GOP candidates, Pat Robertson and his moment of clarity

[Townsend]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/pat-robertson-republican-candidates-extremism-down-notch-ya-194714069.html

Pat Robertson to Republican candidates: Take the extremism down a notch, will ya?

Pentecostal televangelist and "700 Club" host Pat Robertson has some advice for the Republican presidential candidates: Stop pandering to the far right, or lose in 2012.

On his television program Monday night, Robertson, a Christian conservative who obviously has a pragmatic streak, warned that conservative GOP voters were pushing the primary candidates into taking positions on issues that could haunt the party's presidential nominee as he or she seeks to woo the more general--and more moderate--American electorate in 2012.

"Those people in the Republican primary have got to lay off of this stuff. They're forcing their leaders, the front-runners, into positions that will mean they lose the general election," Robertson said. "You appeal to the narrow base and they applaud the daylights out of what you're saying, and then you hit the general election and they'll say no way."

"They've got to stop this! It's just so counterproductive," he added. "Well, if they want to lose, this is the game for losers."

[heironymouspasparagus]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/pat-robertson-republican-candidates-extremism-down-notch-ya-194714069.html

Pat Robertson to Republican candidates: Take the extremism down a notch, will ya?

Quite a bizarre moment.

[Teatownclown]

OH JESUS!

[heironymouspasparagus]

What he is saying is lie about it, then after you get elected, you can do what you want instead.

About right for Pat Robertson.

[Townsend]

What he is saying is lie about it, then after you get elected, you can do what you want instead.

About right for Pat Robertson.

Sure.  I was surprised he didin't quantify it with that last part you mentioned.  #crazypsychoconman

[Townsend]

So weird, another moment of clarity on a good day for science:

[heironymouspasparagus]

Reality is such a painful thing for reactionary extremists.  I wonder if it was the fact that there exists a Joshua tree that is well over 7,000 years old - dated by counting tree rings - much older than the 6,000 he has been 'pushing' for so long.  Or the correlated rings from trees much older - going back another 10k or more.  Not to mention the 400,000 years or so of ice "rings" that exist way down south.  (One year per layer - if it all doesn't melt during the 'summer' - which does happen - so the count is probably low.)  Don't even need carbon dating to establish the earth's age as many times the incorrect interpretation by people of the Biblical account.

We are having a Galileo Moment in our society right now.
All the more amazing since Pat himself was one of the mentors and agents of extremism in this country for so long...well, still is actually.

[AquaMan]

Yeah, well, there's still Sen Inhofe type people in powerful positions. You aren't going to see any renaissance thinking from those pulpits.

[Ed W]

While ole Pat may have had a moment of clarity, I wouldn't count on it lasting.  Tony Norman had this to say about him in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:

Giggling mischievously last January and reading notes jotted down during his off-the-record chats with the Lord, the televangelist refused to name the winner, but he did lambaste President Barack Obama with a catalog of God's complaints about how he was running things.

Fast forward to a few days before the election and the facade of coyness had been dropped. Pat Robertson, like his cohorts in the right-wing media entertainment complex, was predicting not just a Romney win, but a landslide.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/tony-norman/pat-robertson-evolves-to-show-some-sense-664327/#ixzz2DozSxmx8

Now, it's entirely possible that God simply changed His mind about who would win in November, and if so, it's equally possible He'll change positions on Creationism in the near future too.  God can do that.  It's one of the perks of being omnipotent, after all.

On a related note, I read today that Boston's Logan Airport ran out of parking spaces on election day.  Not parking spaces for cars, but rather parking spaces for all those private jets as the 1% expected to fly in for the big Romney victory party. 

Robertson kicking Creationism to the curb may be a fundamental ideological dividing point much like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939.  It was a turning point for American members of the Communist Party, many of them idealists who hung on through Stalin's purges, but could no longer stomach his dictatorial power.  The pact formed an alliance - temporary as it may be - with the political antithesis of communism.  Members left the CPUSA in droves.

I'm not trying to suggest that Robertson's statements will have the international impact of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.  Instead, I think it will cause fragmentation on the religious right with a diminution of their political clout.