Indeed, the Los Angeles Times offers something of a correction tonight, "Social Conservatives Put Religious Twist on 'Tea Party' Message":
For most of a year, the small-government advocates of the "tea party" movement have stolen the spotlight from the Republican Party's veteran performers: the Christian conservatives who have long driven voters to the polls for the GOP.LAT has its own source credibility problems (i.e., Grover Norquist, cited therein, is not to be trusted), but the overall thrust of the article is accurate, and -- amazingly enough -- even some hardline secularist airheads aren't quite fooled by the faux tea party/conservative splinter meme.
Now the veterans are stealing the tea partyers lines.
In news releases, mission statements and interviews, prominent social conservatives increasingly are using the small-government rhetoric popular with the tea party activists and long used by economic conservatives -- but with a religious bent.
Their websites explore the morality of debt and the risks to religious freedom posed by growing government. Like the tea party activists, they reverently invoke the Founding Fathers, but emphasize the role the founders' faith played in their writings.
The rhetorical shift is evidence of the potency of government growth as the galvanizing issue on the right. While economic and social conservatives have a history of tensions, many conservatives see the unified opposition to President Obama's healthcare plan and stimulus spending as an opportunity to strengthen the bridge between the two camps before the November elections.
Moral clarity deeply encompasses economic liberty, but also so much more. With that in mind, the sooner this dirtbag moral train wreck of an administration is dumped down the gutter, the better.
2 comments:
Same old Alinskyite crap, over... and over... and over.
They been trying to split the Right in every way imaginable since the day Obama got in- >yawn<
But the problem with that is NOTHING unites like a common enemy... and the force of opposition to Obama is now far, far more powerful than potential rifts on the Right.
We were allied with Stalin, Saddam Hussein, et. al.... because we judged Hitler and Iran to be worse.
Hard to imagine any social conservatives feeling more threatened by some moderate GOPer than Barack Obama's reign of terror.
It would be better if they were split. Social conservatism is the opposite of fiscal/government conservatism. Look folks, regardless of the rhetoric, social conservatives want big government, they just want it big in other areas than the socialists do.
Social conservatives claim they want "religious freedom" but they really want a Christian spin on public life. I find it hard to see freedom when they campaign that a christian prayer SHOULD be recited in school for example.
Social conservatives want lots of laws to try to "engineer" a moral society modeled in a biblical sense. While a much more moderate version, theirs comes from no different a direction than the Taliban. To see how this is not small government, take their anti-gay agenda as an example. Any laws created require judicial, legislative, and executive resource and absolutely increase the size of the government. If we did pass anti-gay legislation, then we'd thin out our law enforcement and judicial resources even more trying to prosecute gay people that have been discovered to have been "illegally" married. I'm sure they'd even insist on having law enforcement professionals go under cover in drag and try to entrap clergy who would dare try to marry gay people. However, a true conservative would argue the government has NO business defining marriage or being involved in marriage in anyway except in situation of divorce that may require the civil court system. A true conservative would argue that, if anything, there are too many laws about marriage and however people want to define "marriage" to themselves and their partner(s), they should be FREE to
define it anyway we want. And the government should not SPEND ANY resources on marriage other than the aforementioned civil court system.
Consider too, that in polls they are the faction that is most behind the $2-3 trillion dollar war in Iraq and generally for military action around the world, wanting the US to build its "righteous" empire. Policing the world and building empires is not small government. It is the opposite. And if there is one budget that most risks bankrupt the US, policing the world is it, and it happens to be the one thing they stand behind the most.
I'm a true conservative. I threw my last presidential vote away voting for Ron Paul and would do it again. I helped campaign locally for him. I am pissed about taxes and government spending. But the only reason I don't join the tea parties is because of the imposter conservatives there delivering their faith based message through it now, giving lip service to fiscal conservatism, saying they're on board with a small budget because jesus would want that. They've just about ruined the Republican party and now they have their sights on ruining this awesome grassroots movement before it even really begins.
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