Carnival of the fire-breathers

I intended to write about the GOP's message problem with the headline: "Shoot the Messenger." Sunday's murder of abortion doctor George Tiller makes my title inappropriate, but the idea remains relevant.

The adage, of course, is "Don't shoot the messenger," meaning we shouldn't necessarily blame the person who delivers bad news. For the GOP these days, however, the problem isn't so much the message. It's the messenger. By grotesque coincidence, Tiller's murderer furthers the point.

It has long been a problem for the GOP that some of the party's cherished positions are embraced most enthusiastically by people whose grip on reality is sometimes ... tenuous. This is especially true with regard to abortion.

There are certainly compelling secular arguments against abortion that one might be perfectly willing to hear. Then Randall Terry shows up.

Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, doesn't represent the Republican Party, but he is the most familiar face of the anti-abortion movement. When President Obama recently gave the commencement address at Notre Dame, who showed up to lead the protest but Terry and the equally odd carnival performer Alan Keyes.

Rather than convincing people to think differently about abortion, the Terry-Keyes act makes one want to write checks to Planned Parenthood.

Such is the dilemma of the GOP: How do you get out the message when the messengers keep getting in the way?

Now comes a fanatic with a gun. Let me be clear: I don't mean to compare Terry or Keyes to the shooter.

That said, fire-breathers on the right don't help, whatever the cause. They may warm the base, but the Republican base is becoming a remote island in Mainstream America. Everyone else is paddling away. Accurately or not, the right-wing wacko contingent increasingly dominates the public perception of the GOP. And, fairly or not, that perception makes it easier for characters such as Scott Roeder, the suspected shooter, to become associated with the party.

Already, Roeder's story is emerging to reveal a right-wing character from central casting. Previously arrested on explosives charges, Roeder was once attracted to the Montana Freemen, best known for engaging FBI agents in an armed standoff in 1996. Roeder's ex-wife told The Associated Press that he had become "very religious, in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way. ... That's all he cared about is anti-abortion. 'The church is this. God is this.' Yadda yadda." Indeed.

Some Internet commentary even refers to Roeder as a "Christian terrorist." Let's see: Christian, pro-gun, anti-government, pro-life. Sounds like a Republican, right? Oh, and he's suspected of being an assassin. Connect them dots.

The GOP can't control who joins the party. But what the Democrats have that the Republicans lack is a moderating voice. While Democrats have Obama, Republicans are stuck with the squeakiest wheel du jour.

The GOP has contributed to the distortion by pandering to its less rational elements. Still fresh in our minds is the last presidential election - a strange season that might be attributed to desperation if not for a prior history in times of political prosperity.

Two words: Terri Schiavo. During that 2005 Operation Rescue debacle, Bill Frist, then the Senate majority leader and a physician, lent credibility to the circus performers by diagnosing Schiavo via video and challenging other medical opinion that she was in a persistent vegetative state.

And let's not forget how the GOP handled the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois against one Barack Obama. They inserted their own African-American, Alan Keyes.

We should never shoot the messenger, it should go without saying. But until the Republicans marginalize those who belong in the margins, they won't be attracting many new recruits. And the messengers will continue to obscure the message.

© 2009, Washington Post Writers Group