Hey, do y’all remember James Robison? No? Well, then let me have Mike Huckabee reintroduce him to you.
Despite Huckabee’s inclination toward a forgiving Christianity, Robison’s passion drew him in. He dropped out of seminary after one year to take a job as Robison’s director of communications.
“The way the Moral Majority movement was actually started was there was a rally that James Robison did in 1979 that I helped coördinate,” Huckabee said. “It was all because of the local television station in Dallas throwing him off the air, because, in a sermon that he preached on television, Robison said homosexuality is a sin. Think: 1979, it wasn’t really an outrageous statement. Anyway, they got some complaints and they told him he couldn’t be on television. Well, Texas? Are you kidding me?” More than ten thousand Christians came to a “Freedom Rally” at the Reunion Arena, in Dallas, to protest Robison’s expulsion. “There was this amazing energy coming up from these evangelical Christians,” Huckabee said. “I remember almost being frightened by it. If someone had gotten to the microphone and said, ‘Let’s go four blocks from here and take Channel 8 apart,’ that audience would’ve taken the last brick off the building.”
Did that refresh your recollection?
Good.
It looks like James Robison isn’t thrilled with Senator Ted Cruz’s performance in office because the vice president and executive producer of Robison’s television program “Life Today” is going to challenge Cruz in a primary.
Christian television executive Bruce Jacobson, who has discussed the possibility of taking on the Texas Republican in a primary, has a now live campaign website, brucefortexas.com, and Twitter handle, @brucefortexas…
[Jacobson] worked in the U.S. Department of Transportation under President Ronald Reagan, and served as a deputy regional representative for the Department of Labor under President George H. W. Bush. He also served as a director of a Regional Emergency Management Team during the Bush administration.
I have a couple of other interesting tidbits to note.
A Fort Worth-based super PAC has been raising money to help a potential Jacobson campaign. The group, Texans for Texas, has raised about $25,000. It has paid the Pittsburgh-based firm Brabender Cox, which has ties to Rick Santorum.
The PAC has criticized Cruz for spending too much time out of state during his unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination last year.
I don’t know if that Texans for Texas thing is a jab at Cruz’s Cuban heritage or his Canadian birth because the alleged Zodiac Killer grew up in Texas from the age of four. What I do know is that almost all the money raised for Texans for Texas so far has come from a Baylor graduate named Terry Redmon who served as the Director of LIFE Outreach International from 1985 to 2001. LIFE Outreach International is part of Robison’s ministry and the producer of his television program.
The connection to Santorum may just be some kind of coincidence rather than a hangover from the two men’s competing presidential ambitions.
Anyway, I guess real Texans don’t think Cruz makes the cut.
The braintrust at fivethirtyeight seemed to think yesterday that Ted Cruz could be beaten in a general election but they didn’t even mention the possibility that he might be weakened up or even defeated in a primary. The consensus with them seemed to be that the Nevada and Arizona Senate seats are the easy pickings for the Democrats, and that Alabama is a toss-up. They had a debate over whether Tennessee or Texas should be next on the list, with one side favoring Texas’s more favorable demographics and the other noting the advantages of incumbency and seeing the open seat in the Volunteer State as the more vulnerable of the two.
I’d be interested to see if their opinions are affected by the news that Cruz won’t get a free ride to the nomination. I also think the profile of the folks who will be opposing him is just as interesting as the fact that he will be opposed. He’s getting taken on by the white charismatic evangelical right.
How will Cruz move to blunt their challenge?
And, to think, Cruz was the one incumbent Republican senator up for reelection that Steve Bannon promised not to challenge!
I imagine the Democratic frontrunner Beto O’Rourke is pretty happy about this news. Cruz won’t be able to pivot to the middle; he’ll use up a lot of resources trying to hold onto the “tear the last brick off the building” crowd, and he’ll make a lot of powerful Republicans angry just by defending himself and going after their guy who happens to be an authentic Texan.
I’m thinkin’: popcorn.
I moved away from Texas in the early 90’s. Back then, I never would imagine that pseudo Texans like George Bush and Ted Cruz would have a snowballs chance in hell of being elected dog catcher, let alone governor or senator.
Between Moore and he’s fellow supporting “culture war” pastors and being reminded of people like Robison’s own Texas right wing octopus I think we’re WAY past the point of having to amend the Constitutional to remove the tax-exempt status on these fake Christian churches that cover for America’s right wing authoritarian white supremacy movement organizing, funding, and support networks.
Historically, our nation has had no problem bringing the full power of our government against anything the left has produced even partially as organized and funded as our white evangelical movement.
The case has been made before that the first amendment actually forbids special tax-exempt treatment for religious organizations.
The supreme court has ruled that tax-exemption for churches is narrowly constitutional “in spite of rather than because of their religious character. For religious institutions simply share benefits which government makes generally available to educational, charitable, and eleemosynary groups.“
In other words, removing the tax exempt status of religious organizations would not require a constitutional amendment. Churches are only tax exempt insofar as they act as other, secular charitable organizations act.
Now, that’s not to say that the court with the current wingnut majority wouldn’t invent some new constitutional right forbidding church taxation. But it’s certainly not the constitution preventing church taxation today.
But it seems they are never called to account when they are not behaving like other charitable institutions and are definitely involved in non-educational, non-charitable actions
Sure, I’m just pointing out that the problem isn’t constitutional.
Reporting today from Fort Worth…
This development is odd. Very odd. Cruz came up through the same evangelistic wing of the Texas GOP that Redmon does. For them to eat one of their own is uncharacteristic, to put it mildly.
Maybe Cruz treated Redmon arrogantly since 2012, or maybe the solipsism in the GOP caucus has reached a new threshold. Either way, I’m pretty dumbstruck by this. I thought the chamber of commerce wing might go after him, but not his own supporters.
Agreed. Although there are lots of varieties of charismatic right wing christians, so Ted might be a congregant of a group not recogized as true believing enough, this seems like it is probably the result of some personal beef. Ted Cruz may rub certain people the wrong way…(No, really.).
I lived in Texas for 7 of the longest years of my life. Texas politicians have no loyalty any longer. Its everyman for himself and devil take the hindmost.
WHY, you ask is Redmon on his way to savaging Cruz? Because Cruz is crippled, can beaten and Redmon wants to be a senator. I guess if you looked hard enough you could find some reasoning but the bottom line is “I can take it, so I will”.
I’d assume this Jacobson dude doesn’t have much of a chance, if his PAC is just being funded by 1 guy. To me that indicates that there’s not exactly a groundswell of right-leaning dissatisfaction with Cruz (nor can I imagine why there would be, other than sheer incoherent rage against all incumbents).
On the other side, I have read that Julian Castro has been contemplating entering the race. That would give us two strong candidates. (And hopefully that would not itself hurt the cause.)
The fivethirtyeight chat was great, and mirrored the thoughts I’ve been having for months now. I think it is highly likely that Sinema and Rosen are in the Senate come 2019. The third seat will very likely come from Alabama, and then there could be additional seats from TX (I suspect Cruz is fairly vulnerable in a general election this cycle), TN (if it’s Bredesen vs. lunatic), AZ (if McCain passes away in the Spring, which is fairly likely), or ME (if Collins switches parties, which I have to think she’s inclined to do pending the outcome of the midterms). All of those are legitimate possibilities, not pipe dreams (though I think TN is a bit of a longshot).
Hell, we could end up with a 52-48 Senate for the Democrats by the time this all shakes out.
Castro isn’t running for Senator, I’m pretty sure he has said so. Beto O’Rourke is the Dem candidate.
yes, evidently some polling months ago showed that despite higher name recognition he was way behind O’Rourke
The braintrust at fivethirtyeight seemed to think yesterday that Ted Cruz could be beaten in a general election but they didn’t even mention the possibility that he might be weakened up or even defeated in a primary.
Need I remind you about the GOP primary last year? Nate & Co. didn’t even put Trump in the driver’s seat until after South Carolina. That is despite Trump leading the polls for ages. IIRC, they gave Rubio the edge for a long time. Why? I have no idea. Seems to me they put their thumb on the scale at the time.
538 doesn’t use a polls-only model and never has.
To which they (Nate) has responded: yeah I fucked up and adjusted after. Are you going to cite this to the end of time as if that nullifies everything else they say?
I didn’t even bring up the general election!! My point is that Nate is far from infallible.
538 had the best prediction in the general against all competitors. He had Trump pulling the inside straight at 30%. Nobody else gave him those odds.
More of this red state political scuttlebutt. Following the money and the long-term relationships is excellent context for this primary challenge.
More Christian than thou and more conservative than thou seem to be the ways that newly politically motivated wealthy can purchase a piece of the action and newly ambitious or not-yet-done politicians can take a run.
The aim on Cruz raises the issue as to whether there is blowback from the ICE crackdown onto Hispanic GOP politiicians in all offices. And whether the evangelicals might be the wing of the party that swings into action in order to get stronger support withing the GOP for their “Freedom” (gah) agenda.
Also curious as to how Cruz’s dad plays into the relationships and calculations here.
Interesting that Robison was playing the homophobe message in 1979 to call “Christians out of the closet” (no not that closet, just to action). That was after Phyllis Schlafly used the danger of lesbian feminists to sabotage the Equal Rights Amendment. Until that moment the Catholics had anti-abortion; the evangelicals had homophobia (and not much traction). Robison was part of building that traction. And the Southern evangelicals around Bob Jones University were defending segregation academies from federal sanctions.
When the Moral Majority was actually formed, the leadership made the choice to fly the flag of anti-abortion and the pennant of homophobia and talk about school choice (vs. reproductive choice) to elide segregation.
So what new wrinkle in values voting can Robison put together to sting Cruz with? They’ve got to be going for the the ultimate Democrat-vanquisher. Testing it on Cruz would be the logical step.
The christians wants full repeal of Roe/Wade and this may be their way of pushing Cruz into their full repeal position. The christian right has reduced its self to one issue…abortion.
Abortion and binary sexuality plus the right to discriminate in order to enforce these norms.
Some might be hanging on to a hope of avoiding taxes for related non-religious corporations–bookstores, media corporations, and so on.
Well for one thing, up to this morning he was one of 2 senators who had specifically NOT un-endorsed Moore. That’s one way to keep the dominionists on your side.
We have 1 full year more of Mueller. And at the end of it, BEFORE the election the cross-hairs will be so firmly planted on Trump that nobody will be able to mistake it. We’re in late 1973 now, people. If you’re old enough to remember the Watergate, you remember that feeling.
Trump should have gone ahead immediately after firing Comey and fired the Special Prosecutor. Because when Mueller issues his report, it’s going to list about 15 major felonies Donald Trump personally committed, including obstruction of justice, perjury, conspiracy and a bucket-load of other felonies. And he’s going to have witness testimony because he’s rolling up the chain.
Trump waited to long. Now the political damage would be too great. But it will get worse. By the time he’s ready to actually lash out in rage and brutally suppress the investigation it will be too late.
If any of you have been involved in federal felony conspiracy cases, you know how powerful a really good, tough federal prosecutor can be. And Mueller is going after Trump like John Gotti.
To say this is going to have a political impact is putting it mildly. No matter what the right-wing echo chamber does, they are going to be isolated on this.
If I were betting, I’d take the 30% odds that Nate Silver gives the Democrats of taking the Senate and bet the house.
A year is a long time, and Trump is just getting warmed up. They are desperately passing a massive tax give-away to corporations and the 1%, paid for by massive cuts to middle class health care. Everybody’s premium is going up next year. That is not going to sell well.
Not even in Texas or Tennessee.