Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party

By Max Blumenthal

Hardcover: 416 pages, $25

Nation Books: New York

September 2009

This isn't a book for the faint of heart. The deep underbelly of the Republican right is far weirder, and far more disturbing, than most observers recognize. The corruption, the sex scandals, the lust for power--it's all here, presented in a fast-moving romp that's part sociology, part psychology, part gossip column.

But that's gossip in a good way. It's well-documented gossip, not just rumors, and the personal and political stories behind the personalities that fill these pages is critical to the web that Blumenthal constructs, showing the ties that you didn't know existed from notorious serial killer Ted Bundy who James Dobson used to amass part of his forture, to Gary Bauer to Blackwater's Erik Prince to Ralph Reed to Jack Abramoff to Tom Delay to Tony Perkins to David Duke to Tom Coburn to Bill Kristol to Sarah Palin. They're all there, and the story of how all these players have become connected with an extreme and pathological "religious" philosophy to take over the Republican party is fascinating.

Blumenthal explains where the current Republican Party came from, who it's foundational thinkers were, and just why it's still so dangerous. While the conventional wisdom is that the Southern Baptists are at the core of the religious right movement, Blumenthal shows that the movement actually grew out of the works of R.J. Rushdoony, the son of survivors of the Armenian genocide, who devoted his life to nothing less than replacing America's constitutional democracy with a theocracy based on Leviticus case law.

Calling for the literal application of all 613 laws described in the Book of Leviticus, Rushdoony paid special attention to punishments. Instead of serving prison sentences, criminals would be sentenced to indentured servitude, whipped, sold into slavery, or executed."God's government prevails," Rushdoony wrote, "and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them." Those eligible on Rushdooney's long list for execution included disobedient children, unchaste women, apostates, blasphemers, practitioners of witchcraft, astrologers, adulterers, and of course, anyone who engaged in "sodomy or homosexuality." Burning at the stake, death by "the sword," and hanging were some of Rushdoony's preferred modes of execution. However, his son-in-law Gary North, a self-styled Reconstructionist economist (who eventually fell out wiht his father-in-law) and former adviser to Republican Representative Ron Paul of Texas . . . advocated stoning evildoers to death. Rocks, North argued, are free and plentiful, making them ideal tools for the financially savvy executioner. (pp. 20-11)

Rushdoony's writings influenced people like Bush's faith-based initiatives czar Marvin Olasky and Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., whose vast wealth funded Rushdoony's think tank, as well as a number of intelligent design initiatives and California’s anti-gay Prop 8 initiative. Rushdoony also heavily influenced Francis Schaeffer, a 1960s icon of the Jesus Freak movement who became radicalized with the Roe v. Wade decision and essentially created the violent anti-abortion movement, out of which grew the larger political effort around "values voters," attacking all of the secular underpinnings of America. The rest, essentially, is the political history of the Republican Party for the last 40 years.

Then there's the sex. It might seem that the slightly icky things we've learned about the private lives of everyone from John Ensign to David Vitter to Mark Foley to Ted Haggard are just an entertaining offshoots of the larger movement, but Blumenthal sees more. Drawing from Erich Fromm's Escape from Freedom, about the psychology of Nazism and authoritarianism, and Eric Hoffer's The True Believer, Blumenthal describes the frame of reference for so many of the adherents of this extreme fundamentalist worldview, many of whom were brutalized as children. He desribes it in a discussion with Scott Horton:

Followers of the Christian right openly admit that they have no capacity to restrain themselves from total depravity without constant, stern commandments from an angry God. As Gov. Mark Sanford, an evangelical minister, declared during his recent press conference confessing an extra-marital affair, the "bottom line of God’s law" is to "protect us from ourselves." Senator John Ensign, the only Pentectostal serving in the Senate, attributed his own sexual dalliances to having "walked away from God," or having relied too heavily on his individual will. These figures believe if they don’t do what God supposedly wants them to do they will descend immediately and inevitably into sin and perversion–because that’s what they want to do. Fromm explained that those who seek to obliterate the self in the drama of an authoritarian crusade have attempted a "neurotic solution" that always leads to self-destructiveness. They use right-wing politics as a form of cheap medication, hoping to cleanse their sullen souls by purging the land of sin. But cheap medication rarely works. Thus none of the recent Republican sex scandals are unique; they are reflective of the sensibility of the movement that took over and shattered the GOP, and which Fromm analyzed so concisely in his 1941 book, Escape From Freedom.

And, by bowing before James Dobson and mouthing the correct words, they find absolution. And, if they aren't gay, political rehabilitation. The cases of David Vitter and Larry Craig are particularly representative of this.

One quibble I've got with Blumenthal--his assertion in the book's title that by allowing itself to be subsumed by the religious right, the Republican party has shattered. It hasn't yet, and Blumenthal's own book shows the danger that the nation is still in as long as the American body politic--and opinion makers and political leaders--underestimate the degree to which this mindset has taken over the Republican party. Torture wasn't just the outgrowth of Dick Cheney's personal evil, it was the inevitable result of the "Holy War" the administration was waging.

Without a real understanding or acceptance of the extremism, of the radical and violent nature (which is bubbling up more and more frequently since Sarah Palin unleashed the beast during the 2008 campaign) of what is now the Republican base, we carry on as if the Republican party was operating as the counterpoint to the Democratic party, as if it were somehow still the "loyal opposition," and not fundamentally committed to the radical overthrow of secular America. Bargaining with the Republicans in Congress as if they were partners in governing America is a very bad bet.

I've saved some of the more fun stuff, particularly Max's great expose work from Alaska on Sarah Palin, for him to talk about. Join us in the comments.