Looney & Duff: MacCormack’s Nomination Exposes a Deeper Problem in the Republican Party

“There is a long and dishonorable tradition of invoking religious conviction as a pretext for persecution. Jadon MacCormack is not the first to take a faith of love, forgiveness, and charity and bastardize it into vicious bigotry, cruelty, and contempt toward others and call it principle. His hate is a reflection of himself, not the Christian faith.”

“MacCormack is one example of a broader and deeply troubling pattern. The Republican Party in Connecticut and across this country continues to attract people who advocate views that have no place in a pluralistic democratic society. A group of elected Republican Party delegates got together and chose MacCormack to be the Republican nominee for the 50th District. MacCormack wrote a biography of preacher Steven Anderson who advocates the death penalty for gay people, has been banned from more than thirty countries, and whose church has been designated a hate group. Did none of these local Republicans know about MacCormack’s viewpoints that were so public and extreme? How does a man who chose to celebrate Steven Anderson get a Republican nomination for the Connecticut General Assembly without a single person in that party demanding answers?”