Roll Call executive editor Morton M. Kondracke attacked New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd by comparing her to Christian activist and anti-abortion extremist Randall Terry. Kondracke said that Dowd “is turning out to be the Randall Terry of the left.” His comments, from the March 26 edition of Fox News' The Beltway Boys, follow previous attacks by Kondracke against liberal politicians.
Randall Terry is a right-wing Christian extremist with close links to violent members of the anti-abortion movement. He has been arrested and sued numerous times as a result of his anti-abortion activities. He has claimed that Christians “are called by God to conquer this country,” and has said of abortion provider Dr. Warren Hern: “I hope someday he is tried for crimes against humanity, and I hope he is executed.” In 1993, he told an audience in Fort Wayne, Indiana: “I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good ... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a Biblical duty, we are called by God, to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism” [Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, 8/16/93].
Terry has recently received considerable media coverage as a spokesman for the parents of Terri Schiavo and as the leader of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, which has staged numerous protests advocating the reinsertion of Schiavo's feeding tube.
Kondracke's comment came in response to Dowd's March 24 column, in which she wrote: “Oh my God, we really are in a theocracy. Are the Republicans so obsessed with maintaining control over all branches of government, and are the Democrats so emasculated about not having any power, that they are willing to turn the nation into a wholly owned subsidiary of the church?”
Kondracke has falsely attacked liberal politicians as well:
- He echoed the widely discredited charge made by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) did not properly earn his third and final Purple Heart while serving in Vietnam.
- He vastly overstated the cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit in order to accuse Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) of using a bogus cost estimate of his single-payer healthcare proposal.
- He was one of several Fox News commentators fixated on a manicure Kerry purportedly received shortly before the 2004 presidential debates, saying: “It's not what folks do out in the country is get a manicure.”
- He was part of a chorus of conservative commentators repeating the baseless claim that terrorists wanted Kerry to be elected president. Kondracke claimed that “for all I know,” the insurgency in Iraq was “designed ... to help elect John Kerry.”
- He falsely claimed that Kerry said in his Democratic National Convention acceptance speech that “we'll [the United States] fight back only when attacked.”
From the March 26 edition of Fox News' The Beltway Boys:
KONDRACKE: All right, now, now, now, now, I have to say, I do have to say that, that on the left, there's just as much rigidity and automaticity, or, you know, automatic... jumping knee-jerk reaction to this. I mean, the, the, the, Maureen Dowd, the columnist for the, for The New York Times, who sometimes I think is turning out to be the Randall Terry of the left --
[laughter]
KONDRACKE: -- said, quote, “Oh, my God, we are really in a theocracy. Are the Republicans so obsessed with maintaining control over all branches of government, and are the Democrats so emasculated” -- she has a tendency to go to through questions of emasculation -- “about not having power, that they're willing to turn the nation into a wholly owned subsidiary of the church?”