rant> Thank you very much Charlie and George Greer, and thanks very much, George Will, for your coined phrase now picked up and used to convince the world that murdering an innocent is a good thing and saving same is a bad thing. The theme is developing as a fresh mantra as it wraps the notion many decent Americans share, (namely that killing innocents is a bad thing) with the notion that Congress should not overstep its bounds (especially in trying to control our Imperial Judiciary.)
Now we see efforts to discourage the killing of an innocent is "extreme".
/rant>
But rather than serving as this year's Republican savior, Missouri ended up exemplifying why the GOP lost the mid-terms — and why the religious right's political alliances are increasingly, startlingly, up for grabs. Like their evangelical counterparts almost everywhere else, Missouri's religious right voted in surprisingly healthy, near-2004 numbers. But moderate and independent Missourians did not come along for the ride — partly because the stem-cell wedge proved to be anything but magic. Like the infamous Terri Schiavo intervention by Congress, opposition to stem cell research is an extreme extension of the "pro-life" position — an extension too far, in the view of many Christian voters. As former Senator John Danforth wrote in spring 2005, "It is not evident to many of us that cells in a petri dish are equivalent to identifiable people suffering from terrible diseases." Danforth's blast spread through Missouri faster than kudzu. So did his warning that the religious right had become a dangerously divisive force.
GOP Doesn't Monopolize Moral Politics
8mm
