RNC Hires Hate Group Leader Tony Perkins to Co-Write Official GOP Platform

Normally, the national party platform is carefully written by behind the scenes players who are more concerned with crafting an appropriate document that clearly states the party's core beliefs and objectives, but leaves room for a humane and, you know, sane interpretation. Not true this year.

In a sign of the party having become completely unhinged by radicals hammering down the doors, the GOP has solicited the services of Tony Perkins, leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center certified hate group The Family Research Council. The SPLC identifies several characteristics of the FRC, including its determination to force gays and lesbians to undergo medically and psychologically disreputable "reparative therapy" in an effort to change their sexual orientation. The FRC also continues to disseminate fear and stoke the fires of hate against gays by making the claim that gay men are more likely to be pedophiles, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

For some perspective, this designation puts the newest architects of the GOP's 2012 platform in league with other hate groups like the Aryan Nation, the Ku Klux Klan, the Nation of Islam, and Skinheads. In fact, Perkins has personal ties to some of those groups. It's not just anti-gay hate that Perkins has cast his lot in with over the years.

Aside from anti-gay activism, Perkins, while a reserve police officer in Baton Rouge during 1992, refused to report an illegal conspiracy by antiabortion activists to commit violence at an abortion clinic. He was suspended from duty in 1992, and quit the reserve force after openly criticizing the department. Then, there's this:

In 1996, while managing the U.S. Senate campaign of Woody Jenkins against Mary Landrieu, Perkins paid $82,500 to use the mailing list of former Klan chieftain David Duke. The campaign was fined $3,000 (reduced from $82,500) after Perkins and Jenkins filed false disclosure forms in a bid to hide their link to Duke. Five years later, on May 17, 2001, Perkins gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), a white supremacist group that has described black people as a “retrograde species of humanity.” Perkins claimed not to know the group’s ideology at the time, but it had been widely publicized in Louisiana and the nation, because in 1999 — two years before Perkins’ speech to the CCC — Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott had been embroiled in a national scandal over his ties to the group. GOP chairman Jim Nicholson then urged Republicans to avoid the CCC because of its “racist views.” 

So yes, to write part of its party plank, the GOP has chosen Tony Perkins, a renegade police officer who covered up a conspiracy to commit violence, has ties to Klan chieftain David Duke, who spoke before a white supremacist group that describes black people as a "retrograde species of humanity," and who publicly calls gay people "intolerant," "hateful," "vile," "spiteful," "pawns of the enemy." (Incidentally, Perkins recently blamed the SPLC for a shooting at the FRC headquarters, claiming that the SPLC's "heightened" and "hateful" language may have led to the shooting).

Reports indicate that Perkins' platform will call out "an activist judiciary" that seeks to undermine Judeo-Christian principles by "redefining marriage." This is nothing new. After all, this is the same Tony Perkins who once said of the Supreme Court,

“The court has become increasingly hostile to Christianity and it poses a greater threat to representative government more than anything, more than budget deficits, more than terrorist groups.” 

In Perkin's platform, the GOP opposes everything Obama has done for gay rights, including its handling of immigration cases that involve legally married gay people whose partners could still be deported because of the lack of federal marriage recognition. Perkins is, of course, totally happy to rip these families apart. His platform also insists that married gay couples receive no federal benefits and that they not be allowed to marry on any military bases. Naturally, Perkins is angry at Obama for refusing to defend the indefensibile Defense of Marriage Act.

So when you're reading the GOP's plank on marriage equality (or marriage inequality, in this case), just remember that the man they hired to write it is a racist, sexist, law-breaking, homophobic monster who compared the Supreme Court to a terrorist organization and leads an SPLC certified hate group.

Ultimately, this well may be the most fiercely anti-gay platform the GOP has ever drafted. Kudos to the Log Cabin Republicans for somehow snagging an olive branch and getting the words "dignity and respect" thrown in there, too. But  they must be the only ones who actually believe it.

Obama Condemns Rape. Naturally, Mike Huckabee Rushes to Rape's Defense.

In the world of the Tea Party, one might think that Obama could come out in favor of anything and Republicans would find a way to be against it. Conversely, it also seems like Obama could come out against anything and Republicans would rush to defend it. As crude as it sounds, sometimes I think that Obama could say that rape is bad and Republicans would rush to defend the practice.

And as crude as it sounds, that's exactly what happened today.

After GOP Rep. Todd Akin was a little too honest about the social conservative worldview as it relates to rape and abortion yesterday, politically mindful conservatives like Karl Rove sought to distance themselves from his comments on the difference between rape and "legitimate rape." That left President Obama with the task of stating the obvious: "Rape is rape," it's not a good thing, and we don't need a bunch of mostly male politicians defining when rape is and isn't "legitimate."

That sounds reasonable, right?

Well, no. Fox News host and 2008 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, after acknowledging that rape can be "horrible," went on to extol the virtues of "forcible rape" and to remind that socialist, Marxist, Muslim, anti-American, Kenyan president of ours that, sometimes, rape can produce great results:

“Ethel Waters, for example, was the result of a forcible rape,” Huckabee said of the late American gospel singer. One-time presidential candidate Huckabee added: “I used to work for James Robison back in the 1970s, he leads a large Christian organization. He, himself, was the result of a forcible rape. And so I know it happens, and yet even from those horrible, horrible tragedies of rape, which are inexcusable and indefensible, life has come and sometimes, you know, those people are able to do extraordinary things.”

And while we're remembering the sheer number of great human beings that forcible rape (whatever the hell that is) has given the world, let's not forget that consensual sex has often landed us with terrible results, like Adolf Hitler, for example.

So just remember, ladies, if you're going to make a baby while you're being raped, just make sure it's a forcible rape. Forcible rape just tends to result in better children than consensual rape, oddly enough.

Mitt Romney's Tax Rate Under the Paul Ryan Plan: 0.82%

Under the budget plan put forth by Mitt Romney's newly announced Vice Presidential nominee, Romney wouldn't have paid the meager 13.9 percent tax rate he paid in 2010. If Paul Ryan's 2010 budget had been enacted at the time, Mitt Romney would've paid only a 0.82% tax rate. No, that's not an exaggeration.

In 2010, Romney paid around $3 million in taxes on a taxable income of $21.6 million. But if he had been operating under the Paul Ryan budget, Romney would've paid far, far less--just $177,650.

How's that possible? Much of Romney's income, as with other rich Americans, comes from investments. The Paul Ryan plan would eliminate taxes on those investments, including capital gains, interest, and dividends. Furthermore, Paul Ryan's budget includes a $3 trillion giveaway to the richest and to corporations. In January, Mitt Romney criticized Newt Gingrich for advocating similar ideas.

But if the top 1% of Americans are allowed to pay virtually no taxes, how does Paul Ryan pay for government spending, like the $40 billion in subsidies he wants to give to the oil industry?

That's easy. Eliminate Medicare. Eliminate $1 million in pell grants--including the very program that allowed him to complete college after his father died. Privatize Social Security. Eliminate 4.1 million jobs in just two years. Privatize education. Eliminate food stamps and safety net programs for the poor.

And make the lower 30% of Americans pay a higher tax rate.

Because, in the word's of Paul Ryan's favorite philosopher and greatest inspiration, Ayn Rand, the poor, the sick, and the old are "parasites" and "dependents" who only "degrade the dignity of men." Cutting off their lifeline, is in fact, an act of moral correctness. Ayn Rand is where Paul Ryan learned about the virtue of selfishness and the moral imperative to worship at the feet of the "job creators."More on that later.