  Conservative blogger and convention speaker Brian Camenker of MassResistance pronounced it “the best conference of its kind in memory. It was God and country—and unflinching, refreshing non-politically-correct sanity.”47

  The How to Take Back America Conference may have been extreme, but it was not an exception.

  One week before in Washington’s art deco Omni Shoreham Hotel, the Value Voters Summit had convened its high-powered but closed-to-the-press conservative cattle call. The usual suspects all appeared—including Huckabee and Bachmann—but they were joined by presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. There were religious figures ranging from the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins to born-again B-movie actor Stephen Baldwin. And rounding things out was former Miss California-turned-conservative-sex-symbol Carrie Prejean, a martyr to the liberal media for support of what she called “opposite marriage” as opposed to same-sex marriage.

  The How to Take Back America themes were in full force, with breakout sessions titled “Thugocracy: Fighting the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy” and “ObamaCare: Rationing Your Life Away.” Minority Whip Eric Cantor got in touch with his inner Glenn Beck by saying, “Right now, millions of Americans are waking up realizing that they don’t recognize their country anymore.” During Mitt Romney’s address an audience member channeled Joe Wilson and shouted “He lies!” to which Mitt quipped, “I approve of that comment.”48

  But it was the Huckster who walked away the event’s big winner with a speech rejecting calls to modernize or moderate the party. “I’m not sure the center makes a whole lot of sense when it’s coming from people who certainly don’t have our interest, or our country’s interest, at heart.”49 This was a new assault—saying that centrist Republicans were not just trying to subvert the GOP, but that they “certainly” did not have America’s best interest at heart. It was the kind of attack that had previously been directed at liberals, but now the enemy’s list was growing to include all but the true believers. These appeals helped the ordained minister and former Arkansas governor win the Values Voters straw poll easily, apparently answering the question the title of one book for sale in the hall asked: “Who Would Jesus Vote For?”

  Beneath the heartfelt talk of God and Country there is a strangeness seeping into our politics, not just incivility but outright hostility. It is a sign of the increasing influence of the extremes, embracing the slash-and-burn techniques of a talk radio entertainer instead of the coalition-building skills of political leaders. But by enabling the extremes, Republicans may be sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

  Year-end polls in 2009 showed a hypothetical Tea Party beating Republicans in a three-way match-up against Democrats. These fueled conservative populists’ claims to represent an independent third-party movement, reflecting the rise of independent voters to more than 40 percent of the electorate. There’s only one problem: The would-be leaders of the conservative populist movement hail from the right wing of the Republican Party. Sarah Palin’s popularity is astronomical among Republicans and conservatives, but she is decidedly unpopular with independents and centrists. Likewise, Rush Limbaugh is hugely popular with conservatives and Republicans, but his brand of harsh partisanship is kryptonite to independents and centrists. The source of this disconnect is not a mystery. A 2008 survey by TargetPoint Consulting found that 96 percent of centrist voters consider themselves conservative to moderate on fiscal issues, while 86 percent of centrists see themselves as liberal to moderate on social issues. To put it another way, only 4 percent of centrists describe themselves as fiscal liberals while just 14 percent describe themselves as social conservatives. The rise of independent voters has been in reaction to the increased polarization of the two parties, while conservative populists believe that the parties are not polarized enough. For all the libertarian talk, the only independence their leaders advocate is moving further to the right on social as well as fiscal issues. Conservative populists’ threats to bolt from the Republican Party may not be a bluff, but they are an attempt to hold the GOP hostage to its most fundamentalist elements, hijacking American politics in the process. You cannot unite a country by first trying to divide it.

  HUNTING FOR HERETICS

  In 2008, the most competitive Senate race was in Minnesota between Al Franken—the longtime Saturday Night Live comic, liberal Air America host and author of best sellers like Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot—and the incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman, a one-time Woodstock attendee turned prosecutor and the former mayor of St. Paul. While Obama won the state by 10 percent, Coleman’s broad center-right profile helped him gain enough crossover votes to make the race too close to call, with a gap of 0.01 percent—or 225 votes out of the 2.9 million cast.

  But the morning after the election, some Wingnuts on the right were calling for Coleman’s defeat. Here’s the logic of young conservative radio host Ben Ferguson: “I think a lot of people last night think this was a cleansing for the party. We got rid of some dead weight, we got rid of some RINOS—Republicans In Name Only. There are Republicans today, like myself, that are rooting against Norm Coleman, hoping Al Franken wins, just so we can at least have a real Republican next time around. I mean, for me I’m like ‘Let’s kick ’em all out,’ you know. The ones that act like they’re real conservatives that weren’t, hey, go on home.�
��1

  Ferguson eventually got his wish. Eight months later, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected Coleman’s appeal and the Senate Democratic caucus got precisely the sixty votes it needed to beat back a filibuster, the tactic Republicans had counted on to check Obama’s agenda.

  The convictions that led some Wingnut conservatives to find a paradoxical satisfaction in defeat were neatly expressed by a sign I saw paraded at the Tea Partiers’ 9/12 march on Washington: “All progressive or liberal democrats or republicans are communists.” They are not interested in rebuilding the Republican Party if it means forming coalitions with anyone who is not a strict social conservative as well as a fiscal conservative. They want to see the party purged, Stalinist-style, before it rebuilds—even if it means being defeated by Democrats. It’s an inquisition based on ideological purity. Conformity is courage. Dissent is disloyal.