The Republican Party Means Absolutely Nothing Now

The current state of the Republican Party is embarrassing. What else is new? Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Question here from Patrick, the butcher, who says, when is this country going to wake up to the toxic effect that the Dominionist right has had on the Republican party? All this culture, war Bs comes directly from pulpits and the so-called Bible belt. If they're going to make political speeches from the altar, then they need to be taxed into non-existence. Where the expletive deleted is the i r s, um, wonderful question there. And of course, it's something that we have actually talked about here on Ring of Fire. Um, God, for almost 20 years, it's been one of the biggest issues that we have talked about here on Ring of Fire. In fact, Mike Papantonio has done so much on it. He was actually featured in the, uh, Academy Award nominated documentary, Jesus Camp. Uh, if you haven't seen that, by the way, brilliant film. I think at one point you can actually see my hand in it.

Um, but no, it, it heavily features obviously, Mike Papantonio in his role in the early days of Ring of Fire. It's wonderful. Please check it out if you can. Jesus camp is the name of it. Um, but no, seriously, you're right. And Frank Shaffer, the au author, who, by the way, we have interviewed many times on Ring of Fire as well. Uh, you can find his videos on our YouTube channel. Uh, he basically has laid this out and he's been sounding those alarm bells for many years now. You know, Frank Shaffer's father essentially helped create the religious right, him and, and another man whose name escapes me at the moment, I apologize. But they did this. They put this out there. They said, Hey, listen, how can we grow the church? How can we use the church to our political advantage? Abortion? And of course, since then, it has bloomed well beyond just abortion, okay?

You know, we, we've got the, the transgender issues, the bathrooms, the sports. Oh God, we gotta keep the transgender people out of those places. And, and now it's gone even further. We can't even allow them to transition. Our kids are being indoctrinated. The culture wars have expanded beyond the wildest dreams of the founders of the religious right. And of course, one of the reasons is they kind of had to, I mean, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade, which is something the religious rights been hammering on for 40 years, suddenly they're like, oh, crap, what do we do? And they just immediately moved on to the next, you know, horrible, scary thing that's corrupting your children. Um, and that is, of course, according to them, the issue of transgender people. You're also right. I will add about the irs. We have preachers that are 100% pushing politics from the pulpit.

And there's a very, I don't wanna say, you know, obvious, but kind of reason why the federal government doesn't go after these institutions. And the reason is because the second you send a federal agent into a church, the Republicans are gonna use that to win every election in the next cycle. The second you send an IRS agent to do an audit of a church, it's over. They will weaponize that against us, even though it needs to happen, it should happen. But I do think Democrats realize, like, look, we know these horrible things are happening. We know what they're doing. We know it's a violation. We know it's illegal, but if we go after them, even if we can prove it, even if we can show how these people are violating their tax exempt status, the right wing is gonna have a field day with it. They're gonna capture the messaging. We're gonna look like we're attacking religion. So that's why nothing happens. It sucks to say that, but I promise you that is why nothing is happening on that issue, out of fear, not because these churches are doing everything right.