“Reformed” Rightwing Rabble-Rouser Tells All

Straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. Francis Schaeffer is a veteran of a militant Fetus-Worshipping cult — oh, sorry, they use the term “Pro Life” — that started in the 1970s. He’s been closely allied with Dick Armey, among others.

It’s hard to tell how much he’s “changed” or “reformed,” but he gives an insider’s view of the Republican scorched earth policy against Obama’s health reform plans.

He says: “The Republican Old Guard are in the fix an atheist would be in if Jesus showed up and raised his mother from the dead: Their world view has just been shattered. Obama's election has driven them over the edge.”

As we already know by now, there’s been a team effort between the multi-billion dollar health insurance industry and gangs of rightwing rent-a-thugs. Their sole purpose is to intimidate people who speak publicly in favor of health care reform. As he puts it, this operation is “a well-financed, top-down orchestrated fake grass roots campaign by corporate interests to try and protect the profits of the insurance business.”

Comparing today’s Neanderthals to his own checkered past as an anti-abortion activist, Schaeffer says: “What we did to clinics they are now doing to congressmen and others speaking out for health care reform.”

You probably don’t like this guy, but he sounds credible. Think of him as a criminal who rolled over on some larger criminals in return for a lighter sentence.

FreedomWorks (closely tied to Dick Armey) is one of these infamous Astroturf groups using the orchestrated top-down approach that, as Schaeffer says, has “been the norm for conservative organizations for years. How do I know this is the norm? Because I used to have strategy meetings with the late Jack Kemp and Dick Army and the rest of the Republican gang about using their business ties to help finance the pro-life movement to defeat Democrats. I know this script. I helped write it.”

Schaeffer says Dick Armey used to be a decent guy, and asks rhetorically what happened to him:

“How could he stoop so low as to be organizing what amounts to America's Brown Shirts today? I think I know what happened to him, Gingrich and the rest: They can't compute that their white man-led conservative revolution is dead. They can't reconcile their idea of themselves with the fact that white men like them don't run the country any more — and never will again. To them the black president is leading a column of the "other" into their promised land. Gays, immigrants, blacks, progressives, even a female Hispanic appointed to the Supreme Court... for them this is the Apocalypse.”

“Dick Army and company have been driven mad by their reversal, not just of political fortunes but of seeing that they've wasted their lives. They now know they were wrong: about the country, the free market, war for fun and profit, and what the American people really want. They made their best case and were rejected by the American people…So now all the Republican gurus have left is what the defeated Germans of World War Two had: a scorched earth policy. If they can't win then everyone must go down. Obama must fail! The country must fail!”

Schaeffer sums up his article with:

“It's time that this whole shabby (and insane) business be exposed, vilified and run out of town on a rail by whatever responsible Republicans — if any — that are still in the party and who want to see the fortunes of their party revived. Republican leaders taking insurance industry money via lobbying firms and using it to organize what amounts to roving bands of thugs not only need to be exposed but thrown out of the public debate forever. They should become absolute pariahs. It's time to give this garbage a name: insurance industry funded fascism.”

cross-posted at Bring It On!