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Profiles In Extremism: The Virginia GOP's Tea Party Ticket

This year, after switching its nominating process from a primary election to a convention system, the Virginia Republican Party selected three candidates for statewide office who are far out of the mainstream. The state convention, attended by the party’s diehard members, was an opportunity for the Tea Party wing of the party and Religious Right activists to push the state GOP even further to the ideological fringe, even after the bruising the party took nationwide in the 2012 election.

Now, Virginia voters will have the chance to vote on a GOP ticket so far to the right that it would make Barry Goldwater cringe.

Undermining Abortion Rights

Gubernatorial nominee Ken Cuccinelli, the state attorney general and a former state senator, boasts that he entered politics by challenging a Republican lawmaker in a primary over the incumbent’s pro-choice views. After he was elected to the state senate, Cuccinelli tried to pass a personhood law which would criminalize(link is external) all abortions in every case, along with several forms of contraception and fertility treatments. He has warned that God will punish America(link is external) over abortion rights, which he compared to slavery(link is external), and has embarked(link is external) on several endeavors as state senator and attorney general to close clinics that provide abortions and to defund Planned Parenthood.

E.W. Jackson, the minister and failed US Senate candidate who won the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor, earned plaudits from the far-right for arguing that Planned Parenthood is worse than the Ku Klux Klan (link is external) . He fears that due to health care reform “abortion will increase like a plague upon the land(link is external)” and claims anyone who backs a pro-choice candidate is “blaspheming their God(link is external).” An advocate of personhood laws(link is external), Jackson has slammed(link is external) abortion and in vitro fertilization as “evils” that carry “the mark of Satan” and are akin to the gross crimes committed by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

The GOP nominee for attorney general, state senator Mark Obenshain, like Cuccinelli backed multiple personhood bill in the General Assembly. He also supported successful legislation requiring invasive, transvaginal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions. In fact, Obenshain introduced legislation that would make it a crime (link is external) for a woman to fail to report a miscarriage to the police, punishable by a hefty fine and even prison time. A former board member of James Madison University, he wanted to ban(link is external) emergency contraceptive pills from the student health center.

Anti-Gay

A hero of the anti-gay Right, Ken Cuccinelli has attacked gay rights at every turn(link is external), most recently by taking on the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that struck down sodomy laws(link is external). Cuccinelli describes homosexuality as “intrinsically wrong(link is external),” “against nature and harmful to society(link is external)” and as representing a “personal challenge(link is external),” arguing that gay people can’t have a family(link is external). Cuccinelli led the effort(link is external) to pass a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which he said would lead to polygamy(link is external), and denounced HIV/AIDS education.

“When you look at the homosexual agenda, I cannot support something that I believe brings nothing but self-destruction, not only physically but of their soul,” Cuccinelli said(link is external).

He has worked(link is external) to stop gay people from adopting children and extending health benefits to their partners, and even tried to stop college and universities from offering protections for LGBT employees.

Obenshain opposed (link is external) a bill to protect LGBT employees from job discrimination three times in the state senate. Receiving a perfect rating(link is external) from the state’s chief anti-gay group, Obenshain voted(link is external) in favor of bills that would curb gay adoption rights and undermine anti-discrimination policies at public universities. The state senator also withdrew his support(link is external) from a judge whose nomination drew GOP opposition because he is openly gay.

Jackson has built his entire career demonizing gays and lesbians, whom he has called(link is external) “perverted,” “degenerate,” “spiritually darkened” and “frankly very sick people psychologically, mentally and emotionally.”

“Homosexuality is a horrible sin, it poisons culture, it destroys families, it destroys societies; it brings the judgment of God unlike very few things that we can think of,” Jackson said(link is external). “It also attempts to poison our children, divide them from their parents and the teaching of the church and basically turn them into pawns for that movement so that they can sexualize them at the earliest possible age.” He maintained(link is external) that gays have “recruited” black men, warning that homosexuality is “killing black men by the thousands.”

Jackson has also linked homosexuality to pedophilia (link is external) and bestiality(link is external), and suggested that God will punish the military (link is external) over the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, calling(link is external) the discriminatory policy’s repeal “an abomination.”

Government Shutdown

Government shutdown architects Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Jim DeMint, a former US senator from South Carolina who now leads the Heritage Foundation, are two of Ken Cuccinelli’s favorite politicians. He told(link is external) a conservative gathering, “I’m glad Ted Cruz was here. That was a great win. You know, you get more Ted Cruzes in there to back up Jim DeMint and you have less to worry about. You want to elect people you don't have to lobby. Sort of launch and leave missiles, politically speaking. Ted Cruz is a good one, and he’s a smart missile.”

During the shutdown, Cuccinelli joined (link is external) Cruz at a Religious Right group’s event, even while saying he opposed Cruz’s strategy. But Cuccinelli actually backed a similar strategy in Virginia, urging(link is external) anti-tax Republicans to take their budget standoff “right to the brink, over the brink.”

E.W. Jackson also previously supported government shutdowns. At a 2011 Tea Party rally with House Republicans, he chanted “cut it or shut it” during that year’s budget standoff(link is external). During this year’s shutdown he addressed the Values Voter Summit, an event where speaker after speaker, including Cruz, praised the GOP’s shutdown strategy.

Restricting Voting Rights

Cuccinelli said that Virginia, the home of Massive Resistance(link is external), should no longer be subject(link is external) to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He is also a huge supporter(link is external) of voter ID laws that encumber voting among people of color, along with urban, young and elderly voters. While serving in the state senate, he fought against(link is external) efforts to improve access to absentee ballots and restore voting rights to people who had served time for nonviolent felony convictions.

Obenshain will continue Cuccinelli’s legacy of undermining the rights of voters if he’s elected to replace him. The Washington Post editorial board writes (link is external) of Obenshain: “In the legislature, he has been a champion of the GOP push for more restrictive voter ID laws, which would reduce access for poor and minority voters. (There is zero evidence of voters misrepresenting their identity at the Virginia polls, the ostensible justification for such laws.)”

Anti-Science

Exhibiting just how his extreme ideology influences his policymaking, Cuccinelli used his office as attorney general to hound climate scientists(link is external) who worked at the state’s universities. One scientist who was relentlessly attacked by Cuccinelli said(link is external) that the GOP gubernatorial candidate wanted to “intimidate clime scientists” and “chill the scientific discourse” around climate change. Courts sided with the University of Virginia(link is external) over Cuccinelli, and also rebuffed(link is external) his legal challenge to the EPA’s regulations of greenhouse gases.

Obenshain readily defended Cuccinelli’s witch hunt against climate scientists, opposing(link is external) a bill to prevent the attorney general’s office from pursuing cases against academic inquiries. He told one Tea Party activist that he “absolutely(link is external)” would pursue another lawsuit against the EPA and investigation into climate scientists.

Jackson, for his part, denies the theory of evolution(link is external), arguing that the theory must be wrong because chimpanzees do not have a spoken language. He similarly rejects climate science as “silly” and “hysteria,” arguing that God would prevent climate change. “As if God’s gonna let mankind destroy the planet with SUV’s,” he told National Review’s Betsy Woodruff(link is external), who also notes that Jackson has preached that yoga and meditation could lead to demonic possession.

Anti-Obama Conspiracy Theories

Cuccinelli has flirted with the birther conspiracy theory (that President Obama was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii) and told(link is external) a birther activist that it “doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility” that Obama was born in Kenya, even offering the activist legal advice. He also warned (link is external) people against registering for a Social Security number “because it is being used to track you,” and endorsed the conspiracy theory (link is external) that Obama won re-election through voter fraud.

Jackson, meanwhile, suggested that Obama is an “anti-America, anti-Christian(link is external) Communist (link is external) and an anti-Semite (link is external) with “Muslim sensibilities (link is external) ” and “a lot of sympathy for radical Islam(link is external).”

“He certainly does have a lot of affection and favor for Islam,” Jackson said(link is external). “I’ve heard him talk about Islam in ways I’ve never heard him talk about America, and Christianity, I don’t even think about that with him, I really don’t, come on, that’s a joke.”

“We are dealing with an evil presence,” Jackson said of Obama(link is external).

He has also claimed that Obama is in “ rebellion…against God (link is external) ” and supports “an agenda worthy of the Antichrist(link is external) ,” tweeting(link is external) that Obama would “like to be” the “Pres. of Sodom & Gomorrah.” Jackson also believes (link is external) Obama “will force schools to start teaching all children homosexuality.”