Drive Lankford And The Hatemongers From The Temple

So the Rethuglicans have descended once again into the worst form of gutter politics. Expect more. When your party is morally bankrupt, reprehensible and relies on Christo-fascists as their base – name-calling, stereotyping, smearing and dehumanizing your opponents are your only tactics. At the core of their recent “Smear the Queer” attack on Congressman Strickland is the same type of tactic used by Mussolini, Hitler and other rightwing authoritarians.

A GOP operative, Gary Lankford, emailed out unsubstantiated allegations concerning Strickland’s personal life to targeted rightwing constituents claiming that Strickland was, among other things, “soft on those who sexually assault children.” I guess when you are 20 points behind in the race and desperate, you’ve got to shamelessly create works of fiction in order to arouse your base. You remember Karl Rove started that street rumor that John McCain was mentally ill and had an illegitimate black child with a hooker. This is standard fare for the Rove-Blackwell wing of the Republican Party.

Gary Lankford, the Republican Party’s social conservative “coordinator,” was just doing the despicable job the GOP paid him for. It should come as no surprise that Lankford is headmaster at a Christian home school and was also listed until recently as the state director of the Ohio Restoration Project. The Restoration Project is busy trying to round up thousands of so-called “patriot pastors” who would have you believe that Jesus is the greatest hater in history and that real pastors have to have mansions, Lear jets and Rolex watches.

Strickland needs to, like Jesus, metaphorically get out the whip and drive these hypocritical hatemongers out of God’s temple. Or, at least out of the people’s temple, known as the statehouse. Expect between now and Election Day that J. Kenneth Blackwell and his rightwing jackbooted thugs to tell every lie they can while praising Jesus and passing the cash to so-called patriot pastors in order to distort the truth and the Gospel to bring victory to the GOP.