Axis of evil
Meet the new Republican senators. Five of them hope to make your worst nightmares come true.
BY DAN KENNEDY

1) Tom Coburn: Keeping us safe from condoms and the ‘gay agenda’

Fresh from helping to save Oklahoma from the scourge of teenage lesbianism, Tom Coburn arrives in Washington with perhaps the most bizarre set of right-wing credentials of anyone in the Republican Class of 2004. A former three-term congressman who was swept into office 10 years ago on the coattails of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, Coburn — who succeeds retiring Republican senator Don Nickles — is an obstetrician possessed of an obsessive fascination with other people’s sexuality.

In 2003, George W. Bush named Coburn to co-chair the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS. Coburn’s very first act was to speak out against the one preventative behavior (other than abstinence) that actually works. "I will challenge the national focus on condom use to prevent the spread of HIV," he said upon his appointment. Earlier, as a congressman, he had sought to force condom manufacturers to label their products as "ineffective" in slowing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.

But that doesn’t begin to plumb the depths of Coburn’s so-called thinking. In his successful Senate campaign against Democratic congressman Brad Carson, Coburn called for the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions. That certainly gives new meaning to the term "pro-life." As a physician, Coburn himself performed abortions, although he says it was always to save the life of the woman. Tell it to the judge, Doc. Nor is that the only dissonant note from his career in medicine: Coburn was once accused of having sterilized a young woman without her permission. He says she had asked him to perform the surgery, though he conceded that he had lacked the written authorization that the law required.

In the 1990s Coburn criticized NBC for broadcasting Schindler’s List, the Oscar-winning film about the Holocaust, charging that it would encourage "irresponsible sexual behavior." That particular outburst was so odd that even one of his ostensible allies, self-appointed morals czar Bill Bennett, felt compelled to label Coburn’s remarks as "unfortunate and foolish." Coburn is also an outspoken opponent of the "gay agenda" in general and same-sex marriage in particular; as a member of Congress, he refused to allow the city of Washington to fund its program for domestic-partnership benefits.

Earlier this year, Coburn said that lesbianism is "so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl [at a time] go to the bathroom." Coburn’s source: a campaign worker. He later said his remarks had been taken "out of context," whatever that was supposed to mean. His spokesman gamely insisted that Coburn was worried that "our kids are getting mixed messages about sexuality." Mixed-up, rather, if they’ve been listening to Coburn.

Sources: Salon, September 13, 2004; AlterNet, March 28 and October 13, 2004; the Associated Press, October 12, 2004.

2) Jim DeMint: ‘The Family’ values, homophobia, and tax chicanery

If Tom Coburn is #1 on our list of exotic senatorial specimens, South Carolina’s Jim DeMint might qualify as #1A rather than #2. Congressman DeMint, who defeated Democrat Inez Tenenbaum in the campaign to succeed another retiring senator, Democrat Ernest Hollings, belongs to a secretive religious organization with anti-Semitic leanings, and is a tax-cut hypocrite and an outspoken homophobe to boot.

The decades-old religious group, best known for sponsoring the annual National Prayer Breakfast, is generally known as "The Family," "The Foundation," or "The Fellowship." A magnet for high-ranking conservative Washingtonians, it is said to have supported some vicious Third World right-wing dictatorships over the years — as well as performing the occasional good deed, such as helping to foster the relationship between Menachem Begin and Anwar el-Sadat. Members also reportedly believe that God’s covenant with the Jews is broken, and that they are "the new chosen." DeMint is close enough to the inner circle to have lived, along with five other congressmen, in a million-dollar Capitol Hill apartment subsidized by "The Family."

3) David Vitter: Putting young men and women in harm’s way

The election of Louisiana congressman David Vitter to the Senate is an ominous sign of the problems facing the Democratic Party, especially in the South. Vitter won more than 50 percent in a multi-candidate election last Tuesday, thus avoiding a runoff next month. The retiring incumbent, John Breaux, is a Democrat who’s conservative enough to inspire teeth-gnashing among liberals. But unlike Zell Miller, who these days sounds more Republican than Dick Cheney does, Breaux is a Democratic loyalist capable of pulling off the occasional bipartisan compromise. Vitter, though, is a straight-down-the-line ultraconservative.

According to rankings published by the National Journal, a nonpartisan political magazine, Vitter is the most conservative congressman elected to the Senate this year — more conservative than 87 percent of his peers. He has a 100 percent ranking from the National Right to Life Committee; a zero percent ranking from Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay-and-lesbian civil-rights organization; a zero percent ranking from the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club; and an "A" from the National Rifle Association.

4) Richard Burr: Corporate errand boy scoops up PAC money

North Carolina has come a long way since the days of Jesse Helms. Its Research Triangle is as sophisticated and well-educated as — well, as in any blue state. So it’s only appropriate that John Edwards’s successor in the Senate stand out as being somewhat different from his fellow Republican freshmen. To be sure, Congressman Richard Burr is as anti-choice, anti-gay, and pro-gun as the rest of them. But he comes from that strain of Republicanism more interested in sucking up to corporate interests than in joining hands with the godly.

How in the tank is Burr? With $2.4 million in donations, this distant relative of Aaron Burr received more money from political-action committees than did any other Senate candidate this year. "The main people he looks out for and answers to are the large corporations. That is the most troubling thing about Richard Burr to me," says Berni Gaither, a North Carolina Democratic Party official. Democratic activist Hayes McNeil puts it more succinctly: "Burr’s record in Congress looks like a whore’s bed sheet."

5) John Thune: A simple-minded campaign of flag-waving and heterosexuality

Of all the freshmen Republican senators-elect, there is one celebrity — John Thune, of South Dakota, who knocked off Senate minority leader Tom Daschle. But though Thune, a former congressman, is an ultraconservative with ties to the religious right, he doesn’t stand out for any particular policy outrage. Rather, Thune is a master of the sort of political cheap shot that excites the imaginations of those who like their symbolism both simple and stupid.

Take, for instance, a debate between Thune and Daschle on NBC’s Meet the Press. Thune was agitated over something Daschle had said in March 2003, just before the war in Iraq began — that is, that "this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we’re now forced to war." Never mind that a) Daschle was speaking the truth, b) he had voted in favor of the war resolution and later backed the $87 billion in reconstruction money for Iraq and Afghanistan, and c) he was a veteran and Thune was not. Thune took the opportunity to accuse Daschle of something close to treason, saying, "What it does is emboldens our enemies and undermines the morale of our troops."