With Tea-Baggers Running Amok, the Right-Wing 'Civility Project' is Off to a Rocky Start

Mark DeMoss, a long-time conservative public relations expert has launched ‘The Civility Project’ which, he claims, calls for civility in the public discourse. Evidently, the Tea Partiers breaking up Town Hall meetings aren’t listening. 

This is not the golden age for the Republican Party and its Christian conservative base: “Birthers” rage; Tea Partiers shout down elected representatives at Town Hall meetings; GOP officials are caught sacking their aide’s wife (Sen. Ensign), an Argentine (Gov. Sanford), and anyone he could pay (Sen. Vitter); Joe the Plumber returns from Gaza and briefs GOP lawmakers on Middle Eastern matters; Sarah Palin cuts and runs; congressional Republicans say no to just about everything Obama, including health care reform; Dick Cheney hawks his hawkishness and defends torture, while daughter Lynn, considers running for office (defending torture?); and the old-timers on the Christian Right are selling the same anti-gay, anti-abortion smack. Even former Florida Governor Jeb Bush admitted – in an August Esquire magazine interview with Tucker Carlson – that the Party has lost its way.

Bush goes on to tell Carlson that Republicans “haven’t upgraded our message. We haven’t updated it. If you close your eyes and listen to most Republicans, most conservatives, the same speech could have been given in 1990. … If people think our message is outdated, our message is not relevant to the world we live in, and I think a growing number of people may feel that, you lose your relevance.”

Mark DeMoss, a long-time Christian Right/GOP-oriented public relations expert whose clients included the Rev. Jerry Falwell, for whom he was chief-of-staff, and Franklin Graham (the son of the Rev. Billy Graham), thinks the entire political landscape is out of whack, and he’s got a better idea; “The Civility Projects,” as summed up in a headline at Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink – “How to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable.”