God-Damned Republicans
Just how damned are Republicans by their adherence to gods, Reaganomics, and other fantasies? In the latter case, completely and totally. In the former case, not quite as much as I expected.
I had wanted to make a simple table showing the frequencies of popular political buzzwords in the major speeches at the GOP convention, like I did for the Democratic convention. Unfortunately, The Guardian didn’t run their summaries for the Republicans. That seems odd. What sort of bias does that reflect on their part?
Anyway, I wanted to at least see how often God appeared to the Republicans this week. I went to the Republican Convention website (something I am sure John McCain has never done) and snagged the text of every speech. Then I searched them all for the appearance of the non-existent.
The results are a little surprising. I expected a bit more pandering than I found. For example, Sarah Palin only mentioned God twice. In her case, her clinical-grade delusions are so well documented that the Repugs probably thought they didn’t need to call attention to it. Her fundie fans were already in her camp. No need to over-God it and risk alienating the three Republicans who aren’t infested.
In the tables that follow, you’ll notice that I split the Godding into two columns. The first column is how many times they ruined the main part of the speech. The second column is how many times God is mentioned in the obligatory “God bless America” boilerplate that’s tacked on to the end of every political speech in the country. That makes it easier to see who the true panderers are, without the data being clouded by the token pandering.
I’ve broken it out into three tables: Major Speakers, Minor Speakers, and Minor Speakers who forgot to mention God at all and will therefore burn for an agonizing, torturous eternity in Hell for not helping God take over the U.S. government.
Each table is sorted by piety, and then alphabetically within levels of mental illness.
First up are the major speakers:
| Major Theocrats | Main Speech | End of Speech |
|---|---|---|
| John McCain | 6 | 1 |
| Fred Thompson | 1 | 2 |
| Sarah Palin | 1 | 1 |
| Joe Lieberman | 1 | 0 |
| Mitt Romney | 1 | 0 |
| Rudy Giuliani | 0 | 1 |
| Cindy McCain | 0 | 1 |
| Mike Huckabee | 0 | 0 |
As the official nominee, it makes sense that John McCain would mention God the most. That’s his flag to carry as the standard-bearer of the Theopublican Party.
It’s odd that Mike Huckabee doesn’t mention God at all. Maybe it’s for the same reason as Sarah Palin. The fundies already know who their people are. No need to call attention to the fact.
Next come the lesser people (I’ve put GWB in here, because the party only gave him a few minutes. They would have been happy to not have him at all.):
| Lesser Theocrats | Main Speech | End of Speech |
|---|---|---|
| Anne Beiler | 5 | 1 |
| Tommy Espinoza | 4 | 0 |
| Marsha Blackburn | 2 | 0 |
| Sam Brownback | 1 | 2 |
| George W Bush | 1 | 2 |
| Leslie Smith | 1 | 2 |
| Lindsey Graham | 1 | 0 |
| James McEachin | 1 | 0 |
| Michael Williams | 1 | 0 |
| Tom Ridge | 0 | 3 |
| Tom Cole | 0 | 2 |
| John Ensign | 0 | 2 |
| Bill Frist | 0 | 2 |
| Erik Paulsen | 0 | 2 |
| Norm Coleman (Tues.) | 0 | 1 |
| Norm Coleman (Wed.) | 0 | 1 |
| Michael Steele | 0 | 1 |
There’s nothing too surprising in those results. It’s the sort of numbers I expected to see for all of the speakers. That’s what makes this next table so peculiar:
| Stealth Theocrats | Main Speech | End of Speech |
|---|---|---|
| Renee Amoore | 0 | 0 |
| Michele Bachmann | 0 | 0 |
| John Boehner | 0 | 0 |
| David Cappiello | 0 | 0 |
| Jo Ann Davidson | 0 | 0 |
| Carolyn Dunn | 0 | 0 |
| Mary Fallin | 0 | 0 |
| Carly Fiorina | 0 | 0 |
| Rico Luis Fortuno | 0 | 0 |
| Bill Gross | 0 | 0 |
| Wes Gullett | 0 | 0 |
| Ashley Gunn | 0 | 0 |
| Shanna Hanson | 0 | 0 |
| Jon Huntsman | 0 | 0 |
| Jay Love | 0 | 0 |
| Abel Maldonado | 0 | 0 |
| Rosario Marin | 0 | 0 |
| Mel Martinez | 0 | 0 |
| Carol Mutter | 0 | 0 |
| Ruth Novodor | 0 | 0 |
| Tim Pawlenty | 0 | 0 |
| Elena Rios | 0 | 0 |
| Aaron Schock | 0 | 0 |
| Charlie Summers | 0 | 0 |
| Christy Swanson | 0 | 0 |
| Orson Swindle | 0 | 0 |
| Joe Watkins | 0 | 0 |
| Meg Whitman | 0 | 0 |
It’s odd that there are this many people who didn’t mention God at all. Sort of destroys my concept of what a Republican is. It must be some sort of trick! (As we saw with Huckabee above, it says nothing about their own personal piousness, just how much they feel they need to mention it. Don’t fall for it!)
September 6th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
That does, indeed, surprise me. I guess I’m just overwhelmed by the emphasis on religion by the pundits and the platform policies that I didn’t realize how infrequently the political figures mention it in their speeches.
I guess McCain would invoke god eight times, didn’t I? Can’t remember. I was close!
September 6th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Methinks they were trying to downplay the crazy, and they didn’t want to scare away the more moderate (read: sane) of their voting base.
September 7th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
If you have not yet forced yourself to endure this video, here it is in all of its fundamentalist glory:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,3068,Palin-average-isnt-good-enough,Sam-Harris-Los-Angeles-Times
Its worth watching if only for an unvarnished, undiluted sense of what this country would be like if she ever becomes our president. Sam Harris, as usual, uses the English language like a fine-edged sword in dispatching any argument in favor of Palin.
I know atheists are notoriously independent people. But somehow we have all got to rally around a common cause and stop McCain-Palin from winning. There are 30 million people in this country, unaffiliated with any religion, that ought to have their blood chilled by this video. We can also become a significant voting block for elections to come if on 4 Nov. we hear that atheists, agnostics and secularists turned out overwhelmingly for Obama and helped him win. Maybe then they’ll start listening to us instead of the wackaloons on the right.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am
Thank goodness the republicans are willing to call upon a higher power for guidance
and God is the higher power. You can either do things on your own, or use the greatest helper there has ever been. Seems like a wise choice to me.
I find it funny that all the others that don’t want God invloved in politics or hardly any other area of their life, sure enjoy living in a country full of religious God fearing people. This country was founded on the backs of people who worshipped and followed God. If there were no churches, no religion, no religious influence then this would be a Godless place. And you know that you, nor your family would want to live here. Go figure that one out.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:02 am
Mitch:
I’m sorry. You made a typo:
You obviously meant those last two words to be “never was”.
Actually, we don’t enjoy it at all. People like you make the United States a living hell.
You act like that’s a bad thing.
Actually, we would love to live in such a place. Go figure that one out.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:57 am
“If there were no churches, no religion, no religious influence then this would be a Godless place.” – Oh, that is some brilliant reasoning there Mitch. 1 + 1 = 2!
I don’t enjoy living around religious crazies who seem to want nothing more than to repeal the progress mankind has made for the past 1000 years. If you believe in a higher power, fine…but don’t use it to guise your ignorance, insecurities and hypocrisies. We have enough problems in the real world…we don’t need any made up ones as well.
September 9th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Yes, Mitch, we all really enjoyed it when God (not that evil science) told Jonas Salk how to make the polio vaccine. We thrilled to God’s mighty hand whenever one of those Saturn V rockets (made with patented Ark technology straight from God’s mouth, not science) lifted off for the moon. And the invention of microwave ovens, Ipods and cell phones has us flocking to church in gratitude. I only wonder why God didn’t let those poor bastards in on all this stuff back in the Middle Ages. I bet they sure would have appreciated some Words of Wisdom during the Black Death; something like…oh, I don’t know…maybe “rats and their fleas are carrying plague bacilli everywhere they go. Hint – get rid of the rats, take a bath and wash your clothes once in a while.” Sure would have worked better than burning witches, cats and flagellating themselves.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Mitch: Ok…seriously…there were SO many logical fallacies in your argument, I just had to point them out.
If we wanted/needed guidance from a so called, higher power, then why bother even having a government? What is the point really if we could literally just skip all the elections and debates and simply go to God for help whenever we needed it?
People and animals alike have been ‘doing things on their own’ for a long time and things have worked out pretty good so far. Also, seeing as God has also been the greatest ‘MURDERER’ and or cause of murder…yeah, how is that helping us again?
-outside of bringing the crazies out into the open so we can detain them away from normal functioning society?
Sorry, but not everyone has a choice. I am 16 and therefore am unable to live outside of the guardianship of my parents without their consent.
Also, America is based on the idea that everyone can believe in whatever they want; just because the current vast majority of them do believe in God doesn’t mean that the rest of us should just ship off and move out. What happened to intergration over segregation?
It’s called ‘tolerance’ UR DOIN’ IT WRONG!
Oh yeah, and we weren’t always a country full of God-fearing Christians. Go back a few hundred years and the only people here were the Natives who were (Lucky them) ignorant of the other continents across the Atlantic and Pacific.
No…this country (as stated a MILLION times on this site and various others) was founded on the belief that each man and woman was free to their own belief. The early Americans after all were trying to ESCAPE the rule of the Church of England.
September 10th, 2008 at 5:51 am
Let’s look at Mitch’s lecture to us just a bit differently:
Thank goodness the republicans are willing to call upon a higher power for guidance and Zeus is the higher power. You can either do things on your own, or use the greatest helper there has ever been. Seems like a wise choice to me.
I find it funny that all the others that don’t want Zeus invloved in politics or hardly any other area of their life, sure enjoy living in a country full of religious Zeus fearing people. This country was founded on the backs of people who worshipped and followed Zeus. If there were no temples, no religion, no religious influence then this would be a Zeusless place. And you know that you, nor your family would want to live here. Go figure that one out.
Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Obviously in our culture, one absurd mythology is seen as just that, but another equally fatuous mythology is supposed to be deserving of our respect and deference. Both play by the same rules, and both are supported equally by the evidence. Yet because of the culture people like Mitch were born into, Christianity is pretty much the only outlet he has to escape reality. Religion can take many nasty forms, but underneath all of the ugliness, its all still the same fearful, hateful bullshit rational people have come to reject.
Mitch, I hope you take the time to read this site, and others like it, thoroughly. If your mind is even the slightest bit open to reason, you might learn something new about yourself. If not, well, you have my sympathies.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Oh, and by the way, here’s an example of what a McCain administration, “guided by God”, would look like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdJUCU1UH2w
The Republican party cares only for power and wealth. To hell with all of them.
September 10th, 2008 at 7:33 am
LOL. But Sarah! That’s actually what they want!
September 10th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Brian: I love you just so you know.
Parrot: Well the point of that was to flip Mitch’s words around on him. ;P Just me being a smartass really.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Sarah – With any normal human, it would be a valiant effort, but with fundies, there was no flipping. That is exactly what they want. Scary… Scary…
September 11th, 2008 at 6:03 am
Ever notice how most people who have an alternative view to this site will come on, post once, and then leave? It’s like they’re incapable of discussion or debate. If you really believe in something, you should be willing/able to defend it.
September 11th, 2008 at 7:40 am
If their opinion was so important in the first place that they felt they had to express it, you’d think they’d want to defend it. Since they don’t, it has the effect of not being expressed at all. All we do is refute it. Then since the original idea is never defended, it looks to all the world that it had no merit. They actually do themselves a disservice.
Many of these ideas have no merit, of course, but some of them might. We’ll never know, because the original poster is too cowardly or stupid to post again.
September 11th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Drive-by posting. It’s a common phenomenon among blogs. In fact, I’m guilty of it myself from time to time. Sometimes you follow a link on a blog you frequent, feel you want to contribute something to the new blog, close the window, and forget you ever visited the site. I think if blogs had notification updates (very few do), you’d see more return visits. Now, I’m not saying it’s the blogs’ fault — far from it. Just that it should be expected from time to time. So many blogs, so little time! I do agree, however, that if even half the fake outrage expressed were real, you’d make it a point to revisit the page at least a couple more times before forgetting about it.
September 11th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Parrot: True. My excuse is teenage ignorance, Mitch has none.
As for why they leave arguments half-finished (outside of Parrot’s explanation):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3HaRFBSq9k
September 11th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
For all we know, Mitch could be a 12 year old fundie homeschooled child who suddenly found himself confronted with an internet connection and mom and dad out attending a tent revival.
September 12th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
As I was on my way to work this morning, I listened to the dreaded, immoral bastion of the liberal media, NPR, and their top-of-the-hour story about Palin’s ABC interview and how she’s transformed this race. The basic gist of the whole thing was that she has energized the Christian base of the republican party. People interviewed praised her stances on social issues, as if boys kissing is the worst threat we’re dealing with here.
I’m now of two minds about this election. On the one hand, I should be confident and calm. Obama is, after all, a once-in-a-generation candidate, and he’s been running a nearly flawless campaign up to now, and by all rights, this should be any democrat’s year, anyway. McCain’s only useful tactic is to lie his ass off and hope enough people aren’t paying attention too closely.
Which brings me to my other state of mind – namely, my cynical expectation that the stupidity of the American electorate is far more potent than I had ever realistically imagined, and that despite reality, McCain might just win this thing after all. One minute I’m appreciative that Obama can keep his cool, something every president ought to be able to do, but a moment later I’m wondering why he doesn’t fight back harder and blow this clown out of the water for good. Certainly the facts are on his side, as well as the general mood of the country. Get angry, for crying out loud!
One way or another, it’ll be over soon, right? Let’s hope reason prevails over ignorance for a change.
September 12th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Well, Brian, you’ll be happy: Obama is hitting back and hitting back hard. I’m in a so-called “battleground state” (NC) and I saw some great new Obama ads tonight. The most powerful one (to me) was just him sitting in a chair talking about why McCain is not change and he is. It was so brilliantly simple and powerful it could have been Rovian, except there were no lies. The other one was a complete dismantling of McCain’s “Lobbyists is the sux0rs” stance, FINALLY pointing out that his entire campaign is run by lobbyists.
I’m of two minds too, Brian, but my second mind is less “is America that stoopid” and more “will it be close enough for the Republicans to steal through nefarious and illegal tactics again?”
September 12th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Parrotlover,
I’m glad to hear that you’re getting some action on your end. Here in the Buckeye state, into which one might think Obama would pour considerable resources given its electoral importance, all I see are frakking McCain ads.
I’ve donated to his campaign, so I get e-mails everyday basically asking for more. His campaign manager, David Plouffe, sent one out which, in essence, said, “Yeah, we’re gonna get tough! Just you wait! We might even use harsh language, so, watch out you…you bully!” If you have to stop and calibrate your outrage, something is amiss. I realize he has a “brand”, or image, or whatever to preserve, and getting into the gutter jeopardizes that, but come on. I need to hear that he is as angry about all the shit that’s gone down the last eight years as I am. Its not hard to do, and I’m sure most Americans would welcome it. He needs to do it now, not at some unspecified time in the near future. Unfortunately, most Americans think with their reptile brains every election, and the sooner he understands this, the better off he’ll be. McCain and the republicans have always known this. Why else would a unaccomplished, underinformed fundie be on his ticket?
He captured lightning in a bottle during his convention speech with his “Enough” line. He needs to do a lot more of it.
September 12th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Brian-
WORD to both of your posts. I’ll admit that I’m…cautiously optimistic about Obama.
And also, speaking as someone that lives in a fundie state, I definitely feel your pain. I often feel I’m surrounded by idiots. And well…as I like to say, around here, you can’t chuck a Bible without hitting a church.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:40 pm
me too.
I’m in NC too,and I was surprised to find on our state board of elections website awhile back,that there are more dems here than repugs.(I know,shame on me for not knowing).But to look around and see all the McCain’t signs,it seems we are the silent majority.of course it’s difficult to say which way the others will vote,but I take it as a good sign.
here are the no.’s,as of today here (if you saw former Pres. Clinton on The View,he predicted Obama will win,and he said that registration for democrats was up,while flat for repubs,at least then (Sept. ’08) ),and may that be a good sign Obama will win !
Voter Registration as of 11/02/2008 Democratic: 2,860,556 Republican: 2,000,360 Libertarian: 3,546 Unaffiliated: 1,392,209 Total: 6,256,671
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:39 am
S – The problem with NC Democrats is that a lot of them are Blue Dogs and DINOs. The fact that there are so many registered doesn’t mean much. Just look at our state government. We are absolutely dominated by Democrats, but at best we get basically a Republican Lite agenda passed each year. There are some good people doing good work and there are some True Liberals™ too. And, all in all, the state government functions far better than if it were ruled by the Republican Iron Fist. But it’s important to note that not all Democrats are created equal. There are better Democrats and we need to elect them in the primaries, pushing out Blue Dog Republican Lite candidates to affect real change.
Brian – I respect your passion and determination, but I think Obama getting too dirty would do more harm than good. McCain has run the slimiest campaign EVAH and look at how it has helped him: it hasn’t. Obama taking the high road, I personally think is helping him. Just my opinion. We are one day before the election and the Obama average on RCP is +7.
November 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
PL,
You’re right, of course. But a month and a half ago that wasn’t such an easy thing to be confident about. All of us here know stupidity when we see it, and we also know just how pervasive it can be. I vacillate between having no hope for our species whenever Ron brings us the latest in fundie dipshittery and thinking maybe we’re smarter than I thought because it looks like a rout for Obama and other Democrats tomorrow.
S., you mentioned yard signs. The other night I took my dogs for a walk through parts of my very, very red town (think Mayberry without the charm) and I was stunned to find an astonishing ratio of Obama signs to McCain signs. I stopped counting Obama signs after 30. How many McCain signs did I see in my hour-long walk? One. One frakking sign. Nothing I’ve seen or heard in this entire campaign has cheered me up as much as this.
I figure in about 20 hours from now it’ll be official. If nothing else, let us all hope the phrase “Joe the plumber” is never uttered again by any human being.