{"id":268,"date":"2011-04-07T15:08:34","date_gmt":"2011-04-07T19:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/?p=268"},"modified":"2011-04-08T09:07:48","modified_gmt":"2011-04-08T13:07:48","slug":"new-hamphire-gop-follies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/new-hamphire-gop-follies.html","title":{"rendered":"New Hamphire GOP Follies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I figured that when New Hampshire House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt  sought an audience with Manchester archbishop John McCormack to  apologize for calling him a pedophile pimp, it would kind of chill  things out between the state GOP and the Catholic Church. But Tea Party  hard heads up there in the Granite State seem to have adopted the  slogan, &#8220;Dis Free or Die.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Thus, Rep. Timothy Comerford (R-Fremont) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.unionleader.com\/article.aspx?headline=GOP+chief+says+House+members+have+lost+focus&amp;articleId=8b38275e-c016-4457-a29f-5c61d484f911\">has sent an email<\/a> to all lawmakers calling McCormack &#8220;a corrupt scumbag&#8221;  and describing Church leaders &#8220;socialist-globalist leaning potentates.&#8221;  (Let it be noted that Rep. Comerford is a Catholic who graduated from  St. Anselm&#8217;s College in 2006.) Then there&#8217;s 31-year-old Andrew Manuse,  who was sufficiently annoyed by McCormack to <a href=\"http:\/\/nhjournal.com\/2011\/04\/05\/gop-rep-to-target-catholic-church-tax-status\/\">bethink himself <\/a>of introducing a bill to remove the Church&#8217;s tax-exempt status.<\/p>\n<p>The vituperation has reached a point where some Party of Lincoln  graybeards are suggesting that it may be getting in the way of  legislative business and even undermining New Hampshire&#8217;s battle to  maintain its status as first-in-the-nation presidential primary. \u201cWe  have always prided ourselves on being thoughtful, considerable [sic] voters who should be trusted with important responsibility of picking  presidents,&#8221; said one. &#8220;But the recent antics in Concord have cast a  dark shadow  over that assertion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Maybe so, but I&#8217;d say that in the GOP presidential sweepstakes this  year, New Hampshire&#8217;s youthful Republican legislators have their fingers  on their Party&#8217;s pulse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> As for the apology, it <a href=\"%20As%20for%20the%20apology,%20it%20took%20place%20today%20as%20planned,%20and%20neither%20bishop%20nor%20parishioner%20is%20saying%20more.\">took place<\/a> today as planned, and neither bishop nor parishioner is saying more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I figured that when New Hampshire House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt sought an audience with Manchester archbishop John McCormack to apologize for calling him a pedophile pimp, it would kind of chill things out between the state GOP and the Catholic Church. But Tea Party hard heads up there in the Granite State seem to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>New Hamphire GOP Follies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/new-hamphire-gop-follies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New Hamphire GOP Follies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I figured that when New Hampshire House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt sought an audience with Manchester archbishop John McCormack to apologize for calling him a pedophile pimp, it would kind of chill things out between the state GOP and the Catholic Church. But Tea Party hard heads up there in the Granite State seem to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/new-hamphire-gop-follies.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-04-07T19:08:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-04-08T13:07:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"New Hamphire GOP Follies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/04\/new-hamphire-gop-follies.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"New Hamphire GOP Follies - Religion &amp; Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"I figured that when New Hampshire House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt sought an audience with Manchester archbishop John McCormack to apologize for calling him a pedophile pimp, it would kind of chill things out between the state GOP and the Catholic Church. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}