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Remember once upon a time when the GOP stood for something rather than against pretty much everything? Remember when sanity played a part in Republican political deliberations? Remember the days before the Grand Old Party became God’s Own Party?

Look at the 1960 Republican Platform. Take a deep breath. Remind yourself that God had only been in the pledge of allegiance for six years, since 1954. Let your breath out slowly: God gets one mention.

Yes, an obligatory “We call upon God, in whose hand is every blessing, to favor our deliberations with wisdom, our nation with endurance, and troubled mankind everywhere with a righteous peace,” a prayer that actually comes after a very Obaman “call to service” that would have had 2012 Republican heads exploding.

If we jump to 2012, there are 10 mentions of God – God-given this and God-given that. You won’t find the word service appearing in the same sense in 2012 as in 1960. The word “abortion” does not appear even once in 1960, yet appears no fewer than 19 times in 2012 and contraception twice. Likewise, the GOP did not deem “contraception” worthy of mention in 1960. It wasn’t that people weren’t using contraceptives in 1960. The GOP just didn’t care about it.

On June 17, 1963 Abington Township School District v. Schempp (consolidated with Murray v. Curlett), 374 U.S. 203 (1963) declared school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be unconstitutional.

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The 1964 Republican Party Platform mentioned God 3 times. That is the year that triggered the rise fundamentalism in the modern GOP. Not enough God in the GOP? There was certainly no mention of either abortion or contraception. Conservatives took notice: As the New York Times observed in their September 28, 1996 issue, “Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign brought many evangelicals into active politicking.” His defeat in 1964 was the impetus for the formation of the “New Right” which linked itself to the Religious Right.

Jump to 1968 and you still see minimal mention of God, right at the very end where it says something very un-GOP-like about liberty and justice for all: “We rededicate ourselves to this Republic—this one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” It also said nothing about abortion or contraception.

Go to 1972 and you will find no mention of God at all – and no mention of abortion or contraception. Again, it was not that people were not using contraception or having abortions in 1972 – or not believing in God. It was just that the GOP did not feel they were worthy of mention. It isn’t until 1976, when you get back to three mentions of God, that you see a single mention of abortion, and you still see nothing about contraception, let alone homosexuality.

1979 saw Jerry Falwell’s establishment of the “Moral Majority,” an organization made up of conservative Christian political action committees which campaigned on issues its personnel believed were important to maintaining its Christian conception of moral law. Of course, this conception of moral law was to be imposed on American society whether we wanted it or not.

In 1980 the GOP gave us one mention of God, as in God help us, and three mentions abortion. It even gave abortion its own heading. In 1984 God gets three mentions and abortion is now up to six, and now not only is abortion important for Americans but the GOP is against “all U.S. funding for organizations which in any way support abortion or research on abortion methods.”

The war on Women’s Reproductive Rights also heated up in 1986 when Randall Terry founded Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion group that blockades abortion clinics. Suddenly actual political issues were becoming less the focus of the Republican Party than so-called social issues but what are in reality moral issues based on a narrow Christian understanding of what is and is not moral. What is today called the “culture war” is in reality a war of naked aggression waged by fundamentalist Christianity on a free and open society.

You can see the trend toward theocracy. Certainly, party platforms do not tell the whole story, but the development of the GOP into a God-centered religious party is quite easy to trace. In 1988 we see four mentions of God and six of abortion and another of contraception and the trend continues into the 90s.

In 1992, Pat Robertson said to the Denver Post, “We want…as soon as possible to see a majority of the Republican Party in the hands of pro-family Christians…” Randall Terry agreed, saying in April: “What it is coming down to is who runs the country. It’s us against them. It’s the good guys versus the bad guys. It’s the God-fearing people against the pagans, and some of the pagans are going to church.”

The Republican Party Platform of 2000, when the Evangelical George W. Bush was running for president, saw just one mention of God but eight mentions of abortion, one mention of contraception, and of course, the by now obligatory stab at gay rights. Women got quite a few mentions, especially with regards healthcare. It was just that with those eight mentions of abortion, a certain type of healthcare was to be forbidden them.

In preparation for the 2000 election, the Christian Coalition put out 75 million voter guides to support of Texas governor George W. Bush. On January 20, 2001, Bush became president thanks to conservative Christian support, including especially that of White Evangelical Protestants (he received 68 percent of the white evangelical vote).

In 2002, Christian Coalition puts out 24 million voter guides. Religious Right-backed candidates win 18 new House seats and 11 Senate and Gubernatorial elections. A measure of the effort’s success can be seen in the fact that in 2003, 38 out of 52 Republicans in the U.S. Senate received 100% scorecards from the Family Research Council (FRC). This would have been unimaginable in 1960, in the days before the Religious Right’s invention of the culture war.

Not only is the GOP now so God-infested that there is room for nothing else, we are being told that only Christians should be allowed to run the country. Look at the recent Tea Party conference call that told Americans they need a Christian for president, because “anytime you get somebody who disdains law, doesn’t care for the law, who hates the Lawgiver and doesn’t think he deserves his sceptre, doesn’t think that the law giver knows what’s good for you, for us, then naturally you’re going to get pain, suffering, disease and death.”

Think back to 1972 again and the failure of the Republican Party Platform to mention God, and then think about the fuss made over the 2012 Democratic Party Platform’s exclusion of God. In 1972, this would not have been worthy of even a mention by the media, since the GOP excluded God too. In 2012 you’d have that it heralded the return of the anti-Christ, and indeed, that was the suggestion.

Today, President Barack Obama is regularly vilified as demonic and Satanic, and is even identified as that anti-Christ.

God, God, God, OMG GOP!

How about you focus your energy on being Grand once again, and put God on the back burner for awhile? You know, like in the good old days?