Posted on 09/29/2014 4:08:29 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In fairness, the culture-war right has done less damage than the neocons and the super rich have. But they’re still the ones on the ropes.
I’m not sure what’s come over me and I suppose it’ll pass, but at just this moment I’m feeling a little bit sorry for evangelical conservatives. They were apparently pretty droopy, these proceedings over the weekend at the Values Voter Summit, as my colleague Ben Jacobs described things. Oh, yes, Ted Cruz fired them up, and some of the old stalwarts put in respectable appearances, but they have to know deep down that they’re like the horse-and-buggy lobby after Henry Ford has hit town. It’s only a matter of time.
I refer here chiefly to same-sex marriage, the big issue on which the cultural right now represents a quickly shrinking minority. You know the storm clouds are gathering when even Michele Bachmann is throwing in the towel—she declared same-sex marriage “not an issue” and even “boring” at the meeting.
But it’s not just same-sex marriage. The country has liberalized culturally in a range of ways in the past six or eight years, and it’s not only not going back, it’s charging relentlessly forward. The religious right also has no leaders anymore of the remotest interest. Back in the ’80s, Jerry Falwell was a figure to contend with; to loathe, certainly, but also to fear. Today? Pat Robertson has lost his marbles, seemingly, and after him, who? Tony Perkins? No one even knows his name, or if they do, they inevitably think of the guy who played filmdom’s most famous matricidal cross-dresser and aren’t entirely sure that this Tony Perkins might not be that Tony Perkins, which is not quite the type of association they’re looking for.
It’s a group that is losing power, and I think the leaders and even the rank-and-filers know it. Their vehicle, the Republican Party, is going libertarian on them. Rand Paul, whether he wins the 2016 nomination or not, is clearly enough of a force within the party that he is pushing it away from the culture wars. He is joined in this pursuit by the conservative intellectual class, which knows the culture wars are a dead-bang loser for the GOP and which finds the culture warriors more than a little embarrassing, and by the establishment figures, the Karl Rove types, who stroked them back in 2004 but who now see them as a liability, at least at the presidential level. There are still, of course, many states where these voters come in quite handy in that they elect many Republican representatives and senators.
If you think of the famous three legs of the Republican stool (the money conservatives, the foreign-policy conservatives, and the cultural conservatives) and think about which of those legs have had the biggest policy impact during periods of Republican governance in recent history, you have to conclude that the money and foreign-policy conservatives have made out like bandits (in some cases all too literally). The money crowd got all the deregulation it could realistically hope for. The neocons got two wars. The social conservatives haven’t done nearly as well. They’ve gotten some judicial appointments, but Roe v. Wade is still law, and that turncoat Kennedy is probably going to let the gays marry.
Now we’re getting to why on one level I feel a pang of sympathy for them. The disasters the Republican Party has brought us in the last decade—the economic meltdown and the wars—were the fault of the other two legs of the stool. Yet we know that these two groups are going to have permanent power in GOP. The money people own the party, and the neocons still dominate in Washington and—Rand Paul notwithstanding—will always have a considerable degree of influence in the party. The social conservatives are the only faction within the triad that hasn’t heaped wreckage upon the nation (not for lack of trying), and yet they have far less power in the upper echelons of party than the other two groups. And when they complain, as they occasionally do, that they’ve largely been paid back for all their work in the vineyards with lip service and symbolic little executive order-type things, they have a point. It’s a little like labor in the Democratic Party.
And now, 2016 is going to be a pivotal election for them. Many of them want Ted Cruz, who won the Values Voter straw poll. But of course this is ridiculous. Cruz isn’t going to be the nominee. In fact Cruz’s win, and the fact that Jeb Bush and Chris Christie weren’t even invited to the meeting, is a sign of their retreat from serious politics toward something entirely gestural. Bush, from these people’s perspective, is too squishy on immigration, and Christie last October decided to stop fighting the tide of history on same-sex marriage when a decision by the state’s Supreme Court led Christie to withdraw an appeal his administration had lodged against a pro-same-sex marriage lawsuit.
That’s a childish way to do politics. If somehow they were to get their way with Cruz, then Hillary Clinton will easily be elected president, and she’ll almost certainly have the time and opportunity to flip the Supreme Court back to a liberal majority, and they’ll be finished for the good, the cultural right, and they will have contributed mightily to their own well-deserved demise.
OK. Whew. I’m over it.
I’d rather be right than popular.
This article is a mixture of bubble-headed thinking and wishful thinking.
He is WORRIED ABOUT TED CRUZ which is why he attempts to summarily dismiss him.
So if we become nihilistic godless vermin, those precious independents and moderates will vote for us?
ROFL
I’m already 200% behind him. We need to make our selection NOW, not wait for them to give us a squish. The MINUTE he declares I’ll start my quest to raise one million dollars or more. And no, I’m not looking for an ambassadorship.
Your standards and beliefs cannot mean much to you if you can be easily swayed by the opinions and beliefs of others.
Notice that almost no one writes these articles in reverse?
The libtard secular humanists want to gain control of every institution. Once the institution of traditional marriage and family is destroyed, they can substitute their marxist ideas of children being raised equally by the state.
A better word would be apostatized, and not 'liberalized'.
Not going back? Perhaps. If God has given up on us (although long suffering, and not willing that any should perish -- clearly America has regressed to the point that Sodom and Gomorrah would be embarrassed to be associated with us. And we remember what happened to them), then we clearly are not 'going back'.
But until we can, and will, pray that the nation will repent, humble itself, turn back from its evil ways. Although directed towards Israel, the message is appropriate today:
Ezekiel 18:30b-32 ... Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.
Pray that we have not been cauterized to the point that we are as the fools of Romans 1.
Romans 1:18-32 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
You mean about all the great victories social conservatism has enjoyed in the past couple of decades?
Libturds have to be in quite a quandary nowadays. Evangelical Christians they have treated so shabbily in the recent past on one side and folks who will cut your head of for believing in what they believe on the other. Must be kinda hard to sleep at night. It must help to relive their fantasies of how they have driven Christians from the public square. Sweet dreams, morons. Because we behave like civilized people don’t mean we can’t or won’t defend ourselves which is more than you’ll libturds can do.
Funny thing. I’m not discouraged or feeling defeated at all. That’s because the beasts of the left are not answerable to me. They will answer to the Lord. And there won’t be any hiding.
Even if they defeat us, they can’t win. Defeating culture and values means you have surrendered to decadence, chaos, and social decay. This is the celebration (premature hopefully) of a virus who thinks it has defeated the hosts’ immune system, but hasn’t yet realized that means the host will die, and the virus along with it.
This article is wishful thinking on the writer’s part. I watched every speaker on line and they were all fantastic as was the audience. That worries the left.
Seems to be a plethora of postings around FR of late from radical liberal sources (like the ever Marxist ‘Daily Beast’ )without the requisite barf alert.
“If the house is worthy, give it your blessing of peace. But if it is not worthy, take back your blessing of peace. “Whoever does not receive you, nor heed your words, as you go out of that house or that city, shake the dust off your feet. “Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. ~Matthew 10:13 - 15
You’ve been here nearly 15 years and you couldn’t see where he was going from that headline, not to mention the site and the writer?
There are far fewer Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers than there were 25 years ago. You mean like that?
WHERE’S THE BARF ALERT?
The writer obviously hasn’t been looking at the latest polls, which are swinging strongly the other way.
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