Schumer says GOP run by 'theocrats'

by Jim Brown
February 20, 2007

(OneNewsNow.com) - - A liberal U.S. Senator says Democrats have a better chance of creating the next generation than Republicans because the Republican Party is "controlled by two interest groups that don't represent America." The GOP, says New York Senator Chuck Schumer, is dominated by what he calls "theocrats and economic royalists."

According to Schumer, America's Founding Fathers did not want religion determining what their government does -- and neither does he. "I respect faith -- I'm a person of faith myself," the senator said during a press conference recently in America's capital. "I've been in too many inner-city black churches, working-class Catholic parishes, rural Methodist congregations, little Jewish synagogues to not know that faith is a gift -- it's a gift.

"But the theocrats," added Schumer, "are a narrow band of the faithful who want to impose that faith on American government."

The New York lawmaker also shared his belief that the "economic royalists" in the GOP are people of enormous wealth who do not think they should have to pay taxes. "I bought those 10,000 acres with my money; it's my land," said Schumer, demonstrating what he sees as the attitude of an economic royalist. "How dare your government tell me what I can put in the air or put in the water."

And the senator offered another example: "I built my company with my own bare hands; how dare your government tell me what I should pay my worker, how I should treat my worker -- and if I want to discriminate against blacks or women or gays, that's my business. Get your government out of my way."

Schumer says over the last 35 years, with the aid of conservative think tanks and talk radio, the GOP's "economic royalists" have had a philosophy centered "around narrow greed."

Schumer made his comments at a recent joint news conference at the National Press Club with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Gingrich said he disagreed with Schumer's characterization of what the Speaker called "the slightly grotesque Republican Party."