what digby said

When life is getting you down, turn to Digby. That could be my motto. Somehow, talking to Heather Parton, known as “Digby” to those of us who’ve been reading her blog since we first learned the term “blog,” just makes me feel better.

She joined me this morning to pick up where yesterday’s conversation with Frank Schaeffer about the religious hypocrisy in relation to politics left off.

In her latest for Salon, “Why the Christian Right is Going to War (with Itself), ” Digby points out the growing “schism” between the Catholic faithful and the evangelical right:

First we have we have the likes of Ted Cruz saying that the Catholic intelligentsia, as represented by John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito are not up to the job of properly defending social conservatism on the Court. True, all but Kennedy voted against marriage equality. But the others are supposed to persuade him. The deal was that the Catholics would provide the intellectual arguments that would prevail when they got a majority — a majority largely delivered through bloody battles fought by the evangelical right. Cruz, being one of the very few pointy headed intellectual evangelical elites, feels they have failed to deliver their side of the bargain.

And for over two decades Republicans have been telling us that there is no difference between the political and the religious realm. Many have even declared that America is a Christian nation, full stop. Now we have leading Catholic politicians, Bush and Santorum, distancing themselves from religion because the the global leader of their church is not observing that nice little agreement that held the religious right together. Their loyalties are to the party first, which isn’t surprising. They are politicians. But the question is how many other Catholics will follow suit.

But don’t get your hopes up for a big collapse of the Christian right. Their religious coalition may be a bit shaky but the evangelical right is solid as a rock and more influential in the party than ever. The Catholics may find themselves on the outside of the Big Tent looking in at an old-fashioned revival meeting and they may not be welcome anymore.

Of course, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop – that of the “liberal Jew” (of course, Ginsberg, Kagan and Breyer – the three Jews on the court are all Jewish) being to blame for all of America’s ills. Make no mistake, it’s coming. But it is interesting to note that the other six justices are all Roman Catholic. Hmmm…

We also discussed the latest entrants to the GOP 2016 clown car, Donald Trump (ignore at your own peril) and Chris Christie (the jokes write themselves)…  Like this one (even words are unnecessary!)

Christie camel toe

In the first hour, it was my regular Wednesday morning get-together with fellow FloriDUH resident Deborah Newell Tornello. We take turns trying to out-DUH each other with stories from the Oy FloriDUH files.

Some of today’s include

But we had one good one today!

I’ll be back tomorrow, same time, same place with more news, info and commentary, radio or not!