But How Did the GOP Become a “Paranoid Cult”?

From Frank Schaeffer:

The Republicans are arsonists who burned down our national home. They combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America.

I used to be one of them. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year’s primary. I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his “supply side” myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There’s more, but take it from me; my parents and I were about as tight with — and useful to — the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Patience With God–Faith For People Who Don’t Like Religion Or Atheism). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America’s “moral decline.”

They’re still at it. Why are the ultra-conservatives, the loony “deather”, “birther”, “Obama-is-the-Antichrist” right killing their own party? Because they are into purity.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of: CRAZY FOR GOD—How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back