Christian Soldiers

With homegrown terrorists like Robert Lewis Dear, who needs ISIS?  We have our own Christian State right here.  Of course, none of the GOP candidates want to take any blame for Dear's actions, but it is their fiery rhetoric on the campaign trail that inspire rogues like him to take action.  It took 48 hours for any one of them to respond.  All condemned the actions, but Ted Cruz artfully tried to lay the culpability at the liberal doorstep by calling Dear a "transgendered leftist activist!"

I doubt the incident will stop these GOP candidates and their cohorts in Congress from hurling abuse at Planned Parenthood, which has become vilified on the campaign trail for "selling baby parts for profit."  The candidates have also been throwing around absurd figures like 90 per cent of what PP does are abortions, which dates back to Sen. John Kyl's off-the-cuff comment during a Senate floor harangue against any further federal funding for the organization.

It doesn't matter that all these allegations are unsubstantiated.  It is enough to toss them around on the campaign trail and they begin to take on a "truthiness" among the conservative electorate, which is staunchly against any abortions, even if the actual percentage of abortions carried out at Planned Parenthood clinics is 3 per cent, and that what PP "sells" are placentas to research facilities to help cover their own clinical costs.

A guy like Dear gets an earful of this and decides enough is enough, I'm going to take out a few of these abortion doctors to even the score.  We'll probably see more such shootings in the months ahead, as this type of terrorism is nothing new.  There were several well-publicized incidents back in the 90s, including Paul Jennings Hill, who gunned down Dr. John Britton and his bodyguard at a Pensacola, Florida, clinic in 1994.  Hill was actually a minister at a Pensacola church and considered himself a member of Army of God, which still exists today.

Dear appears to be your classic lone wolf, but I imagine he spent a fair amount of time on the Internet, tying into extremist groups like Army of God, which view the current state of society in apocalyptic terms not much unlike ISIS.  It will probably be awhile before we get enough information to draw any firm conclusions.  Not that it stopped Teddy Boy from casting blame on crazed liberals.

Of course, none of the GOP candidates is evenly remotely willing to admit that the ugly rhetoric they have been fomenting on the campaign trail could possibly inspire guys like Dear.  Instead, they try to muddy up the issue with all sorts of speculations and allegations, a la Trump, who continued to reference the faux undercover videos allegedly proving that Planned Parenthood was harvesting baby parts for sale.  In other words, what this "maniac" did is bad, but Planned Parenthood is even worse.  This of course resonates with the very group of radical fundamental Christians that Cruz and Trump are appealing to.   The only thing they don't do is go so far as to condone the actions of Dear himself.  He's the "extremist," but if Planned Parenthood knew what was good for itself, it would get out of this business all together.

The GOP candidates continue to pitch the false narrative that Planned Parenthood is principally in the business of abortion so that they can claim some kind of moral high ground.  This is even more disgusting than Robert Lewis Dear because he was acting out of his own twisted logic, whereas our holier-than-now GOP candidates use incidents like this to justify their warped view that PP is some medieval institution engaged in heinous crimes, hence the continued circulation of the disturbing videos, knowing full well it is images like these that set persons like Dear off.

The Republican Party has so thoroughly demonized Planned Parenthood that it can't help become the target of many persons' "tremendous dislike," as the Donald put it.  The GOP candidates ignore the other 97 per cent of health services Planned Parenthood provides.  They focus on only one thing because this is what resonates with their audience, but they will never admit that Robert Lewis Dear is part of their audience.