Calling the Kettle Black: Bush, Rove, and Fred Phelps

Why do we stay so polarized? How can it be possible in the first place for cynics to grab hold of the public eye and the power of the government with divisive tactics and positions that once upon a time would be relegated to the end of the political bench? In explanation, let me tell you about a subject I know no small bit about.

The Rev. Fred Phelps, leader of a cult that calls itself the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, has jumped from my old Topeka stomping grounds to the national stage. Preoccupied with homosexuality, Phelps and his mostly-extended-family congregation became moderately well known nationally, and infamous locally, by picketing the funerals of gays who died of AIDS, churches who didn’t take a hard line against gays, parks that were supposed to be locations for gay trysts, and eventually any large local public gathering. His picket signs were garish, graphic, and blunt; the most famous signs were “God Hates Fags” and “Fags Burn In Hell.”

Phelps did what I thought wasn’t possible to grab national headlines; he became even more extreme in his paranoia of homosexuality. He and his WBC followers started picketing the funerals of U. S. soldiers from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, publicly stating that their deaths were God’s punishment of a country that tolerated homosexuality. The reaction of the country outside the Great Plains was all the explosive outrage the middle class can muster. The very idea that a group could picket fallen soldiers in a time of war flew all over the patriotic citizenry and offended sensibilities regarding respect for the dead.

But the rest of the country is learning what Topekans are too familiar with. As deranged as he is, Fred Phelps is a lawyer and a brilliant one. Further, his sons and daughters are lawyers. They have thwarted nearly every legal attempt to rein in their practices. A judge in Kentucky just threw out that state’s law that prohibits protests within 300 feet of funerals.

Moreover, the Phelps Clan (as I “affectionately” call them) utilize a crass but effective strategy. They make their extreme statements, and when the inevitable outrage comes from reasonable people, they bully back against those critics as being enemies of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Between the constant drumbeat of their hate-filled diatribe and the threats of legal action against any who would oppose their statements and actions, the Phelps Clan wears and demoralizes casual criticism against them until they’re resigned to put up with the Phelps’ extremist conduct.

Karl Rove probably didn’t study the Phelps Clan’s methods. But it’s hard to tell from the way President George W. Bush’s political strategist has transformed political discourse in this country. Rove has done with the Bush presidency as Phelps has done with his anti-homosexual crusade: taken positions that the center sees as extreme, then attack those who react against those positions.

Campaigns no longer run to the center as the conventional wisdom has always dictated. With an evenly divided country, Rove chose to emphasize controversial hot-button issues for the far right (e. g., abortion, same sex marriage) that alienate the center but whip the conservative base into a frenzy and motivate them to go to the polls. With Rove, it’s all about how many of your base can you turn out on election day, not how many in the center can you get to come to your side.

And so it was that in the tight 2004 presidential election the people of southern Ohio decided that Bush should be re-elected over John Kerry. Not, according to exit polls, because Bush was seen as more effective in the war on terror or the war in Iraq. Southern Ohio went for Bush because he was against gay marriage, and a plethora of state constitutional amendments for same sex marriage bans held up and reinforced homosexuality as the great social boogeyman.

As for demonizing the opposition, Bush has demonstrated a mastery not surprising for the reputed loyalty enforcer for his father George H. W. Bush. The Iraq war was sold to America with questionable WMD intelligence reinforced with constant imagery of mushroom clouds and dirty bombs. Critics of the Iraq war were compared to Nazi appeasers. Outrage at Bush’s warrantless wiretapping was met by Bush charging that Democrats don’t want us to listen in on the terrorists.

This is government without consensus, an elbow-your-way-to-the-front approach that cuts the knees out of those who dare speak in opposition. It’s the inevitable fruit of doing the outrageous and casting those who react indignantly as being the “real” extremists.