The 'Cultural War' Is Not 'Fringe'

Amazing how the post-modern left has perverted truth and decency to elevate radical homosexuality and environmental extremism, and infanticide and totalitarian secularism and God knows what else, to the "mainstream," while those standing up for goodness, decency and family values are "fringe."

But that's the meme running through this piece at the New York Times, "From the Fringe in 1992, Pat Buchanan's Words Now Seem Mainstream":

TAMPA, Fla. — Twenty years ago, Patrick J. Buchanan rocked the Republican convention in Houston by declaring there was a “cultural war” taking place for the soul of America, denouncing the Democratic Party as one that supported abortion, radical feminism and the “homosexual rights movement.”

“The agenda Clinton and Clinton would impose on America — abortion on demand, a litmus test for the Supreme Court, homosexual rights, discrimination against religious schools, women in combat — that’s change, all right,” said Mr. Buchanan, a conservative commentator who was a rival to President George Bush in the 1992 campaign. “But it is not the kind of change America wants.”

The speech — along with similarly sharp-edged addresses by the evangelist Pat Robertson and Marilyn Quayle, the wife of Vice President Dan Quayle — pushed issues like abortion, gay rights, religion and the role of women in society to the front of the stage, often loudly. Supporters of Mr. Bush pointed to the tone of the convention as one of the reasons he lost the election that November to Bill Clinton.

Yet Republicans gathered here to nominate Mitt Romney suggest that those speeches would hardly give them pause today. What many viewed as the fringes of the Republican Party 20 years ago have moved closer to the mainstream — evidence, Mr. Buchanan said, of the extent to which a Republican establishment that was once relatively moderate on social issues has been pushed rightward by grass-roots conservatives.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Buchanan, who is not attending the convention here, said he was struck by what he described as the warm reception in the hall in 1992. He said that Mr. Bush’s aides were similarly praiseworthy after he walked off the stage. The temperature soon cooled but, he said, he had no doubt the speech was the right speech for the right audience in 1992 — and even more so today.

“That speech was then, and is now, consistent with the heart and soul of the Republican Party,” Mr. Buchanan said. “The country-club and the establishment Republicans recoil from the social, cultural and moral issues which many conservatives and evangelicals have embraced.”

Mr. Buchanan said Mr. Bush would have been well served had he seized on the issues Mr. Buchanan raised and used them in his campaign against Mr. Clinton.

“The issue on which they were most vulnerable was social and cultural issues,” Mr. Buchanan said. “That is what they could have won on.”

More at the link.

Buchanan's full speech is here. The dude was on fire.