Over the weekend, Cathie Adams was elected the new Chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party.
Adams also happens to be the President of the Texas Eagle Forum who has deep ties to other right-wing leaders in the state, such as David Barton and, as the Texas Freedom Network notes, has a long history of ultra-right-wing activism:
- Ms. Adams has compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler, suggesting that his speech to American students was “eerily like Hitler’s youth movement.”
- In an e-mail to far-right activists in 2008, Ms. Adams viciously attacked the faith of then-candidate Obama (page 40):
“While many question Barak Hussein Obama’s ‘religion’…, the more important question is whether he has a ‘relationship’ with Jesus Christ because that is the only HOPE that any of us have to obtain eternal life. I personally see NO evidence that Obama has that kind of ‘saving faith.’”
- Two years ago Ms. Adams opposed a ballot measure providing $300 million annually over 10 years for cancer research. Voters approved the measure, which had the support of Gov. Perry and then-President George Bush. But Adams didn’t, falsely claiming that the money would be used in embryonic stem cell research and suggesting that medical researchers are amoral monsters:
“Scientists are on the verge of cloning humans, injecting them with diseases and studying them, then killing them.”
- Defending the dominance of failed abstinence-only programs in Texas schools recently, Ms. Adams blamed the state’s sky-high rates of teen births and sexually transmitted diseases on the supposedly inferior morals of Mexican immigrants:
“If mom had a baby at age 15, are her morals going to be setting different standards than someone who has grown up in the American culture where that is not typical? As a matter of fact, we would look at someone impregnating a 15-year-old as child abuse.”
- She opposes the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which gives children of the working poor access to health care:
“Now illegal aliens will be able to purchase cheap insurance for their children. This is an incentive for them to come here.”
